Instagram Strategy for 2023: What You Need to Know

Instagram marketing, or really an Instagram strategy, has been a moving target for me over the past five to six years. I feel like no one really knows what's going on over there at Instagram. I mean, you can listen to five Instagram experts and they can all tell you five different things and still contradict themselves as well. But when it comes to Instagram, it is a huge platform for me and my business. It not only helps me grow my audience, but it gives me a platform to build a deeper connection with my audience so that then they ultimately want to work with me or buy from me over any of the other competitors that are out there. Which is why I'm devoted to figuring out an Instagram marketing strategy for 2023, but more importantly, making sure I'm using Instagram for what's most beneficial for me, booking more clients. So if you're looking to build a solid Instagram strategy for 2023, I'm going to walk you through everything that I'm doing and show you how you can start implementing it as well. The very first thing you want to do when you're diving into an Instagram strategy is first figuring out if your target audience is actually hanging out on Instagram. This is such a huge step that so many people forget to think about, but diving into truly understanding your audience and know what kind of content they like to consume and where they are hanging out. Now, the one thing that I do get from clients and students, not only on Instagram, but on YouTube as well, they tell me, well, I polled my audience and they don't hang out on Instagram or in YouTube. And I say, okay, I get that your current audience, the audience that you built, not particularly using Instagram or using YouTube, is not on Instagram or YouTube. But what about the potential audience that could be on Instagram or YouTube? So you still just want to take a little bit of a dive into seeing if your audience outside of the audience you already built does hang out on Instagram. Because I will tell you, Instagram is pretty popular. It reaches 1.2 billion users every single month. And 81% of Internet users rely on Instagram to research services, products, and businesses. On top of that, 50% of Internet users have used Instagram to purchase a product or service recommended to them or advertised by them on Instagram. I will tell you right now that I will never encourage you to take on more social media platforms than you can realistically handle. Because when it comes down to any content marketing strategy, whether it be a YouTube marketing strategy, an Instagram marketing strategy, a Facebook marketing strategy, you need to be able to manage it and stay consistent. So before you jump into an Instagram strategy, you do really need to think, one, do I have the time to do this? And two, should Instagram be a priority for me right now, for me in 2023, I'm basically hanging my hat and creating and focusing on two platforms and it is Instagram and YouTube. Before I dive into how often you should be posting on Instagram, what types of content to be posting on Instagram, and how to really simplify this entire process, I want to first talk about what's important to the Instagram algorithm, because basically our content will live and die by the algorithm. So over on YouTube, I've been there seven years and I talk about the YouTube algorithm and how it's the YouTube trifecta that really starts signals to the YouTube algorithm to put you in front of new people. And that trifecta is your click through rate, your audience retention and your end screen clicks. But Instagram algorithm works differently. The Instagram algorithm is actually looking for good content as well. But what signals good content to Instagram is shares, saves, and ultimately likes and comments. Because if people are engaging with your content, it must be good because people don't engage on crappy content, they just scroll right, right by it. So Instagram uses those signals to determine should they push this content to more people. I do want to talk about shares real quick. So when you go on Instagram, on any post, you can hit that little arrow and people can share your content in their stories. It is critical to think about creating shareable content because this allows you to get in front of new people. Because if your audience is going to share it with their audience, that's just a bigger circle of people to see your content that could ultimately come to your profile and start following you. So while you're thinking about a marketing strategy here on Instagram, I want you to definitely be thinking about how can you tweak your content to make it shareable, because that is absolutely going to get you more followers and really more visibility on Instagram. All right, so the million dollar question, how often should you post on Instagram? To be completely honest with you, I don't think there's a true answer here. I personally believe the answer is in your court. What can you realistically handle posting on Instagram? Because I'm telling you, consistency is key. I would prefer you start somewhere that you can be consistent and then add on from there. What I don't want you to do is say, I'm going to post every day of the week. I'm going to post five times and then quickly burn out. Or just dread Instagram. Find something that works for you, because this is your business that you're building. It is your rules. You can make the rules that you want to make. So that could be one time a week, three times a week, five times a week. Your business, your rules. Because if you can't keep up with it, what's the point? I'm going to tell you a little secret here. Stop listening to what all the experts are telling you on how often you should post, especially if it stresses you out. And decide for yourself what you want to be posting on Instagram and how often. Now, let's jump into what should we be posting on Instagram Once we decide on our schedule, I am going to tell you. You do need to have some type of video content baked into your Instagram marketing strategy. Now, that can be reels, that can be stories, that can be lives. I personally hate going live, but that's me, my business, my rules. So let me talk about each one of these video options and what might feel good for you. Reels are really great for getting in front of new people and building your visibility. I honestly think if you're looking to grow your Instagram account like you want more followers, you do have to be incorporating reels into your Instagram marketing strategy. How often you should be posting reels? I would say one to three times a week, if that can work for you. Remember, I want you to be consistent because the best strategies are the ones that you can remain consistent with. I do want to go on a little sidebar here about reels, so they do not have to be as complicated as you think. You can literally record yourself, like working at your desk and pop a quote on it, pop content on it. You can even grab B roll from Canva and create inspirational reels or educational reels that way as well. You don't have to be dancing or mouthing or lip singing to make a reel. And you don't need fancy editing to make a reel either. Here are just a few examples of different types of reels that you could be making that don't involve you dancing, lip singing, saying the words, anything, or actually even being on the video. All right, now let's talk about stories. Now, stories aren't going to help you get new people to your Instagram account, but they're going to help you build a deeper relationship with the people who are following you. This is going to be a great opportunity to start communicating with them, sharing more about you, so that basically you're building a community and you're making a connection with your community. This is where your audience will get to know you and decide it's you that they want to buy from or work with, as opposed to any of the other options that are out there. And that's really the difference in marketing these days is that everybody has a competitor of some sort, but what makes you stand out is basically your uniqueness and your personality is one of those pieces. And people need to see that to determine if you are the right fit for them to buy or work with. Now, if you watched the last video that I posted about my content marketing strategy for 2023 and I said the video girl is going to be writing content, I think that is also important in an Instagram marketing strategy to have some type of long form written content in the feed. Now, this could be two different ways. This could be in the caption, or it could be what's being called Twitter carousel posts. But basically what these posts are doing is each slide through the carousel. You are teaching your audience something or you are sharing a story so that people want to slide through the entire carousel. Now, with the education piece, the idea is after they get done reading everything in your carousel, they save it because they're like, this is really good, I gotta come back to this. Or they share it because they're like, this is really good. I gotta share my audience this. Some people are sharing and saving. Or you tell them in that carousel post to click the link in your bio to get the free checklist or join the free training. This is engagement and this is what the Instagram algorithm algorithm is looking for, like we talked about earlier. So Instagram is going to more than likely push that post to more people in the search feed. So maybe you're thinking, okay, Trina, if I'm already doing long form YouTube, like how can I keep up with all this content? Great question. Whether you're creating a YouTube video, whether you're writing a long form blog or a podcast, you want to utilize that content, but just remold it for Instagram to make it work for Instagram, gone are the days of just pulling out a clip from your blog, or pulling out a clip from your podcast or YouTube and slapping it on Instagram, you really gotta remold that same content. It can be the same topic, the same things you're saying, but molding it specifically to fit the platform, viewing behavior, consuming behavior. So what you could do with these longer forms of content. Podcast, YouTube blog is sharing key takeaways or going into more detail on one specific topic in your video. This is something that if you're checking out my Instagram account, we are working on creating more of here this year. Not only will this save you a lot of time, like recreating the wheel, coming up with constant new ideas to be posting, but my friend Latasha from Uncanny Content also mentions how important it is for your content to be congruent across all platforms so that you're not confusing your audience. Because it wouldn't make sense for my audience to get an email from me Monday morning talking about the five things I'm doing differently in my business in 2023. But then they pop on Instagram because they like to hang out on Instagram and they see a post from me talking about my outsourcing process. Right? There's no congruency there. They're like, wait, she sent me an email this morning about what she's doing differently now. The outsourcing could have been a part of that, but I know it wasn't. But you just want to make sure no matter where your audience is following content has that same theme each week. So again, they're not confused about what you're actually talking about that week. All right, now let's talk about how we can simplify this entire content plan specifically for Instagram marketing. Because you can simplify it, nine times out of ten, you're over complicating it. Let me walk you through an example of how I do this specifically for myself. So that video I talked about five things I'm doing differently in 2023. It's started with a YouTube video. The YouTube video goes live on Wednesday morning, shortly after I send out a newsletter sharing a little bit of a story behind that video and why they should go watch it. Then when I actually film that YouTube video, if you watched my again, content strategy video from last week, I dive into my viral video script and how when I'm scripting my YouTube videos, I'm also pulling pieces to script my reels. So when I'm done shooting these YouTube videos, I shoot my reels as well. Same content, just filming it in a different style. So I have a YouTube video and my newsletter. I have two reels already created from that same chunk of content. We also turn that into a blog post and Instagram carousel posts like we've been talking about. So it's just restructuring the main piece of content. My friend Ashlyn from Ashlyn writes, causes your hub content and then finding different ways to repurpose it for the platform that it's going on. So just a little bit of restructuring to really maximize that content's potential. So I don't want you to think when you post this giant YouTube video or you post this epic blog post like you've blown your content wide all at once, start to break it up in different places throughout that week, that you publish it and just restructure it for Instagram, whether it's on stories, whether it's a reel, whether it's carousel posts. Now, having an Instagram strategy is all great, great. But I don't know about you. I'm not showing up on Instagram and taking hours to create content, just to create content. I'm using it to make money in my business. Right. Go ahead and comment below if you want to use Instagram to make more money in your business. Right? Make money now. So I know that you get it. So how are we going to tie this whole Instagram marketing strategy into getting more people to take action with you? Sadly, it's pretty easy. All you need to do is ask and listen. This is something that I am not good at at all. It's literally been probably the biggest reason I haven't made more money off of Instagram, because I just have a hard time talking about what I do. I can share information, tips, strategies, thoughts all day, every day, but when it comes to just changing the type of content that I'm talking about, like buy my course, apply to 10K on replay, I get a little itchy inside. Maybe you do as well. And I realize this when I go and I talk to people at conferences and they don't even realize that I have a course called Video Strategy Academy that teaches you the strategy behind building a YouTube channel for your business. They don't realize that I have a coaching program where I help entrepreneurs get to consistent 10k months in profits, or that I have a YouTube production agency where we literally plan your entire YouTube strategy, tell you what to film, script it for you, and edit it for you. Because I don't talk about it enough. And funny enough, the few times that I do bring it up, we see a spike in traffic to our offers, applications to 10K on replay, applications to my agency. And every time I see that, I'm like, oh, I should talk about it more. And then I don't. So when you are building your Instagram strategy, you need to make sure you're reminding yourself or planning certain days that you are Going to promote yourself. This is so key. And I get it, I struggle with it too. But we need to promote ourselves and the things that we sell. But if you get that itchy sales feeling, here's a little tip that I've done to make it a little easier. You can ask your followers to to start that conversation with you so you don't feel like you're cold calling somebody. For example, if I'm doing a topic similar to this particular video over on Instagram in my Instagram script for my reels or in my captions, I know how Instagram strategy is. So go ahead and DM me right now. What is the hardest part for using Instagram for you? Or what is the hardest part? Coming up with content ideas on Instagram. Go ahead and DM me. You've now open the opportunity for them to reach out to you, you to respond to them by giving them some value. And now you have this two way conversation going. You can provide, like I said, some helpful insight or some ideas and then you can tell them what that next step might be. Is it your DIY course? Is it your Instagram agency? Drop that next ask in there. They may actually need what you have. They don't know you have it. We've got to get more social on social media. We have to make that connection because it is a social media platform. So don't be afraid to respond to comments. Create those conversations. And here's a simple way to start getting used to this. You can create a post or do an Instagram story about your morning coffee or your morning tea and why you like it. And then you can easily ask, are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker? So your audience doesn't even need to think about what to post. They can say coffee or tea. Then that opens your door to see, oh, what kind of tea do you like? Is it English breakfast tea? Or what kind of coffee do you like? Do you drink it with creamer or do you drink it black? Right, you can start having that conversation now. Instagram is one of the two main platforms that I'm focusing my content marketing Strategy on in 2023. The other one is obviously here on YouTube, but I am making some major changes when it comes to my current YouTube strategy. I'll be sharing more about it on Sunday's video or if it's already live, it'll be on your screen right now. So make sure you are subscribed and you have that bell notification turned on. So you know immediately when I publish this video.