Instagram is becoming an increasingly important social media channel and a force to be reckoned with, even among the B2B segment. According to Iconosquare’s 2015 study, 70 % of respondants have looked up a brand on Instagram and 62 % of the users say they follow a brand just because they like the company.
More and more companies are moving away from the self- and sales oriented advertising and instead moving towards storytelling marketing. Instagram presents an excellent opportunity to humanize a brand, nurture relationships and grow communities. But how do you make sure you stay top of mind for your audience and how on earth do you keep your Instagram feed interesting?
Here’s a few ideas on posts for your B2B Instagram account:
- Show your company history, milestones, past events, fun facts, anecdotes, old photographs – it will show your company has a long history, is a trustworthy partner and can also help you achieve emotional connection.
- Create short demos and tutorials. Social Media isn’t just a channel for pushing and advertising to new potential clients. It’s just as much about providing your current clients with information and educational content.
- Demonstrate thought leadership by creating interview snippets with your employees or teams
- Involve your audience. Let them ask questions to your experts and have them either answer it in a short 15-second video or a comment along with a picture that is related to the answer.
- Share company news in a visual way. Instead of a boring press release use visuals to show your news. It could be anything from a new website, a new CEO, a new award or a new merger. Take a photo of the event or something that represents the news and post it along with a short and to-the-point caption.
- Feature your employees and show that there’s people behind your company. Create short video interviews where the employees get the chance to tell their view on their field of expertize. Take pictures of your employees from different departments and quote them on a certain topic that’s relevant for their position.
- Feature new (or long standing) clients. It doesn’t only give off the impression that you have happy clients and work as a reference list for possible leads, it also deepens your relationship with the client.
- Collect User Generated Content. Encourage your audience to create and feature the best on your website. Research from Engage Sciences show that the use of UGC from sources such as Instagram increases web traffic with 11 %, gives a 10 % decrease in bouncerate and websites with Instagram shots generally achieve a 25 % better conversion rate than glossy production shots.
- Use Instagram to promote content on your other social media channels. Say that you’re hosting a contest or a webinar event on your Facebook, make a post about it and drive people to that channel.
- Instagramming from an event for the sake of letting your audience know that you were at an important event has a function, but isn’t always very interesting. If you’re the one speaking you might feature a picture of the preparations. If you’re merely there you might Instagram a picture from one of the speeches, but make sure you’re including an interesting insight, use the official hashtag and tag the person and/or company providing the insight. You’ll build relationships and demonstrate that you’re up to date on the very latest in the industry.
- Display company culture insight and your company values. If your vision is to be creative and think outside the box then illustrate this by being very creative in your posts. If you pride yourself on having an international staff, do posts with an international theme. Fedex is an excellent example of this. They show that they’re constantly hard at work to deliver our packages by showing Fedexs trucks and -workers constantly on the move in a million different settings and at all times of the day.
- Be fun and playful! Social Media is a great opportunity to show that you’re so much more than just a boring software company or a monotonous law firm. Show creativity and you’ll be considered creative.
- Use the company colors as a theme or play with the logo
- Build a community around a hashtag. Nike does this very well. Their #runfree campaign is just one example and their #chooseyourwinter not only promoted their brand but also mobilized runners to go running no matter the temperature.
- Show off your CSR values by showing your employees doing voluntary work, biking to work to keep emissions down and similar.
- Create visual case studies. Take a picture of or shoot an Instagram video of your client using your product and let them explain what the products mean to them.
- Post teasers of announcements and product releases. It will build exectations and keep people coming back for more.
- Statistics and data are always interesting. Presenting them in a nice way will be a lot more exciting than just a text about it on your branded blog. Create an Infographic about the data that works well for Instagram, or have your employees visually form the number you want to talk about. Don’t be afraid to mix a little fun in posts that are about hard facts and numbers.
- A day in the life of Instagram-stories. Do you have any prominent employees, employees with a big personality or employees that have very unusual and/or exciting day-to-day tasks? Have them do a series of “a day in the life of” pictures.
- Detailshots from your office. Even something as ordinary as a coffee mug rack can get exciting if you use the right kind of aesthetics and include an interesting or fun quote.
- Feature pictures from social events at your company. For many people it plays an important role in the recruitment process that the company has a lively and social atmosphere.
- Show what your employees are doing right now #widn and then pass the torch by tagging employees at your client’s or your partnering company.
- Interact and engage with others. Don’t expect to have an engaged audience if you don’t interact with them on your own channels and engage with your most important fans and influencers on their channels. It will show that you’re not just in it for the self promotion, but actually genuinely interested in them.
