16 Inspirational Ideas for Instagram Post

Instagram is a huge marketplace for digital marketing with over 1 billion monthly active users and 80% of its accounts tracking business accounts.

So if your brand isn’t on Instagram yet, it’s time to get on board!

And if you’re not sure what to post, in this article,  we compiled some great ideas from successful brands.

Your Instagram posts should stimulate interaction, reinforce your brand image, and post a variety of content while ensuring consistency of style.

1. Create a series of content

If you don’t know what to post each day, you can create a series of highly relevant posts.

The most common pattern you’ll see is quotes from famous people.

These highly recognizable topics are easy to create quickly and can help you build a connection with your users.

2. Share festive posts

No matter what time of year it is, there are always holiday-related posts to share.

Of course, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and Thanksgiving are not the only big holidays in the year, but there are also days that people don’t know about but are real, like Popcorn Day (January 19) and International Friendship Day (July 30).

For example, this Christmas post from Starbucks below was shot with their Starbucks products! Doesn’t it feel festive?

Have you heard of International Avocado Day?

McDonald’s took advantage of the holiday and the hamburger flavor pairing to create timely, high-quality digital marketing postings.

3. Current-affairs related posts

Hey! What’s the latest news?

Are there any hot topics on social media right now?

Are there any new developments in your field or industry that are worth mentioning?

Is there anything new and interesting to discuss?

4. User-generated content

You don’t have to create content all the time, you can use user-generated content to help your digital marketing campaign.

If you’re a company that sells products, chances are users already have great photos of your products! All you need to do is ask them, or set up your own hashtag.

For example, the W hotel’s IG account often posts good photos taken by guests at the hotel, which not only saves the time and labor cost of taking the photos by the hotel itself.

It also increases users’ goodwill towards the hotel.

Users are more likely to trust the photos and comments provided by other users than official corporate messages.

5. Answer common questions

You can usually pay more attention to what questions your followers and users are interested in, and then answer them in a post.

Or, you can let your users ask questions directly.

6. Share relevant business information

You can share business news and messages that are relevant to your brand, but be sure to share posts that are interesting and relevant to your followers.

For example, if your company has hired a new employee, congratulations, that’s great! But does it have anything to do with your followers?

Take this post from Oreo, for example, about their upcoming Marshmallow Moon flavor! Don’t rush out and buy it, it’s currently a US-only flavor.

7. Share the story behind the brand

People are all gossips! Whether it is the scandal of a celebrity, the private life of an actor in a TV drama, or the love life of a colleague …… there is no way we can resist human curiosity.

From a psychological point of view, transparency is an effective way to create meaningful connections and users are more likely to be loyal to a transparent brand.

So, don’t be afraid to personalize your brand too much.

You can share some interesting stories behind your brand and introduce the people who work behind the scenes.

For example, Google has a lifeatgoogle account, posting the life of their employees, events and so on, so that users can “contact” with the real people behind the cold brand.

8. Record events or special days

As I mentioned earlier, brands can document the lives of their employees to bring users closer to the brand.

This technique is also used by Hubspot, which has a Hubspotlife account in addition to the official Hubspot company account.

In addition, they also record special events.

9. Host IG marketing giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a great way to help your IG grow.

You just need to specify how you want to participate in the giveaway – do you want to tag a friend? Repost it on your IG? And post a good picture of the giveaway!

10. Corporate offers

Offers are the quickest way to grow your brand’s business.

But be careful not to over-promote your offers, otherwise users will not want to buy right away, but will want to wait for the next offer to come.

Also, too many offers will reduce the image of your brand and eventually followers will find out that your offers are a regular thing and will no longer be shaken.

The way to use offers is to use them only on specific holidays, so that you can ensure that you can increase your sales immediately without damaging your brand image.

11. Encourage users to leave comments

Interaction rate is the key to digital marketing!

If you have a high interaction rate on your Instagram posts, Instagram’s algorithm will reward the account.

How exactly do you increase your interaction rate? One effective way is to encourage your followers to leave comments through quizzes or tests.

Or let followers leave comments about their mood today to increase the number of comments and interaction rate.

12. Collaborate with other celebrities or brands

Internet celebrities have their own influence. Their power lies in the fact that the followers who like them are more likely to listen to their ideas and suggestions.

Collaborating with other celebrities can give both parties exposure in each other’s channels and increase new followers.

Therefore, collaboration marketing is a very powerful tool in marketing techniques.

13. Promote your long-form content

Does your brand run a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, etc.?

If so, you can use Instagram to promote these social media outlets. If you have more than 10,000 Instagram followers, you can add a link to each post.

But what if you don’t have that many followers yet?

The first way is to use a link to your Instagram page to introduce yourself, and then use the post to direct your followers to click on the link to the page you want.

But a better way is to have users leave a comment below the post and then send a link from the message (Direct message).

This way, you not only promote your long content, but also increase the interaction rate of the post.

14. Re-create your long content

Creating long content takes a lot of time and effort. So why not turn that long content into short content that you can share on Instagram?

Whether it’s a blog, a video or a podcast, you just need to choose the videos that get the most clicks or buzz.

Gary Vaynerchuk, an internet celebrity in the business world, uses this format to his advantage, presenting the same content in different formats.

15. Promote your brand story

Everyone loves a story.

How did your brand get to where it is today?

Have you encountered any obstacles or difficulties along the way?

How do you present them visually in your Instagram posts?

Goodwin and Goodwin, a team of logo makers, shared this post to document the growth of their brand.

16. Tell your customers’ stories

If you’ve already shared your brand story, why not share your customers’ stories?

As I said before, you can repost photos of your customers using your products, because people are more likely to believe comments from other customers

Sharing their customer stories can similarly build a good image for your brand, plus you can link to long-form content from Instagram that is good for your brand.

Fiverr, a freelance platform, often uses this approach, interviewing freelancers who use their platform and their experiences with it.

Creating positive customer stories, and driving Instagram followers to the platform’s website at the same time.