Telling Stories in Pictures – Visual Storytelling with Instagram

Our first internal Instagram workshop was a complete success. You will have already seen this over the past few days on our channels, where the new insights were immediately applied and recorded. Naturally, we don't want to withhold the key facts about the number one picture app from you, so we've put together a summary.

A picture says more than 1000 words.

This is what two app developers thought in 2010 when they launched Instagram, a new photo platform and a new social network at the same time. The original idea was to tell one's own story using everyday snapshots. A kind of "behind the scenes" of one's own life, so to speak. Today, 500 million active users share a total of 95 million photos and videos daily, giving out around 4.2 billion hearts in the process.

Who are these users?

The majority of the Instagram community is female and lives in cities. Instagrammers look for inspiration and entertainment in the app. 80% of all users follow at least one business profile. According to Hackernoon, around 40 million people worldwide are addicted to the photo app. They are already so conditioned that they automatically take a photo when they feel a #instamoment arise.

Since the acquisition by Facebook in 2012, the (organic) reach of individual posts has been continuously declining. Not least due to the introduction of the new algorithm the change from the latest to the “most popular” posts in the News Feed it has become increasingly difficult to reach new profiles and people. The organic reach on Instagram like on Facebook also depends on factors such as the number of interactions within a short period and the average time spent on the post. How can this development be counteracted?

What do you need to be successful on Instagram?

Many companies, influencers, bloggers, and private individuals ask themselves this question today. If you content analyse various accounts of major influencers, the following picture emerges: You need beautiful hair, delicious looking avocado toast, a house on the beach, and the perfect beach body. If we don't have all of that, we have to resort to other tricks and tips.

Who am I? Complete your profile

There are two types of accounts: a personal one, which anyone can create, and a business one, for which you must be an administrator of a Facebook page. These two profile types have differed visually for several months: In the business profile, the company's field of activity is directly below the name. This corresponds to the information provided on the Facebook page, is automatically imported, and cannot be edited in the Instagram app. In addition, as a business Instagrammer, you have the option to provide an email address, a phone number, and an address, which can also be linked with buttons in the profile.

However, the two account types also have much in common: The so called bio, the short description, represents a profile's business card. Here you have 150 characters to tell the most important things about yourself. Formatting, highlights, and clickable links within the bio text are not supported. However, both personal and business accounts offer the option to specify a "website". This link is clickable and can also lead to subpages that are currently particularly relevant.

Monotonous? Definitely not! But somehow it is...

Part of your Instagram business card is also the first set of the last 6-9 photos. They should match, and a clear line should be discernible. This usually happens automatically through a theme. Suppose I run a profile about gardens, this theme already implies that my photos will be about bees, flowers, and nature. Sometimes, however, topics cannot be so precisely defined. In this case, it is advisable to at least use a consistent visual language, coordinate colours, and always choose the same filters and editing methods.

Who wants me? Tag posts correctly

Link as much as you can. Within the app, of course. For an external link, you only have one spot on your profile namely in the short description, as described above. Below individual posts, you often see the hashtag #linkinbio, which is meant to draw attention to a new post on the website. It is not possible to place a clickable, external link directly under a post. If you can't resist and absolutely want to place a link, we have a pro tip for you: a shortened and personalised bit.ly link is easy to remember and also tracks how often it has been used. However, this number is likely to be limited, as Instagram users tend not to like leaving the app. We warned you. But there are several other ways to make content more visible.

Sift through keywords: Hashtags

Hashtags are the keywords on the platform. In the "Explore" view, we can specifically search for hashtags and thus find new profiles that provide interesting content for us. But beware! There's a limit Instagram considers 30 hashtags to be enough. This means that if I've used 31 # in my exuberant motivation, my entire text will be considered "spam" and not displayed. Without warning. The picture will still be posted but will probably receive little to no attention.

Scan the surroundings: Geotags

Geotags should also be used for every post. Similar to hashtags, pictures that have been tagged with the same geotag are collected in a kind of catalogue, and thus new people, who may even be nearby or at least interested in the location, become aware of us.

Get social: Tag other accounts

You can tag up to 20 other profiles in one picture. This offers opportunities for locations, business partners, customers, employees. Brands or influencers whom you want to make aware of your profile are also often directly linked in the picture. These tags are collected and can be viewed on the tagged person's/company's/brand's profile in the "Pictures of me" tab.

Captivate me Bait with the Caption

As already mentioned, the algorithm reacts to the time spent on a post. This means that if my followers spend a long time looking at my post, the app classifies it as more interesting and shows it to a larger audience. If I write a detailed text that picks up on the story of my image post and elaborates on it, thereby inviting the viewer of the image to read, I achieve exactly that. If there is also a question or an invitation to comment at the end of the text, and several comments then trickle in under the image, the audience will also grow continuously. This is because interactions also lead to the post gaining a higher reach.

Tell stories

The original idea behind the Instagram app has not only receded into the background in recent years but has been left far behind. Today, content kings and queens with stylish feeds rule the influencer world. And snapshots no longer have a place on feeds planned well in advance. Instagram itself reacted to this development with the introduction of Stories in 2016. At that time, younger users, in particular, were migrating to the instant photo app Snapchat. Instagram wanted to win them back. This seems to have succeeded: 300 million people use Instagram Stories daily.

A brief excursion for comparison: Snapchat recorded 178 million daily users in Q3 2017; while the app is still growing, its growth is slowing significantly. While Snapchat gained only 5 million daily users in Q3 2017, Instagram Stories gained around 50 million.

Now, everything that doesn't fit into the feed goes into Stories: snapshots, selfie videos, tutorials, self-promotion, etc. At the moment, image quality is not as crucial. As a company, you can give your subscribers a good glimpse behind the scenes of a workday or an event. You can also set tags in Stories. For example, there are also Geotag Stories: If I tag a picture in my Story with the geotag "Vienna", it will also be displayed in the Vienna Geotag Story, and my profile will be linked there.

For several months, profiles with more than 10,000 subscribers have been able to place links directly in Stories (marked with "see more" or "swipe up").

Analyse and adapt strategies

As with other social media platforms, it is important on Instagram to know yourself and your target audience. In the business profile, you already get a good insight into how your target audience ticks and, above all, when they are online. These times should be used more intensively. If you have determined the ideal posting time from the statistics, a plan for a week or a month can be created, for example, with the Later app (there is a desktop and mobile version).

Furthermore, Instagram shows a "leaderboard" of posts in the Insights, which can be sorted by impressions, reach, or interactions. This allows you to see at a glance which content has performed well and provides similar content for your audience.

With our tips above, you should be able to build good organic reach. You can find out what additional tools are available, which apps help you get the most out of your profiles, how you can effectively run ads on your Instagram channel, and a few more tips and tricks in our new whitepaper, which we provide for download.