7 Tips to Optimize Your Instagram Brand Profile

Instagram boasts over 500 million active monthly users, who generate over 40 billion photos and 95 million videos per day. This makes it an obvious platform to focus on in your social media marketing strategy, but highlights just how competitive the platform is as well.

If you’re active on the world’s premier image-sharing platform, you may want to ensure your profile is optimized for maximal reach, engagement and potential. All this really takes is a little bit of planning and revision, which in turn can help you gain followers on Instagram and boost engagement. It’s never too late to assess your brand’s profile—here’s how.

1. Optimize Your Instagram Profile Name

We’ll start with the obvious: your name on Instagram needs to match that of your brand or business. The tricky part lies in those whose names are taken; if this is the case, begin the handle with your business name and append another detail at the end.

Many brands might try to put “the” or “real” at the start of their handle to differentiate their brand, but ideally you want your username to begin the same way that people will type your brand’s name into search. In this case, the username will show up when the search feature begins to autocomplete the query.

You can change your handle any time—find the option in your profile settings.

2. Turn Your Bio into a Call to Action

Your bio shouldn’t just say what you do—to really make use of the platform, turn it into a call to action! Include a hashtag to encourage followers to submit content and expand your visibility. Stick to just one hashtag, and make it unique. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusing or overwhelming new followers.

The field for entering a URL into your profile is essential—but chances are, you’re not using it to its full potential. When you want to promote content, place a short, trackable link in the bio. You should then promote the content in a photo caption (“Check the link in bio to see!”). Change the link regularly to whatever campaign you want to promote and track via the platform. 75% of Instagram users take action after they see an advertising post, so use that URL field to your advantage!

3. Leverage Location for Instagram Optimization

Depending on your industry, you may benefit from location tagging your posts. Travel brands, for example, can gain a lot from showcasing different locations and tagging their posts. If you manage a profile for a shop, geotagging alerts followers to where they can go and buy whatever’s featured.

If your industry or brand doesn’t seem like a fit for geotagging, you might still use the feature for better visibility. Let’s say you have a presence at a convention or other event—by tagging appropriate content with that event’s location, you reach other attendees or local users who browse the location tag.

4. The Age-Old Rule: Quality Over Quantity

When someone happens upon your profile, the first thing they’ll probably do is scroll through your most recent posts. This means you want to ensure that everything you post is top-quality—you don’t want to make a bad impression with a lame image. Unlike other social networks, Instagram is truly a place for quality over quantity.

When ideating content, remind yourself that this profile is an extension of the overall brand experience. Stay on-brand, but don’t be afraid to have some fun and approach things with a sense of humor.

5. Gain Followers on Instagram by Posting at the Right Time

Taking a cue from above, you don’t have to feel pressured to post too often like with other social platforms. In fact, top brands only post about 5 times a week. The real key here is being consistent.

When planning your posts, create a schedule around the best times for engagement. This varies day by day, though generally after work hours are best. Once your photos are taken and edited, schedule the posts using a third-party tool like Hootsuite.

6. Instagram Optimization Requires Listening and Engagement

The above tips are great for optimizing your Instagram profile to get more followers, but what then? You’ll have to engage! As you probably already know, Instagram now uses an algorithmic feed based on relevancy. This means that aside from producing awesome content, you need to encourage followers to interact to stay visible, such as giving them specific calls-to-action, highlighting users, using hashtags, hosting events, and more.

7. Keep Your Community and Online Brand Reputation Safe

With an optimized profile and an active community, there’s just one thing left to consider: how you’ll keep your online brand reputation and community safe from abuse, trolls and spam. To achieve this, you’ll need to vigilantly moderate your profile.

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