24 Tips and Tricks How to Be Successful on Instagram in 2021

24 tips and tricks how to be successful on Instagram. Would you like to start earning on Instagram, become an influencer, or use Instagram to promote your business? We have compiled tips and tricks for you based on personal experience, recent studies, and expert publications on how to be successful on Instagram in 2021. So let’s get to it.

What is Instagram and why does everyone want to use it?

More and more companies want to be visible on social networks and today’s young generation can hardly imagine life without them. Instagram is one of the fastest growing social networks, the second most downloaded application in the Apple Store, and the tenth most searched term on Google.

According to a study Hootsuite 63% of Instagram users open the app every day and spend an average of 28 minutes there daily. It’s no wonder that more and more brands are focusing on Instagram and the phenomenon of so-called Influencer Marketing is growing, even though last year the average engagement dropped on Instagram from 3% to 2%.

Is it difficult to succeed on Instagram?

According to surveys, up to 95% of people looking for success on Instagram will not succeed. What are the most common reasons for failure?

They don’t know what to do on social media and are just trying things. They have no plan
They don’t have patience and think the account will grow in a few weeks
They try to find some “shortcut” and buy fake likes and fake followers
They focus on a topic they have no relation to
They try to apply tactics from abroad that don’t work in the Czech Republic and never will

How much does success on Instagram cost?

Unlike Facebook, Instagram can still be built without having to spend money on advertising at all costs. However, the biggest investment will be your time. And a lot of time. If you’re serious about Instagram, keep in mind that there is no shortcut and you will have to devote that time to the app. Companies should therefore not be afraid to invest in a quality manager or promotion of posts on Instagram, even a very low budget can help you in faster platform development and brand building.

What profiles work best on Instagram?

It is known that fitness guys generally get fewer followers and fewer likes than fitness girls, so you should.. No, you should never think that way. You should never choose your niche based on what’s most profitable, but on what you really enjoy. If you manage an account whose topic doesn’t interest you at all, you can’t count on success. Keep that in mind too if you’re hiring, for example, a social media manager.

The only thing that matters when choosing your focus is this: Choose one and stick with it.

Not every business belongs on Instagram

Instagram is talked about at all marketing conferences, but that doesn’t mean your business has to be on it. If your target audience is 40+, you should probably consider other promotional channels, 71% of Instagram users are under 35. It won’t be the best promotional channel for companies focused on B2B either.

How to create a successful Instagram profile that will impress

It doesn’t have to be love at first sight, but you need to impress. Your profile is your business card, so you should pay great attention to optimizing your profile. What should you focus on?

Username
Name
Profile Photo
Bio (Description About You)
Link

1) How to Choose a Username

Most of you probably already have a name you want to stick with. But if you’re just starting with Instagram, or want to create a profile for your business, here are two tips:

Come Up with a Catchy Name

It’s similar to coming up with a website or brand name – you want something people will remember well and ideally something that connects with what you do. For example, when you see @dnescestujem, you immediately realize it’s a travel profile. The problem arises if after years you want to change your focus, like Cestology, who recently decided he no longer wanted to be Cestology, but Kryštof Paleta. Connections to specific places are also problematic, like @Terezainoslo, who is now in Prague.

Your Real Name

A much simpler option is your real name, especially if your profile is about you or is a business profile. If your name isn’t too long or already taken, there’s no reason not to choose it.

What Everyone Wants to Know

I think it’s time I explain somewhere why I’m on Instagram as Endijka. People often think I’m Andrea because, how did Endijka come from Lucie? I’ve been using this nickname for over 15 years and it started in the game World of Warcraft. I have it on all social media, and even though it’s confusing and I wouldn’t recommend anyone come up with a completely different name, I’m sticking with it.

2) What Name to Choose on Instagram

And that’s quite a puzzle – come up with a name? I’ll just put my name there and that’s it, right? That’s how the average Instagram user thinks, but you should go further. Instagram provides you with quite a bit of space for your name and you can use it to your advantage.

If you’re a fitness trainer, write “Fitness Trainer Tomáš Novák”. What will that do for you? If someone searches for a fitness trainer on Instagram, you increase the chances they’ll find you.

3) How to Choose a Profile Photo?

Companies have it easy – they choose a logo to imprint on people’s memory. But if your brand is connected with you, you need to think a bit. Instagram is mainly about visuals, so approach it that way.

Your profile photo should say a cheerful “hello” and be pleasant to other users at first glance. According to a study by Photofeeler, lighter photos are recommended, a broad American smile, and if your field allows, formal wear is more likable according to studies. You shouldn’t be too far away in the photo so you’re recognizable even on smaller phones.

Remember, you shouldn’t change your profile photo too often – people will remember what it looks like and it helps with quick identification in Stories, for example.

Just try it – can you recall the profile pictures of your favorite Instagram accounts? When you change your profile picture, it can lead to a temporary drop in views. Remember, it’s good to use the same one across all social media.

4) Bio – What Can’t Be Missing in Your Description?

Use every character of the 150 that Instagram allows you. The goal is to explain who you are, what you do, why people should follow you. Quotes are great, but people will understand from them at most that you love Churchill.

Instead, use the description to entice people to click on your blog or e-shop.

My description therefore reads:

Traveler, ????@lukaskonecny and dog mom @karelcockapoo
?Online marketing and blogger
I write about how much traveling costs us and how to earn money online ??

From this you should understand that my profile will be largely about traveling with my husband and our dog Karel. You’ll also find out that I make my living from online marketing and am a blogger. At the same time, there’s an incentive for you to click on the link below, which leads to our articles.

If your main goal is to get users to visit your website, product or project, invite them to click. For example, you can simply write “Listen to my podcast” or “Download the free ebook How to Earn for Free” or “Read the article about zero waste”. Studies have confirmed many times that these call-to-action words like “Listen”, “Download”, “Check out” or “Read” really work. So why not use them?

Tip: Before you start writing your bio, check out the profiles of your competitors or inspirations in the same field.

How to create content that people enjoy

What to publish, what to write about it, and how to make people read it. In this section, we’ll look at a few tips on how to do it.

5) Be consistent

A lot has been written about a coordinated “feed”. If you don’t know what a feed is: it’s what Instagram calls the archive of published photos that you see when you open your profile. At first glance, the user should know what your profile is about. “But I like everything!” I’ve heard this answer at training a hundred times. And I always answer the same way:

It is really important that you stick to one topic. If you travel, people look to you for travel inspiration and don’t want to read a bundt cake recipe. Put it in Stories instead. It’s the same as with a blog (although here it’s more for SEO reasons), it doesn’t make sense to create a blog where you write about travel, marketing, fashion and throw in a recipe here and there!

The profile should be uniform not only in terms of topic, but also visually coordinated. Most marketers and influencers use the Lightroom app (how to use Lightroom), but you can use other apps or edit directly in Instagram (choose one filter and stick with it).

What not to do:

There are “artists” who run their photos through 20 applications. It’s better to take a course on Lightroom or buy presets from bloggers (pre-set filters), because Lightroom really can handle everything you need. Editing one photo with 20 filters in different apps is a waste of time.

Tip: In the Preview or Buffer app, you can upload photos you plan to publish and see how they work together.

6) What photos to publish?

Don’t publish photos and videos that you’re not absolutely satisfied with. If you don’t have quality visuals, it’s better not to post. The optimal size for an Instagram photo is 1080 x 1350 pixels (portrait-oriented photo). Of course, you can stick to the classic square format, which also works. What I don’t recommend to marketers and brands are landscape formats, because they take up much less space on the screen and have less chance of catching attention.

What to watch out for in the photo

That it is sharp
That it is clear to users
Relevant to your focus

Attention: Quality content doesn’t always mean you have to shoot with a DSLR camera, everything has to be perfectly arranged and edited in Lightroom. Your feed can easily consist of snapshots. However, I don’t recommend publishing a cold product photo one day, reposting a photo from another user the next day, making a behind-the-scenes snapshot the third day, and posting a photo from a professional photographer on the fourth day. Don’t forget to be consistent and avoid what we nicely call in Czech “each dog their own way”.

7) What colors work best!?

Repeated studies confirm that photos with a predominance of blue work 24% better than photos where red or yellow is the dominant color. In fact, it’s no wonder, blue is the most favorite color in the world. Similarly, light-toned photos are 24% more successful than dark photos.

8) Photo, gallery or video: What type of post works best?

A recent study by Social Insider shows that photo galleries achieve the best engagement, ranging between 1.65% and 5.13% depending on account size. They achieve 0.25% – 0.51% higher engagement than videos and individual photos. Those achieved the lowest engagement in this study. What works for others may not work for you. In the end, it all comes down to content quality.

9) How and what to write on Instagram

If you want to be successful on social media, you’ll need to be somewhat of a copywriter. On social networks, emotion and humor matter – especially here in the Czech Republic, we can hardly do without humor. Write and publish only when you have something to say. Or better yet, stay silent.

What should I write about?

Try to anticipate what people might be interested in, save the questions they send you, and help them with the problems they face. If you’re managing Instagram for a company, have questions from chat and email sent to you and store them. These are the best sources for writing social media posts and company blog articles. Be interested in what your customers or followers care about and talk to them.

Where to find inspiration?

Questions from customers, followers (email, chat, direct messages)
Discussion forums on your topic
Interest groups on FB
Blogs on your topic
Competition
Reviews

Tips for aspiring influencers

Read what other influencers in your field write about, what works and what doesn’t
Don’t copy, but be inspired
Be sincere and authentic

If you want to improve your copy, I recommend downloading three e-books from the god of all copywriters in the Czech Republic. Well, I don’t know if Otto Bohuš is the god of copywriters, but his e-books are great, practical, and you can read them in no time. And most importantly – they’re FREE.

10) How long should captions be?

You’ve probably noticed that many Czech influencers specialize in captions that resemble essays. Those can work great – if you have something to say. But as studies show, less can be more. And for business profiles, this is especially true.

According to last year’s Social Insider study, the best-performing posts had fewer than 10 words. However, this is a study from abroad with posts in English, so take this information with a grain of salt. Every profile can work differently. Instead of counting words, focus on writing quality and valuable posts that people will enjoy. And experiment.

11) Why and how to use hashtags?

Instagram uses hashtags (hash symbols before words, for example #travel, #vacation, etc.) to categorize posts. That’s why when you search for #sunset, you’ll see photos from users with sunset images. If you add this hashtag to your photo, users can find your photo using it.

Additionally, today people can “follow” hashtags, so it’s possible that by choosing the right hashtags, your photo can appear directly in users’ feeds (on the main wall where photos from users you follow appear).

If you’re new to using hashtags, you should know that they cannot contain periods (.), symbols (!?) or spaces. On the other hand, they can contain emojis.

Hashtags can be key not only to gaining your first followers, but also to getting so-called “power likes” (more below) and being noticed by more influential accounts. Choosing the right hashtags is therefore crucial.

Tip: Whenever we develop a strategy for a client, we also focus on preparing relevant hashtags. Thanks to this, we’ve managed to achieve an impressive 10,000 views with the very first posts on a completely new account.

How to type # hashtag? On Windows and Macbook

The simplest way is to use the right Alt key, or Alt Gr. You can find Alt to the right of the spacebar. Press and hold it, and while holding, press the X key.

On Macbook, #hashtag is written by holding the right option key and pressing the number three.

12) How to choose hashtags?

Some hashtags are so popular that you can find millions of photos under them, for example under #travel users have posted 467,757,079 posts. It doesn’t make sense to use such a hashtag at all, because photos are being added so quickly there that your post will get lost.

It also doesn’t make sense to come up with your own hashtags like #igobyrabbit, under which you won’t find a single post. People don’t use or follow such hashtags.

For starters, I recommend selecting hashtags that have between 10-100 thousand photos.

How to find relevant hashtags?

There are various tools for this, but in the end you already have the best one in your phone. Enter a hashtag in the Instagram search with your focus (in Czech). If you’re interested in travel, it will be “travel”. Instagram will show you similar “related hashtags”, and that’s how you gradually go through various hashtags until you collect 9-15 hashtags.

For hashtags, don’t just look at the number of published posts, but also at what posts are published under them. They should be in harmony with the content you publish or plan to publish.

13) How many hashtags to put under a post?

Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags, but there is debate among marketers about how many is most appropriate to use. It’s true that hashtags help with organic (unpaid) reach, and thanks to them other users can discover you.

Some claim, however, that 30 hashtags looks “spammy” and refer to studies that have confirmed that too many hashtags can reduce engagement. The most common “safe” number discussed is 11 hashtags, but some claim you can use 2-8 hashtags in the caption and another 4-5 in the comment.

I recommend testing and testing and eventually you’ll see what works best for you.

Tip: It doesn’t matter whether you put hashtags directly in the photo caption or as a comment under your photo.

14) About emojis or why use emojis

To use or not to use emojis? Although studies differ in how much using emojis increases engagement, the conclusion is always the same: Use them. And the more, the better. According to the latest data from Social Insider, posts with 25 emojis work best. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever managed to fit that many smileys into one post and if I’ve ever even seen a post with that many smileys.

An older study by quintly from 2017 claims that it can increase engagement by up to 15%, a newer study by Social Insider from the second half of 2019 showed that photos with emojis in the caption have 26% higher engagement on average, with videos the difference is even more dramatic. Videos with emojis in the caption have 70% higher engagement than when the caption is without emojis. Despite this, 50% of users don’t use emojis, so why not include them?

15) English or Czech – or why do so many people make this mistake?

“I wrote my first post in Czech and it has the best response of all,” my friend told me, and I wondered if she had been listening to me over the past three years. Writing in English, something in Spanish, occasionally throwing in a quote in French, and when I want to curse, write it in Czech.

Let’s be frank: Writing in English when most of your followers are from the Czech Republic is nonsense. Yes, it’s nonsense, even if you’re currently living in Zealand or Canada and five of your coworkers who don’t speak Czech have started following you on Instagram.

“But Czechs can speak English!” or “My friends speak English”. I don’t want to take away your illusions, but this theory has been tested by a number of people, and in the end they always found that writing in Czech is more worthwhile.

Yes, some influencers here write in English and then in Czech. But:

They are in a different situation than you
How do you know their followers wouldn’t grow faster if they wrote in Czech?

16) Insta Stories – Stories, how to use them and why not to underestimate them

Insta Stories or stories, which disappear on Instagram within 24 hours. This is a feature that spread to most social networks from Snapchat and it is on Instagram in the Czech Republic that it achieves the greatest success. The quality of your Stories can determine whether people will follow you long-term.

500 million users use stories every day (as we sometimes call them informally), and therefore they are becoming increasingly important for influencers and brands.

For creating Stories, I recommend the mobile app Unfold or Mojo, where you can create stylish-looking Stories in a matter of moments.

People like to play and Instagram knows this very well, so it keeps adding more elements for gamification. You can add polls, voting or countdowns to stories. You can easily add music to the background, write or draw something. An excellent article on 18 (hidden) features and tips for Instagram Stories can be found on Diana Zadáková’s blog.

Tip: You can now add polls even when creating ads to Insta Stories and the first statistics show an increase in conversions by dozens of percent

17) Follow others

In order to gain your first followers, you must follow others and create your own community of people.

Find accounts that have 10,000 or more followers and are thematically similar to your account. See who recently followed them. From these people, select the people you will follow.

Choose people who have themselves in their profile picture, never follow people without a profile picture, according to Brandon Gaille, there is a lower probability that they will follow you back. Lower chances are also allegedly for profile pictures with couples.

Before you follow, look at the profile, browse through the photos on the account, like them and possibly comment if something catches your interest. It’s a lot of work, but work that will pay off for you.

Never follow more than 20 people at once. Also, never frantically like one photo on someone’s profile. Instagram will see this as suspicious and block your account.

Remember that you are building a community of people, you are not trying to force someone to click follow. You want to build a relationship with them – a virtual relationship – and that, just like real ones, takes some work.

A time will come when you follow so many people that you lose track. There is nothing wrong with unfollowing people who don’t communicate, don’t respond to your posts and you don’t find inspiration in their posts either. You can’t possibly maintain contact with everyone, and that’s okay.

18) Liking – give out hearts

Instagram has long recognized when you use liking bots. Besides, users aren’t stupid either. So don’t use apps or bots. Instead, set aside part of your day to go through the posts of those you follow and posts under relevant posts and like what catches your interest.

Avoid frantic liking, not only can Instagram block your account, but you also want users to stop and look at your post rather than like it during a frantic attack on Instagram.

19) Comment and get comments

If you want people to actively start communicating with you and commenting on your posts, you must invest time and start communicating with them first. Don’t try to compete in how many photos you can comment on with “Beautiful photo?”, read the posts and respond to what people actually write.

Again: Give it time and energy. Don’t let it happen that you add a comment “That’s an amazing place! Beautiful” to a post where someone writes how they got robbed in this beautiful place. Yes, it happens. And often. Of course, I’m not saying you should never tell people that they took a beautiful photo.

How to get more comments

Be interested in your followers’ opinions. Invite them to tell you what they think about it, or how it is for them. You will be surprised how much the right question can increase the number of comments. One of my first most successful posts ended with a question about what the most expensive beer they had and how much it cost them.

You can also arrange with friends and employees to comment on your Instagram posts. Be careful, comments should have at least four words.

20) Power likes

What you want to get are the so-called Power Likes. This means your post gets likes from accounts that are bigger than you. How does it work?

The more people like your post, the more its reach increases. You’ve probably noticed this already. If users with fewer followers and lower engagement like you, the reach will only increase a little. But when big accounts like you, your reach can skyrocket. Really.

It happened to me that an account that normally gets 500-1000 likes on a photo got several power likes and the post got 45 thousand likes within a few hours. Power likes can get you into the “discovery” section of Instagram and long-term to the top positions of hashtags like “top posts”.

But how do you get power likes?

Use hashtags created and used by influencers. It’s quite likely that these hashtags are followed by them.
If it fits, don’t be afraid to tag big accounts in comments or descriptions (when you talk about them), there’s a good chance they will answer you and like your post
Comment and like posts from big accounts, respond to them in Stories – become part of their community
Post when people are online (it doesn’t make sense to post late at night when people are sleeping), between 9:00 – 21:00. If you want to know the best time to post for your account, check your statistics.

21) Giveaways and contests

Giveaways and contests are still popular on Instagram. Giveaway posts have about 65 times more comments and 3.5 times more likes. Statistics speak clearly: Accounts that work with contests and giveaways grow 70% faster than those that don’t run them.

But how to run a successful contest / giveaway?

The most successful contests are those that are simple and fun. Don’t try to come up with overly complicated conditions, it can discourage many people. Make sure your contests are always in line with Instagram’s rules.

22) Collaboration with influencers / with companies

Collaboration between companies and influencers can bring money to both sides, new followers and higher average engagement. Since I wrote a detailed article for companies, how to have a successful collaboration with influencers, here I will focus only on the influencers’ perspective on collaboration with brands.

Collaboration with a brand can bring an influencer many benefits besides money. New followers, connections with other influencers, products for contests and giveaways, prestige.

At first, collaboration offers can be very tempting, your mind runs: “They give me something for free, I’ll take it!”. Everyone probably has to go through that. But if you take one collaboration after another, in the eyes of brands you become less attractive and in the eyes of your followers you’re just a walking advertisement. Don’t take collaborations if:

A) Companies make you cheap labor

This also happens. A company offers you things for 10,000 CZK, but in the contract you get a condition that you write 8 articles for them, take 20-30 photos, mention them everywhere as a sponsor and share everything they tell you. Such collaboration definitely doesn’t make sense.

B) The product is completely outside your focus

When a travel blogger promotes a washing machine, that’s a bit strange, isn’t it?

C) You don’t like the product / brand

There’s nothing worse than promoting a product or brand that you don’t like and that doesn’t suit you. Always reserve the right to return the product and not review it, the same applies to services.

23) How to use shoutouts

Shoutouts, or mentioning other users and brands, are a great way to gain more followers. Abroad, it’s common practice to buy a shoutout from an influencer, but I haven’t come across that yet in our country. However, to get a shoutout, you don’t have to do anything special.

Reserve one day a week when you share accounts worth following with your followers in your stories, it’s only a matter of time before one of those accounts returns the favor. Reciprocity works very well on social media.

24) Plan and evaluate

You can’t do Instagram without planning. For personal accounts, I recommend using at least apps like Preview or Buffer (free for one account), where you can schedule posts in advance and see how individual photos look next to each other.

In a company, Instagram should not be an isolated channel where posts are made up day by day, but should be an integral part of the marketing strategy with clear and predetermined goals. Posts should be in line with other online and offline marketing activities, and should match visually and in content.

Tip: How we do it

We develop the company’s marketing strategy into a social media strategy where we set clear goals
We create a thematic plan for individual months of the following year
We create subthemes for individual weeks
We create and plan posts 14 days – 1 month in advance (according to agreement)

Example:

January:
Topic: Almonds
Subthemes for individual weeks:

Week: Almond Benefits
Week: Almond Milk
Week: Almond Butter
Week: Savory Almond Recipes

Evaluation

Although we want to build a community of followers, their number is not a telling metric for us at all. Does that contradict itself? No. You’ve probably heard about the case of an Instagrammer with 2 million followers who couldn’t even sell 36 t-shirts. We want followers who have a genuine interest in our account, we don’t just want a number that looks good.

Far more interesting for us are numbers like engagement (interest) or reach, the number of our company’s hashtags used, mentions, number of saved recipes, purchases via Instagram or discount codes that were shared via Instagram. The metrics that interest you depend on the previously established goals.

If you’re just starting with statistics, the ones Instagram itself offers will suffice. However, you can also find interesting numbers for free from Taggy.cz, Igblade or Hypeauditor. The biggest reporting experts are the Czech company Socialbakers.

You can find more tools to support Instagram here

Instagram Promotion

You can significantly support the growth of your company account by sponsoring posts. If you have quality posts, you can reach thousands of people for just a few crowns. On most accounts that we manage, the price for engagement on a post ranges from 0.20 to 1.90 CZK.

I also recommend trying Boosterberg automation, which sponsors new posts for you according to preset rules. Just set it up once and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.