How to Blog on Instagram in 2022: A Beginner’s Guide
Going to publish your first post and tell the Instagram world about yourself, but don’t know how? Or maybe you already have a blog, but you’re not happy with it? What about making money? Is your profile bringing in enough clients or would you like more?
You’re reading the full guide on how to start blogging on Instagram. In this article, I talk about what points to pay close attention to in maintaining an account. Let’s look at all of them:
- choosing a niche,
- target audience,
- analysis of competitors,
- account design,
- writing posts and publishing stories,
- forbidden topics.
What should you do before you start an Instagram account?
Look, there are hundreds of happy wives, needleworkers, fitness models, knitters, photographers, and trainers on Instagram. If you write about the same things they write about, you’ll just drown in the mass of similar blogs.
You need your own thing and instagram doesn’t need another blog.
Start with market analysis
Before you learn how to lead Instagram you need to start with a market analysis. I’m not talking about serious marketing analysis. I encourage you to look at what people are searching for in your niche using:
- Google Trends,
- Comments on forums and competitor accounts.
Before the advent of the iPad, there were PDAs (pocket personal computers) on the market. But they were not popular with people: it was expensive, incomprehensible and ugly. And in 2010, Apple presents its first iPad, which combines the functions of a laptop and a smartphone.
The company saw the potential of the niche, adjusted to people’s expectations and needs, and released the product.
Do an analysis of your target audience
It’s been said and said and said about the target audience, but I still get a lot of comments like, «I don’t know who my target audience is».
The target audience is a group of people united by any attribute. This includes not only existing customers, but also potential customers.
Through the target audience analysis, you’ll know:
- What the potential buyer looks-reads-listens to. When developing texts and advertising you take into account their slang, traditions, religious or political beliefs, ways of getting information, etc. All this increases the effect of the advertisement.
- The needs of the audience: what does your customer need? What problems does she face and what can she offer. This will allow you to make the best possible point offer. As one cliché says: An offer you can’t refuse.
- What your audience breathes. You also know the people they are listening to. This is especially true when buying ads from bloggers.
For a successful start, get to know your competitors
For some reason many people associate working with competitors with fighting, conflict, or even war. Let’s agree, from now on, to consider our competitors as colleagues, from whom we can learn something or build up on their background. It seems to me that this viewpoint is more appropriate for constructive cases.
Why you should analyze your competitors:
- To understand the differences between your assortment and your competitor’s assortment,
- to see their strengths and weaknesses,
- to understand how they sell and where their customers come from,
- to adjust their own development strategy.
How to manage an Instagram account
Once you have your niche, target audience, and competitors figured out, you can move on to the account itself. For readers to notice your profile, it’s important to get it right. This means you need to make a header, think about the visuals, write a content plan, and start promoting your profile.
Decide on the type and topic of the blog
To start blogging, decide on its type. Accounts are usually divided into 3 large groups: business account, personal blog, and expert blog.
Business account. You can have a business account if you want to make a store, studio or salon page. Such profiles are monetized by selling their services and products.
A personal blog is any profile whose author runs an Instagram and does not provide any services. The authors of such blogs often shoot funny and not so funny videos, comment on events in the world, express their opinions on current issues in posts and stories.
Expert blogs are ideal for promoting your services. For example, if you are a makeup artist, copywriter or photographer. It is important for the authors of such blogs to work with the loyalty of the audience, increase their expertise, and involve them with interesting and useful content.
Expert blogs are monetized by selling services and training (courses, marathons, master classes).
Think about the visual design
The visual design includes the profile header, avatar, and photo posts in the feed. Trends are constantly changing and what was relevant in 2020 is already out of fashion in 2022. So I won’t tell you about visual trends, but I will give you some general principles to follow.
- Look at the description of your target audience. Your visuals should be close to those we want to attract.
- Publish high-quality photos. And I’m not just talking about professional photo shoots, although you need them for your blog. Choose your clothes, accessories and surroundings to take good photos.
- Watch the balance of light and darkness. The photo should not have highlights or, conversely, too dark portions.
- Choose a variety of angles. Do not post selfies or portrait photos only. Try to have a variety of perspectives in your feed: details, medium, far, and extra-long shots.
- Process your photos. You can use Lightroom presets or edit images in other photo apps.
Start writing posts
- The maximum length of a post is 2,200 characters, but Instagrammers learned how to get around that limit a long time ago. There are two ways you can post things that don’t fit in the post:
The text on the photo in the carousel. In addition to the first photo, you have 9 more slides in the carousel, where you can write what doesn’t fit in the post. Don’t forget to write in the post that you can read the continuation in the carousel.
2. Comment under the post. Fewer and fewer people are using this method, but it’s still alive, so I’ll write about it. Each comment holds up to 1,000 characters, and if what you don’t enter is less than that number, write a comment. Don’t forget to pin it so that it’s right below the post and people don’t have to look for the continuation. To anchor a comment, you’ll have to post it on behalf of another account.
Depending on the content and purpose, a distinction is made between posts:
Selling. The purpose of such posts is to sell a product, a product, a service. These are posts where you directly encourage readers to buy something from you.
Informational. Provides information to the audience. This may be the latest price, information about changing the address or opening a new branch. This also includes useful posts on the account.
Engaging. These posts are aimed at engaging your existing subscribers so that they leave comments and communicate with you. Here you can discuss about procedures and products, conduct contests.
Entertaining. Good mood and loyalty-boosting posts. Humor gets you closer to your readers. Entertaining content includes funny memes and videos, curiosities and polls.
Post Stories and Reels
In Stories, talk about yourself, personal insights, how your day at work went, share your achievements. Emotional content brings the blogger closer to the audience. It’s important to post stories daily so that you don’t get lost in the subscriber feed.
Business accounts can post current promotions, new products, or have an interactive Q&A about products or services. This will increase your reach and find out what’s interesting to your target audience.
Owners of a personal blog are advised to conduct more live communication: polls, voting, situations from everyday life, urgent news.
An expert blogger can share the results of his work or achievements of his students in the stories. Show your subscribers customer reviews, tool or product reviews. Make it interactive with voting or asking them to rate the results in a before/after style. Don’t forget to show personal content on the blog, it makes a good impact on reach.
What is forbidden to post on Instagram?
Nude photos, posts inciting conflicts on religious, political or social topics are prohibited on Instagram. Plagiarism is not allowed — the social network is against content theft. For sending spam in Direct and spamming comments, you can expect a permanent account ban.
The service may also consider it questionable to publish several posts in one day:
- New profiles 2-4 weeks old can publish no more than 3 posts per day.
- Profiles more than 6 months old can post up to 25 posts per day.
Instagram reacts sharply to any mass action. Numerous identical hashtags, comments, and direct messages are perceived as spam. Endless likes, subscriptions, unsubscribes make the activity of the page suspicious. For various violations, insta can ban you for several hours, days, months, or even forever.
Conclusion
Now you know everything you need to start blogging on Instagram. This social network is a goldmine for business and self-expression. I hope you understand the algorithm of actions and this article will really help you in maintaining a profile.
And don’t forget, reading some information is not enough to develop an account. The main thing is to put it into practice.
