Over the years, Instagram has become one of the most important social media networks. In fact, it’s only second to Facebook in terms of user base.

After all, having over a billion monthly active users makes Instagram a big platform for most businesses. With this large size, there’s a huge potential for brands and businesses to reach and influence their ideal audience – especially as most Instagram users follow at least one brand. 

Whether you want to increase brand awareness, capture more leads, or gain more customers, Instagram is a platform you have to consider for your marketing efforts. 

However, it takes more than just posting images and videos and hoping for the best. You need to be strategic about the content you post on Instagram.

With that in mind, here are 7 components of an effective Instagram account:

• Username: this is your first identifier on Instagram. When Instagram users search for your brand or niche, your username helps both customers and potential customers find you.
• Profile picture: your profile picture provides more detail about your account. Are you a sports star or a makeup artist? Do you run a restaurant or bakery?
• Account bio: for a new visitor on your Instagram profile, your account bio will provide a summary of your brand or business.
• Content: this is the biggest factor that determines the success of your account. With your images and videos, you can build brand awareness and reach more potential customers.
• Hashtags: whether you’re running a giveaway or organizing your user-generated content, hashtags help to group your Instagram posts into different categories. Also, it helps users to find your posts.
• Captions: what’s special about your post? What’s the thought behind it? Captions help to tell important stories about your posts and thus, increase engagement.
• Products: with Instagram shopping tags, you can promote your products on Instagram. While posting about how people use your products in their daily activities, you can tag those products for potential buyers.

How do you ensure that all these parts of your Instagram account are in great shape? It’s often difficult to tell unless you’re an Instagram marketing expert. Because of this, having an Instagram account audit will help to get your Instagram account in great shape to achieve your marketing goals.

Thorough Instagram account audit with Instacheck

If you’re like most people, you visit Instagram a lot. But even at that, you have little understanding of how the platform really works. 

Unfortunately, without this knowledge, it’s almost impossible to optimize your Instagram account for the best performance possible. Another big issue is that understanding Instagram can take months or years of trial and error.

If you’re building your personal brand or running a business, this is time that you can’t afford to lose. That’s why Instacheck for Instagram account audit is a service that piqued my interest.

What information will you get after your Instagram account audit with Instacheck? In a moment, we’ll dive deeper into that and see its potential.

Here are the 6 main parts of your account Instacheck will analyze during an audit:

1. Account username

Think of it, if a person needs to ask for a single piece of information about your account, it would be your account name or username.

That’s why the right username is vital to get exposed to your ideal audience. In most cases, Instagram account usernames fall into these 2 categories:

• Personal/brand name: for popular people and brands, the brand or personal name might be enough to attract more followers. This is because Instagram users know what this person or brand is all about.
• Combination of brand name and niche: for less popular brands, it’s difficult to attract followers through the brand name alone. Therefore, such a business might combine their business and industry/niche name to tell users what they do.

Here’s an example from Hamed Raz where he used his name as username:

By considering your ideal audience, Instacheck will recommend changes that can make your username more memorable to your audience.

2. Profile photo

Apart from your profile page, your profile photo will show up on Instagram searches, stories, and comments. As a result of this, your profile picture can encourage an Instagram user to visit your page and click on the “Follow” button.

Two common types of profile pictures for Instagram accounts are:

• Personal images: if you’re trying to build your personal brand, then having your image will increase awareness with your potential audience.
• Logo/product: if you run a popular business, having your logo as your profile picture will attract many people to your account. This is sufficient because people already recognize the logo. However, a less popular brand can use their product as a profile picture to attract people interested in the product.

In Hamed Raz’s case, he used his picture:

Apart from the image on your profile picture, other considerations include the background and the noise in the picture. You can also change your picture background or profile picture according to seasons, celebrations, or events. Instacheck will analyze these and tell you what you need to know. 

3. Instagram bio

While Instagram users see your profile picture and username first, your bio can convince them to follow and engage with your account. Your account bio is the summary of what your brand or business is all about.

Here, you’ll talk about your main products, promote the right hashtags, and put out a call to action. Also, you can add a link to an important page on your website to direct more traffic to that page.

Considering that Instagram only allows this one link for an account, it’s vital to use the right link. Also, you can leave your contact information here so that leads and customers can reach out to you.

Here’s Fashion Nova’s Instagram bio:

With a well-optimized bio, an Instagram user will likely scroll further down your profile page. Instacheck from Combin will analyze your bio, tell you what you’re doing well and what’s missing to improve your profile.

4. Branding and aesthetics

Considering that there are over a billion Instagram accounts, what will make your account unique? A great answer to that is branding and aesthetics.

When an Instagram user visits your account, does your feed look organized or just jumbled together without any thought? Proper branding means that your images and videos on Instagram preach a common message and have similar objectives.

Thus, your follower should be able to recognize your post even if it’s shared on another Instagram account. 

Having the right Instagram aesthetics helps to make your Instagram feed beautiful. The grid of thumbnails will form a beautiful whole and encourage users to scroll down your page.

As a result, you can increase your follower count and engagement.

Here’s an example from Unico Nutrition:

Instacheck considers these factors and provides recommendations to ensure you have a consistent brand voice and a beautiful page.

5. Content creation

This is one of the most important activities on Instagram. The quality and frequency of your Instagram content will determine your performance. You have the options to upload your content to various parts of Instagram such as:

• Instagram feed
• Instagram stories
• Instagram TV (IGTV)

Through these platforms, you can reach your audience and gain even more followers. Also, your Instagram content can help to capture more leads and acquire customers.

While creating great Instagram content, some elements that should be present include:

• Quality images: considering that Instagram is a visual social media network, images are popular. As a personal brand, you can upload images showing your work and how you help people achieve their goals. Also, businesses can use images to promote their products.
• Quality videos: videos are very popular on Instagram and the platform is encouraging this type of content. You can have videos on your feed, stories, or IGTV. Furthermore, videos are more likely to show up on the Explore page as they play automatically.
• Hashtags: these help you to organize your posts on Instagram. While running campaigns, you can use hashtags to increase your content reach and track campaign popularity.
• Captions: even though an image can be worth a thousand words, sometimes, words make us understand the motive behind posting an image or video.

Here’s an example of great content from National Geographic:

After analyzing your content, Instacheck will recommend actions to take to increase engagement and other results.

6. Engagement

Whatever results you’re trying to achieve on Instagram, it’s difficult to achieve them without engagement. Put simply, Instagram loves an account that engages its followers. And to reward that, Instagram will show their posts to more people.

Common forms of engagement include:

• Likes
• Comments
• Saves
• Shares

Apart from reaching more of your followers, high engagement will push your posts to even non-followers. For instance, if your followers engage with your posts, then there’s a high chance of showing up in the Explore page to non-followers.

Instacheck will analyze your posts to provide tips on how to increase engagement through your content format, frequency of posting, time of posting, and more.

Conclusion

When you carry out a simple Google search, you’ll find many best practices about operating a successful Instagram account. Unfortunately, these best practices won’t work for every account.

So how do you know what will work for your account and audience? Instacheck analyzes your account to provide personalized recommendations so that you can take the right steps to achieve your Instagram goals.