This month we put a focus on Instagram and teaching you everything it has to offer and how you can make the most use of the platform. This week we will be talking about captions, characters, and consistency. When we say characters, we are referring to emojis. 

 

Captions 

 

Instagram allows its users 2200 characters for each caption. That is a lot of words, and we don’t expect you to use them all. Most of the time shorter captions do better anyway. According to statistics, 1-20 characters is the ideal length for an Instagram Caption. Although shorter captions do better statistically, longer captions are trending. Over the past couple of years, the trend of using long captions has continued to grow. Some pages do well with blog length captions. Try it out on your account to see what works best for you. Post a week’s worth of long captions followed by a week’s worth of short captions. Compare your engagement in those two weeks to see what will work best for you. 

 

Hashtags

Hashtags are proven to grow your Instagram account. One mistake we see with hashtags is people putting them in their comments rather than their captions. Instagram used to weigh hashtags in captions and comments the same, but that has changed. Instagram now rewards users who put hashtags in their captions, so we recommend you do so. 

 

Consistency

“Consistency is the key! If you can’t be consistent, then you can’t be anything.”- Tony Gaskins. Like most things in life, if you aren’t consistent with your Instagram account then you will not grow. You need to post at least three times a week on Instagram. There is no posting requirement for stories, but three times a week will work perfectly. You need to post at least three reels each week. Ideally, you should post 5 times a week. Statistics show that you should not post on Sunday, so stick to weekdays and Saturdays. If you aren’t consistent Instagram will not consider you a priority. They will view you as hit or miss. 

 

Emojis

Depending on your age, you may or may not be using emojis. If you aren’t, you need to change that. You have to be careful with emojis because their meanings change regularly. You never know what underlying meaning an emoji could be holding. Do your research, but use them because they are statistically proven to help your business. 

 

Statistics

 

If you want to know the real value of using emojis you need to understand the statistics that back them up. Statistics show that emojis can be extremely beneficial to your business. Tweets that use emojis are shown to have 25% more engagement. Facebook’s engagement levels jump 57% when emojis are used, and Instagram’s engagement levels increase by 48% with emoji usage. When you use emojis, comments and shares increase by 33%. Data even shows that emails with emojis have significantly higher open and click rates. Emojis work and people love to see them. Don’t be an emoji snob. If your brand is too exclusive for emojis you could be losing potential clients. 

 

Where Can You Find Good Emojis? 

 

It can be hard to figure out what emojis are right for your topic and your business. Thankfully, there are plenty of free apps to help solve this problem. The first one we frequently use is Emojipedia. Emojipedia is a reference site that documents standard meanings and common usage of different emojis. It is helpful when trying to determine is an emoji is appropriate for your content. It also allows you to type in a topic. It will send you every emoji that relates to that topic. The only drawback to Emojipedia is that it is only compatible with desktops. It is not mobile user-friendly. 

 

The second Emoji resource we use is called Emojam. Emojam is a browser-based app that helps you discover the correct emoji for your content. It features a responsive design that is clickable and available on desktops. It is also tappable on mobile devices. It gives you the option to create a line of emojis. If you have a younger audience, this could be a helpful feature for you. 

 

Wrapping Up Instagram 

March is coming to an end, so this will be the last week we discuss the ins and outs of Instagram. Come back next week to read all about a surprise topic you will love!