<aside> 💡 Some of these are “hacks” and if they don’t feel right or authentic to you, don’t do them.

</aside>

Settings

Bio

Your Content:

• Make sure you have at least one About video pinned on your feed!

  • Whom you serve, how you serve them
  • Your story
  • This account is for ______(ideal client) who _____(goal, interest, aspiration). With __ years experience in ___ , we specialize in ______.

• The current algorithm favors videos or carousels over single images. But your videos should be bite sized- 6-8 secs is still the sweet spot

• You want your content to stand out but not in the wrong way. Keep it native to the platform - the more produced the content, the more it looks like an ad

Captions:

• Video captions:

  • For the start (and even the duration of the video in some cases) you’ll want an attention grabbing hook of a title
  • Place the text in the top of the video but within the viewable area
  • Make it attention grabbing and related to the content you’re showing them
    • E.g. POV You’re a social media marketer, The 5 things you need to know about Branding, This simple change transformed my business
    • Remember that keywords apply here too
      • Audio captions:
        • Use Instagram to caption your videos over uploading pre-captioned video

  General Tips

• Hashtags are not totally dead but don’t spam them. Yes, you can add them as the first comment

• Show your face. Yes, you can show your work. But people buy from people and it’s really hard to build a real relationship with your target audience when you hide

• Keep it entertaining, educational, empathetic RELATABLE

• Stop selling on Instagram! Convert by creating conversations, connection and community through your content. Add the call to action to the end of your video and/or the end of your caption (and of course in your bio)

• But do ensure it’s high quality. You’ll get dinged for low resolution

• Make sure your reels fill the whole screen - scale to the proper ratio 9:16

• Use in-platform editing tools including Instagram’s own captioning feature, filters, stickers, picture-in-picture, green screen etc.

• Leverage trending audio. Even if you’re speaking in the video, you can add trending audio and change the volume in the video editing controls to keep your audio high and the trending audio low to inaudible. I could write a book on trending audio, but pic audios that are just taking off (under 5k use, even better if it’s under 1k)

• Post captions:

  • The first few words are visible at the bottom of the reel so make them count! Use them to get people to click and read more.

  • KEYWORDS baby, you’ll notice at the bottom of all of my captions I use keywords like this: Marketing | Branding | Events | Strategy | Content Creation. I’ve also seen creators use an actual keyword list buried at the bottom of the caption area (e.g. “keywords: family, family-friendly, kids, travel, tourism, Virginia, parenting”)

  • There is a debate around “wall of text captions” but I’ve found long captions really helpful from keyword/SEO perspective and for increasing my watch time

  • Favor the following types of content to get more engagement:

    • Inspirational content that shares your overall message/motto
      • POVs, pep talks and reminders that evoke emotions
    • Educational content should no longer be long winded tutorials (save that for Youtube)
      • Quick, to the point, with bite-sized takeaways
    • Entertaining content should leverage trends and current events to be topical, fun, and totally relatable
      • You want your audience to enjoy watching you and to follow for more
    • Sincere content where you talk to the camera and/or share something vulnerable
      • This builds trust

<aside> 🔄 Finally, post consistently - whatever that means for you. If your goal is daily reels- awesome! You’ll be rewarded for it. If your goal is 3 reels a week with static posts and carousels mixed in - great! The platform will recognize your posting patterns and you will be rewarded for it. If you post haphazardly, expect haphazard results

</aside>

You can use our free Social Media Calendar template to organize your social media!

Obey Creative Social Media Calendar

Click the “Save as Template” button and log into Notion.