Instagram Rules

The Essential Guide to Building Brands, Business and Community

Jodie Cook

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780711251762
• eBook ISBN: 9780711251779
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

SALES & MARKETING BOOK OF THE YEAR, THE BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2021

'Essential for anyone wanting to take Instagram seriously.' – ALEX WOOD, FORBES

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Boost your business, grow an online community or promote a side-hustle with Instagram Rules. 
 
Instagram is an essential tool for any business, and an estimated 60% of users discover new products via the platform. But how can you use it effectively? Social media expert Jodie Cook breaks it down into 125 bite-sized rules, making Instagram an easy and efficient method for expanding your venture. 

Jodie takes you through the most important aspects of running a professional account – strategy, content, community, growth – and drills into the key concepts so that you can apply expert digital marketing knowledge to your profile, no matter the size.

• Learn the dos and don’ts of post planning; developing a voice; identifying trends; driving a campaign; responding to engagement; and more. 
• Create a personalised Instagram strategy, whatever your business is. 
• Apply insight from interviews with successful users (from Ben & Jerry's and Papier, to freelancers and community groups) and Jodie's own experience working with international brands, celebrities and small businesses. 
• Read as a quick-fire reference or as a step-by-step guide or for effective, focused strategy.

Whether you’re a complete novice, short on time or want to improve your engagement – Instagram Rules makes social media marketing straightforward and hassle-free for any small business or serious Instagram user.

Chapter One

Strategic Approach

The first section of this book is dedicated to optimising your Instagram account for long-term success. With a strong foundation, you can build a formidable Instagram presence and a brand that is synonymous with what you stand for.

Your account and everything it shares must contribute to the bigger picture. So you need to be clear on what that bigger picture is and create an account that will get you there. For this, you need a strategy.

Why be strategic?

A strategic approach is hugely important if you’re taking your Instagram presence seriously because it provides a framework to work within. Knowing what your brand represents and where you want to go makes your social media activity a more conscious endeavour and allows you to push your online activity further.

By ‘strategy’, I don’t mean specific tactics for quick wins but laying the groundwork for long-term success – from setting the right profile picture to choosing the right filters. It should be an embodiment of your entire Instagram presence and what you want your account to achieve for your personal brand or business.

Benchmarking where you are now against where you want to be is paramount: you might not realise how far your account has come until you look back. Growth in likes, followers and comments will become the norm, but applying the tactics and reflecting on them regularly will ensure this continues.

Of course, it is possible to grow an Instagram account without a strategy, but not while trying to maximise the chances of growth. You’ll see from the case studies included throughout that even those Instagram accounts that started off without a plan, or with a scattergun approach, had to adopt a strategy at some point on their journey.

Without considering your account’s identity, it’s easy to be busy on the platform without being productive or effective. A strategy keeps you on track, and if things aren’t going well, you at least have an understanding of what you’ve been doing so that you can change it.

The four steps to building an effective strategy

This chapter is split into the following four areas:

1. Goal-setting

2. Profile Optimisation

3. Brand and Branding

4. Tone of Voice

These elements flow on from one another and combine to provide the foundations for success.

Goal-setting

This defines the purpose of your account, allowing you to identify the direction you want to take.

Profile Optimisation

With your goals in mind, you can now optimise your profile. This is about how you define yourself, attract the right audience and showcase your brand.

Brand and Branding

Your brand and branding is the way everything looks and feels to users. The strength of your brand underpins how you’re perceived online.

Tone of Voice

This is the way you ‘speak’ or ‘sound’ on Instagram. This is an integral piece of your identity because the way you communicate is still highly important on the platform, even if most of your content is based around imagery.

Goal-setting

Almost every article or book about achieving success will discuss the importance of goals, and Instagram is no different. Goals will define your strategic approach; they will help determine your plan during the coming weeks and months, and help you decide what content to post. They may also dictate how you set up your account and how it operates. Goals are where it all begins.

Knowing where you want to go is not always a prerequisite to moving in the right direction, but it does help, preventing you from becoming completely lost or going the really lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Strategic Approach
• Chapter Two: Content
• Chapter Three: Community
• Chapter Four: Growth
• Health
• Final thoughts
• Index
• Further reading
• Acknolwedgments