If you’ve found it difficult to engage with your audience on Instagram or even to reach a broader, you’re not alone! We felt that even as a social media marketing agency that no one was resonating with our content 😫

Why though? We manage several accounts for our clients and we somehow are able to crush it? So why is it that when it comes to our own content we can’t seem to connect?

Instagram and Your Audience Want Content Delivered in a Certain Form

We heard something the other day that made a lot of sense! Imagine Instagram is a social event; party, backyard bbq, holiday party, etc. With that same mindset go back and review your content as if what you were saying is how you’re trying to talk to someone at that event. Does is seem a little bit off? Like you didn’t really pick a topic that was conversational? Maybe you just spoke at them instead of to them?

This is a great exercise to start with every day! Why?

We come at content with our own agenda. Often times our string of thoughts make sense to us because there was a larger conversation going on before hand and we just decided to pick out part of it to use as a piece of content. There’s nothing wrong with that! However, the piece of content you pick does matter.

You’ll have seen that many brands and businesses have their own podcast and they simply take clips from it to use on social. You could do that!

However, if you’re a smaller business you need to recognize your opportunity. You have the want and need to connect with individuals. Most larger businesses don’t have that dedicated touch point anymore. It’s been outsourced and their lead generation is on a much larger scale, so they aren’t so concerned with engagement on certain platforms.

The deeper conversations they are having are happening on another platform.

Cater to Instagram’s Culture and Not It’s Ability

If you don’t know much about Reddit, then we’ll give you a quick cliff notes version. Users of reddit are extremely loyal, avid fans of the platform, and can sense when someone hops in to forums that is a outside user whose trying to market something.

The connects feel odd and isn’t engaged with or is mocked for it’s attempt to infiltrate their community.

Instagram doesn’t limit what content you can post, it doesn’t limit the amount, or the message..(kind of)

It simply knows what will and won’t be accepted by their audience.

So how do you find what will be accepted by the audience?

Use Successful Accounts to Build Out Your Own Content Framework

If you can’t seem to find any traction with your content then you need some help!

You need to find a social media manager of you can find someone that you enjoy following personally and start studying their content. Yeah, this isn’t just a quick fix for getting your content back on track. You’re going to have to put in the work. This may take a little internal reflection and further defining of key pieces of your business.

The reason that many businesses can do well on social is that they aren’t guessing at their business’s core values anymore. They are well established and they’ve teased out the ‘angle’ and strategy in which they are going to use Instagram to connect with their target audience.

So what should be looking at when studying another’s content?

EVERYTHING! But here’s a few more specifics!

• How long are their reels?
• Are their multiple cuts throughout to keep it engaging?
• What is the text on the screen their using?
• Where on the screen is it used?
• Is the hook in the content or text, or both?
• What is the tone they are using in the caption?
• Is there a frequent ‘Call-to-Action’?

Why Instagram ‘Trending Audios’ are a Great Place to Start

Tip: Looking for the ‘trending arrow’ that signifies that this audio is trending. THAT’S NOT ALL KEEP READING! Click on the audio and take a look at the stats. If the current audio has less that 4-5 thousand uses and the original (first) reel has more than 1 Million, then that’s a good indicator that this could help your content reach more people.

Trending audios are a great place to start because it already significantly takes the pressure off of the video aspect of the content.

You’ll see many people touting that ‘Your next viral reel is already in your camera roll’.

This is some truth to that, but if you aren’t accustomed to filming things behind the scenes of what you do, then you won’t have very much to go on.

The key piece to this learning how to define a ‘hook’ by the text used on the screen. This is why studying another successful creator is key. You can often copy the same layout and change the niche topic to fit your content. We don’t have to start from scratch every time and that’s probably the hardest part in re-training your brain how to create content.

Finding what’s working and how to apply it to your content is the magic skill that allows creators to become so successful!

If You’re Having Trouble And Want A Little Help!

Connect with us and schedule a free 30 minutes Social Media Marketing Strategy Session. We’ll talk through your content and give you some clear examples of how you can alter your content to start connecting with target audience.