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Make your Instagram posts higher performing while staying true to your creative vision. Learn how to blend data and creativity with Constant Contact and Shutterstock.
Both brands and creators alike focus much of their time trying to win audience attention on social channels. Home to over one billion users globally, Instagram is one of the most beneficial social platforms for brands to connect with new and existing customers. However, this also means it’s very popular, making standing out amongst the crowd a challenge.
Maintaining an active presence on Instagram is a continuous process of posting, engaging, and remaining top of mind for followers. But in our oversaturated attention economy, how do you capture the engagement your brand needs? Start just like always: with your goals, your brand identity, your new ideas and creativity, and then add the secret sauce: data.
On platforms like Instagram, attention spans only last about two seconds, so executing an idea backed by data is a smart way to optimize for higher engagement.
To make creative Instagram posts that stand out, it takes an artful blend of the following:
- Using industry best practices as a guide
- Applying industry-specific trend data from AI for Instagram posts
- Tying both of these pieces together with your own creative instincts
Here, we’re partnering with Constant Contact, a leading digital marketing platform, to show you how to do it all. Throughout the blog below, we explore advice from both brands on how to use these techniques to foster new creative Instagram post ideas.
Improve Instagram Posts By Following Best Practices
Of course, all brands want to create posts that get a ton of likes, shares, and click-throughs, but that’s easier said than done.
Designing better Instagram content may seem like a purely creative process upfront. While creativity is certainly needed, the content production and curation processes are also analytical. There are several practices you should deploy when developing your Instagram content strategy.
A few best practices to get started with include:
- Perform a competitor analysis. Study what types of creative assets competitors use and what the main subjects within these assets are. Observe what types of posts they publish too, and assess their mix of image posts, Stories, and Reels. You will learn more about which types of posts their similar audiences tend to engage with. This can inspire you!
- Size images properly and thoughtfully arrange contents within the frame. Not only will this help you avoid awkward cropping situations, but it’ll give your followers a quick, clear, and concise look at each and every post.
- Tell a story. Yes, you’re probably trying to sell products and services, but you can craft narratives around your brand. Show how your products are used by real customers. And choose diverse and inclusive individuals to share their experiences with your services. Putting faces to the name of your business will foster brand recognition.
- Incorporate a seasonal flair to your brand by adding a fresh variety of colors to your content. We suggest including seasonal color palettes throughout your posts via on-image fonts and seasonal logos.
Like the images above that exemplify a play on “Back to School,” you can incorporate seasonal trends into your brand’s content by using complimentary images and colors.
If your brand has been on Instagram for a while, you surely have an established brand voice. Of course, you can always boost its influence by following the latest image trends and ensuring its voice follows strong best practice guidelines. Make sure your visual content and copy are aligned in order to develop a consistent, recognizable brand voice.
AI for Instagram Posts Curates Winning Creative
Creative individuals push brands forward.
While the true creative ideas behind social posts come from people, AI can enhance those concepts and help you make the most of your creativity.
Artificial intelligence solutions, like Shutterstock’s Predict, understand which image contents and colors are predicted to get high engagement across six different industries. Knowing these insights, brands can incorporate them into visual content on social media and ultimately, receive more impressions, clicks, or conversions from their posts.
How does AI predict winning creative choices for Instagram content?
- It analyzes billions of creative data points. This is a collection of historical data and current trend data.
- With the knowledge acquired through data analysis, Predict pinpoints top-performing visual content trends across six industries.
- Predict recommends images from the Shutterstock library that have optimal creative content to achieve your Instagram campaign goals.
As an example, below are a few different creative trends that AI has predicted to perform well across various industries:
- Automotive industry: Images including nightclubs perform better than 86% of other creatives for this industry. This data suggests that brands should consider showing people on a big night out, perhaps driving up to a valet and heading into a swanky nightclub.
- Also, in this industry, cool colors like greens and blues outperform creatives of other colors by 88%.
- CPG industry: Images including summer settings perform better than 94% of other creatives for this industry. Consider imagery that transports your audience to sun-soaked destinations, showcases bright, punchy summertime hues, and radiates the joy of the season’s outdoor activities.
- In this industry, violets and blues outperform creatives of other colors by 92%.
- Finance industry: Images including teenagers perform better than 87% of other creatives for this industry. It’s important that people of all ages have financial literacy! Consider including younger models in your ads, or if you’re targeting older audiences, consider including the whole family.
- In this industry, warm oranges and pinks outperform creatives of other colors by 89%.
- Healthcare industry: Images including dating perform better than 88% of other creatives for this industry. Everyone wants to be healthy and thriving! Show off positivity in your ads by including happy, healthy models going on adventures, like dates.
- In this industry, deep jewel tones outperform creatives of other colors by 96%
- Retail industry: Images including sun hats perform better than 79% of other creatives for this industry. Summer shopping season is still upon us. Bring the heat by including beachwear, like sun hats, in your ad imagery.
- In this industry, bright yellows outperform creatives of other colors by 89%.
- Technology industry: Images including gardens perform better than 94% of other creatives for this industry. Interestingly enough, natural settings perform well for technology ads. Consider choosing images of models working or on their phones while surrounded by fresh flowers or the great outdoors.
- In this industry, greens outperform creatives of other colors by 83%.
Supercharge Your Creative Instagram Posts
Best practices are called “best practices” for a reason. And while best practices are reliable standbys, think of AI as a brand-new, easy-to-use tool. When combining both, marketers will unlock what exactly performs best for their brands’ Instagram campaigns.
Combine the best of all worlds with trusted creative partners like Constant Contact and Shutterstock.
Explore how you can enhance your marketing campaigns with Constant Contact and Shutterstock creative assets.
Shutterstock is the leading global platform for licensing high-quality 3D models, videos, music, photographs, vectors and illustrations. Learn more at www.shutterstock.com.
