Are you looking for ways to use Instagram for your business? Or are you looking to start a new business with Instagram?
You’re not alone.
Most business owners are hopping onto the fast-paced Instagram train. You’re probably already a fairly active participant with your personal Instagram account.
So, this should be a walk in the park, right?
Wrong!
You’ll quickly realize that posting on Instagram for your business is a completely different ball game.
And as with all business tools, exploiting Instagram requires a solid strategy.
To help you out, here are 10 great content ideas to remodel your Instagram business page.
Quick Summary
Busy? Here’s a brief rundown of the top 10 Instagram business ideas for posting content.
- Record captivating Instagram reels (Best overall)
- Create high-quality product posts (Best for product-inclined businesses)
- Repost user-generated content (Best for community engagement)
- Liaise with relevant influencers (Best for content creation)
- Exhibit your processes and employees (Best for humanizing your brand)
- Include a prompt for interaction in your caption (Best for post engagement)
- Try out Instagram story polls (Best for feedback and brand awareness)
- Produce video tutorials (Best for technical products)
- Occasionally start a live broadcast (Best for real-time audience interaction)
- Run giveaways and contests (Best for rapid promotion)
Believe me…
These tips are enough to help you keep your audience engaged and expand brand awareness. After applying these ideas, you’ll be sure to notice more account activity and a significant follower increase.
You’re welcome.
Furthermore, if you want an extensive tutorial on the perfect business strategy, give my free 5-Step Masterclass training a shot. Then, sit back and watch your business achieve more predictable monthly sales appointments.
What Are the 10 Best Instagram Business Ideas for Posting Content?
1. Record Captivating Instagram Reels
Best overall
Since its introduction to the app, reels have increasingly gained popularity among Instagram creators, businesses, and users. This feature lets you record and edit short multi-clip videos using creative tools.
So, what is the hype about?
One theory from objective observation is that Instagram’s algorithm and user interface are designed to promote reels specifically. This is most likely because it is a relatively new feature. Furthermore, reels provide a wider global audience not limited to your followers.
Isn’t this literal gold?
Unsurprisingly, the most successful brands on Instagram have cultivated unique approaches to creating reel content that appeals to their target market. And of course, I will spill their not-so-secret secret to hacking Instagram reels.
It’s really simple!
Just make fun reels! People are on Instagram to be entertained, so your brand’s content must not fall short of that. So, leave all the formalities at the door.
Also, I have discovered that if your video doesn’t have a wow factor within the first 5 seconds, it has a higher chance of getting skipped. As such, your creative muscles need to be working overtime for this!
2. Create High-Quality Product Posts
Best for product-inclined businesses
Now, creating product or service posts is the least of your problems. You already know to do that. But I’m here to tell you these posts must be HIGH QUALITY. And I mean high quality regarding visual appeal, brand enlightenment, lead generation and sales.
Relax; there are tricks to it.
First, create a consistent and recognizable aesthetic, feeling, or mood that best reflects your brand. Your brand’s colors and theme would be a splendid source of inspiration for this.
Next, avoid making ad-like content for your Instagram feed and focus on appealing to your audience’s tastes. Then, pair your product photography and videography with sales-driving, interactive captions highlighting essential features.
Because people generally appreciate convenience, including product tags will make it easier for customers to follow through with purchases. In addition, make sure you explore all your posting format options to provide content variety. To be honest, I’m always a sucker for an intriguing carousel post.
Plus, you should definitely use hashtags, but make sure they are relevant!
3. Repost User-Generated Content
Best for community engagement
Ever come across a review you sent to a business on their Instagram feed? Moreover, have you ever patronized an Instagram business because of posted reviews? These examples display the importance of user-generated content to a business.
Get this right.
User-generated content is a strong persuasive force that instills confidence in a brand. It proves to potential customers that your brand is reputable and engages with its Instagram community. The idea is that if other users have great things to say about your brand, then it is likely worth a shot.
So, here’s what you should do with your user-generated content.
Repost customer-generated product or service reviews, memes, or photos on your story and add them to your highlights once they have expired. Ensure that any content you reshare on your feed matches your brand’s high-quality aesthetics.
Like Apple with #ShotoniPhone, create a branded hashtag and encourage your customers to make content using it. This would make discovering and featuring selected content on your feed easier.
At the end of the day, employing this content source would give rise to more sales and user-generated content.
It’s truly the gift that keeps giving.
4. Liaise with Relevant Influencers
Best for content creation
Collaborating with influencers relevant to your brand is always a brilliant idea when creating content and posting Instagram content.
You see, the right influencer choice will allow for piggybacking off each other’s audience reach to gain more attention and improve credibility. In addition, you will get a consistent content source from a unique fusion of creative direction.
Here’s an example.
Khaby Lame rose to stardom as a viral internet sensation and has a whooping following of about 79 million. His collaboration with Boss, the clothing brand, is a marketing strategy bound to reap juicy fruits.
However, smaller businesses cannot afford big-shot influencers, right?
Well, thank goodness for micro and nano influencers. With their follower base peaking in the tens of thousands, these influencers are more affordable and still have a strong hold on their audience.
Be careful when you’re selecting influencers because they directly represent your brand. As such, any misdemeanor on their part will reflect poorly on your business.
5. Exhibit Your Processes and Employees
Best for humanizing your brand
I’ll say it point blank, humanizing your brand is crucial for sales generation.
Hold on; let me tell you how.
Followers love having a peek at the process involved in creating products. This could clarify any reservations about any steps or ingredients used in the manufacturing procedure. Once all doubts are cleared, you will have gained their confidence in your brand.
As such, it would be great to take your audience behind the scenes using Instagram reels. Some brands prefer to use a story because behind-the-scenes content is usually unrefined and could clash with the feed aesthetics.
Alternatively, you could emulate Duolingo by giving your audience a glance at a typical day in your workspace.
Spotlight and introduce your employees so your followers can feel the human touch and input to your brand. This will build trust and deepen the emotional ties between your customers and your brand.
6. Include a Prompt for Interaction in Your Caption
Best for post engagement
For every post, whether it’s a seasonal post, a product announcement, or a meme, it is important to include a prompt in your caption. These conversation and action prompts intentionally lure your followers into interacting and engaging with the post.
Consequently, you will have increased post engagement due to higher visibility. Then, thanks to the algorithm, you’ll be well on your way to achieving a broader audience reach.
Besides this obvious benefit, people love to be heard. So, when your audience takes the bait, be sure to respond when reasonable. It helps to foster a sense of community and build a bond capable of converting your followers into customers.
The last thing you want to do on a business account is snub your followers.
All in all, you must carefully word your conversation prompt to keep the discussion controlled. Like CeraVe, you could ask a question to spark a conversation or urge your audience to share the post and tag friends.
Anything that could get you more likes, follows, shares, saves, and DMs is welcome.
Remember to keep it simple!
7. Try out Instagram Story Polls
Best for feedback and brand awareness
Instagram has a lot of effective tools to aid interaction and engage your audience. And the story polls tool is one of them.
It is a fun way to have your audience learn about your brand and a very effective method of receiving consumer feedback. Set up question polls using the question sticker to have your audience ask important questions about your brand. Then ensure you take your time to answer them.
You can also post fun little quizzes to challenge your audience regularly. This will help you stay relevant and keep them engaged.
Something as basic as a yes or no for a brand decision will further deepen that sense of community. Do this enough times, and your consumers will basically adopt your brand as theirs.
What else?
You can incorporate story polls into new product line announcements and seasonal posts to gauge your follower’s reactions and drive engagement.
8. Produce Video Tutorials
Best for technical products
Many tutorials and informational videos on virtually every topic crowd Instagram if you’ve noticed. And viewers will gobble it up if it has an actionable step-by-step process.
So, if you were wondering how to add value to your audience, I suggest you further populate Instagram with your product tutorials. This content idea would be most valuable to technical brands like Capcut that ordinarily require guides especially when new features are released.
However, non-technical brands with confusing modifications, usage specifications, and creative suggestions can also employ this content idea. Record a quick tutorial on maintenance and troubleshooting steps, or show your consumers a different way to use your product.
You will find that these tutorials are a great way to communicate your product’s value and could land you some sales.
9. Occasionally Start a Live Broadcast
Best for real-time audience interaction
Instagram Link: @colombiasaesthetics
Besides carousel posts, single photo posts, reels, and stories, Instagram provides live streams as another post format. And it will take interactions with your audience to the next level.
You can provide tutorials, introduce a new product line, reveal background scenes, announce milestones, and talk to your customers in real time.
Let’s not even mention how authentic and wholesome a face-to-face question-and-answer session with your followers would be.
If you thought you had a connection with your followers before, wait until you go live.
But…
To have a seamless community-building live broadcast, you mustn’t forget to schedule your live stream and inform your followers. Persuade them to enable push notifications, so they don’t miss the live stream.
You can also add a countdown timer to your story to raise awareness.
Then, create a plan with talking points and structure, and stick to that plan. Ensure your live setup is pleasant, with perfect lighting and no background noise. Finally, give the bulk of your audience some time to join before you begin.
And when the live stream is over, you can post the recording on your feed. You’ll be killing two birds with one stone.
10. Run Giveaways or Contests
Best for rapid promotion
Instagram Link: @softslaystudio
Giveaway contests will be your golden goose for rapid engagement levels and an exciting buzz around your brand.
With giveaway contests, your user-generated content will significantly rise, and people will be more aware of your brand. Why wouldn’t they be? People like competition just as much as they like prizes.
This also bodes extremely well for your brand’s social proof. You see, the more people participating in the contest, the stronger their social influence on those not participating. And that subset will grow smaller and smaller with time.
You could also make tagging friends, sharing, following, and liking requirements for the giveaway contest.
In addition, you can further promote your giveaway with ambassador influencers or Instagram ads to reach larger audiences.
See also: The best paid advertising channels for lead generation
In any case, I recommend offering prizes that appeal to your target audience. This will only work as planned if the incentive is strong enough.
What kind of content can I post on Instagram?
Here are some ideas on what type of content you can post on Instagram with real-life examples:
1) Post client testimonials
Testimonials are a great way to show people the value you can provide and can help you to convert more of your leads and prospects into sales.
Top Tip: Be sure to tag your customers and tell the world how wonderful they are too! Your client will appreciate the exposure and may even give you valuable likes and comments.
2) Show your company culture
Nothing like a Friday Cuban Coffee after a productive week #Miami #Calle8 #LittleHavana
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
A great way to show the human side of your business is to post things you do when you are not “technically” working. Great examples are coffee breaks, lunches, dinners, team meetings and anything else that shows people what your business is like inside and outside work hours.
3) Promote your latest blog posts
If you want more people to read your content, then promote it on Instagram each time you release something new. It will show you are providing value to those that are following you.
Top Tip: You can’t (yet) post links on your non-paid Instagram posts, so what we recommend is to change the link in your bio to your blog home page and then in the caption tell people that the link to the blog post is in the Instagram bio. By changing your Instagram URL to your blog, it allows you to engage more with your audience. Even if people don’t read the blog post, it’s another great piece of content to post. It puts your brand to the front of your audience’s mind and shows them how you can help them.
4) Post pictures of business networking events you go to
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
Do you go to any events related to your business? Then be sure to share videos or images. Take pictures of guest speakers and tag other companies or people where possible. This is a great way to get your business in front of more people.
Top Tip: Use the event’s hashtag, tag the person speaking or tag the event organizer whenever possible to increase exposure. You don’t need to post every event you go to, just the ones you think will be interesting and relevant to your target audience.
5) Post Fun Stuff
If it fits in with your brand image, show your business’s fun side. Today with advancements in artificial intelligence, you can even create fun images with AI or change image backgrounds.
Here’s an example of a post we shared entitled “How we feel every Friday at Skyline Social”.
Top Tip: Depending on who your target audience is i.e. Whether they are more formal or informal, will allow you to decide what type of content matches with your overall brand. For Skyline Social, we want to attract fun, friendly, down to earth and awesome-to-work-with business owners, so we feel very comfortable in posting some “fun” or “humorous” content every so often.
6) Re-post other people’s content
In this example, we re-posted a video that Instagram shared when they changed their logo. It’s related to social media news and relevant to our Instagram followers, which is the reason we shared it.
If other organizations, people, potential clients or existing clients post something that would be interesting and relevant to your target audience, then be sure to repost it using a free app called simply the “Repost App”.
7) Post Infographics
If you have any visually appealing infographics, then Instagram is a great way to share them. Remember, a picture often paints a thousand words!
8) Post images and videos of the events you speak at
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
Let people know if your company is hosting or speaking at an event! It’s an excellent way to show people you are an industry expert.
9) Promote your own events!
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
If you are organizing an event or webinar, you need to talk about it EVERYWHERE, including Instagram.
10) Post quotes that relate to your business
In this quote, we wanted business owners who still feel “shy” about using social media to “take the leap” (so to speak) and start using it.
Great #Quote by @equalman the @tonyrobbins of Tech #BeMoreSocial #SocialMedia #Business
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
In this post, we wanted people to see the importance of social media for their business.
Most people love a reasonable quote. If you find one that matches your brand, voice and personality, then share it. You can even create your own quotes and share them too!
11) Introduce your team
In the above example, we introduced Josh to our followers on his first day of work at Skyline Social. You could do the same! Or, you could introduce everyone to a person from your existing team each week. Share with people their hobbies, personality and their role in your company!
12) At Networking Events
#Repost @ashdavis90 @jrridinger and @xiaa_hc in Miami #Business #Networking
A photo posted by Skyline Social (@skylinesocial) on
Met someone cool at a business networking event? Why not tag them and share it on Instagram too?
These 12 Instagram posts should give you some ideas on what kind of content you should share. Feel free to come up with your own ideas as well.
Instagram is an excellent place to showcase your creativity and your brand and build a strong impression in the minds of your target audience.
What tools can help me create better Instagram posts?
Tool #1: Canva for Instagram
At Skyline Social, we use a number of tools to help us post content that look great on Instagram.
Our favorite is Canva.
Canva makes it super easy for anyone wanting to create and design images, as they have hundreds of templates and excellent quality stock photos that you can buy for just $1 (and sometimes they are even free!)
Tool #2: Wepik
Wepik makes it easy to turn text into images instantly, allowing you to quickly create stunning visuals for your Instagram posts. With Wepik’s easy-to-use interface, you can transform your text into visually appealing graphics with a few simple clicks.
You can also customize the look and feel of your images to create a unique, branded presence on Instagram.
Tool #3: Ripl for Instagram
Another tool we like using is Ripl.
Ripl can turn your images into videos with some nice fancy effects. We sometimes use Ripl to create simple but effective videos to promote our new blog posts on Instagram.
One of the great things about Ripl is that it’s a smart phone app. So you can easily create images and videos for Instagram from the comfort of your phone and while you’re on the go.
Tool #4: Layout for Instagram
Finally, the last tool you should check out is called “Layout” by Instagram. This allows you to put multiple pictures together as a collage, then save and upload them as one image. I
t’s a free app that you can download to your phone and again makes editing and uploading multiple images in one go super easy.
The Bottom Line
Instagram is no doubt a highly effective promotional tool that most businesses employ. It boosts brand awareness and dramatically impacts your brand’s reputation.
As such, the ideas I have outlined above are vital to creating or posting content for your business’s Instagram page. You must combine these tips with a consistent posting schedule, efficient feedback mechanism, and maximum creativity.
Keep in mind that the content you put out should resonate with your target audience while still reflecting your brand’s ideals.
One more thing…
You’ll need a comprehensive marketing strategy to get the best out of all your promotional platforms. This is where my free 5-Step Masterclass training comes into play. Here, I provide the best strategy for generating authentic leads. So, be sure to check it out.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best type of content to post on Instagram?
Generally speaking, entertaining, quirky, aesthetically pleasing, inspirational, niche-specific, and practical content does well on Instagram. As such, you’d want to stick to high-quality interactive posts that check these boxes for your business page.
What should I post first on Instagram Business?
It is important for you to introduce your brand as your first post on your Instagram business account. You could include identifiable elements such as your logo, slogan, and the essentials of your business’s product or service.
What are the different formats of Instagram posts?
Instagram offers a range of options when it comes to posting content. You can exhibit your content on single photo posts, carousel posts, reels, live video posts, stories, and guides.
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, Ash has been helping business owners get high-quality leads, appointments, and clients each month. He has extensive experience working with B2B & B2C industries in finance, insurance, marketing, sales and beyond. Learn more about the author here.