The Top 3 Ways to Improve Your Instagram Feed This Week
You don’t have to have the cohesiveness of a beauty influencer, but it’s important to look established online, Instagram included. These three ways to improve your Instagram feed will help you focus on specifics while leaving time for patient care. We’ll start with building your content, move to posting, and end with a note on consistency. Let’s begin!
Use Canva
Canva is essentially a simplified, web-based Adobe Illustrator. It’s a design SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that offers free templates, icons, and tools that make great designs attainable for everyone. Even though I know and use Illustrator, I rely on Canva’s ease of use when I don’t need Illustrator’s power.
They include pre-sized templates for Instagram and Instagram Story posts, making it even easier to have a cohesive feed. This week, set up an account and start exploring the templates and functionality. Once you find a design you like, keep to that theme to help your feed’s cohesiveness.
You don’t need a highly cohesive feed, but you do want it to look visually appealing. The better your feed looks, the more likely people will be to read the useful content you’re putting together.
The best part? Everything is saved on the Cloud so you can access from anywhere without worrying if a pesky hard drive is going to fail.
Integrate & Rotate Hashtags
Ah, hashtags. For some, the exciting part of crafting a post. For others, the bane of their existence. Like them or not, though, hashtags help users discover your content, and it’s critical to use them on every post. (And Instagram Story!)
The current benchmarks are:
20 to 30 with every post
Posted as the first comment
Rotated frequently
It’s not a requirement to post in the comments. If you use a scheduling tool that doesn’t offer that function, then in the post still works. It’s more important to include them and rotate them frequently.
Create a bank of 30 to 40 hashtags, and pick 20 to 30 of them for each post. Then, mix up the bank of hashtags every month. There are plenty of functional medicine, food, and healthy living hashtags to choose from, so you’re in a good niche! Be sure to focus on ones with 50k to 200k uses, with a few larger ones thrown in. Focusing on the niche hashtags increases your chances of appearing in the top posts for that hashtag.
Retain Consistency
It’s tempting to let posting lapse when there’s little to no traction, but don’t slip up! You’re building a foundation and it’s important to keep going. Even when you feel like no one is watching.
I always recommend clients post three to five times per week on Instagram. Three posts per week, when managed consistently, is enough to keep growing while giving you enough time to plan high-quality content and, you know, see patients.
Five posts obviously takes more time to plan, but also offers an opportunity to share more value. It’s a trade-off that you need to weigh based on the time you have available throughout the week.
Want to learn more about the financial and time commitments needed to market your practice? Check out our free guide here!
Instagram Stories is a bit different. Best practices show that at least one Instagram Story per day is best, so that there is always something for users to watch. (Max it out at five to eight in a 24 hour period to help ensure people will watch each one.) This is the perfect opportunity to take a few minutes between patients to share information on a supplement, study, or type of test.
You can also highlight your meals, recent testing, or other lifestyle content that people enjoy seeing. They want to see that you’re walking the walk, and you’re already doing it, so it’s a quick way to share. Just make sure you do unplug throughout the week; you don’t need to share everything.
Improving your Instagram feed can quickly become overwhelming, especially when patient care comes first. Instead of waiting to start until the perfect moment, take some time this week to work through these three points. Once you start, it’s easier to keep going, and your future practice growth relies on it!