How Indie Makeup Companies Use Instagram

If your indie beauty business is non on Instagram, it doesn't be. With over one billion people using Instagram in 2021, this thought certainly rings true.  As with about other major social media platforms, Instagram is essential to marketing your beauty brand these days.

In fact, one of the beginning things we advise when naming your new beauty brand is to cheque if the diverse social handles are bachelor earlier you buy a website domain or get as far as getting a trademark.

Simply Instagram, initially created equally a simple photo-posting app designed for recording moments as they happen, is peradventure the almost appealing of the main social platforms cheers to its focus on visuals and mobile.

Its appeal as a marketing tool may seem surprising as information technology allows us only a single outbound link tracking back to our websites, online stores, landing pages and so on. Since it launched in 2010, Instagram has remained for the virtually part with few gimmicks – until relatively recently that is.

We love using Instagram for Formula Botanica as it is a fabulous, visual way to interact with our community of indie dazzler advocates. To prepare the scene, we requite several examples of our different styles of Instagram posts in this guide.

Notwithstanding, getting to grips with Instagram can seem like trying to hit a moving target. No sooner take you learned a new characteristic or read upward on how to game the algorithm, than yous find yourself having to learn new tricks to keep upward to appointment with the app.

In this guide, nosotros give you a snapshot of how to piece of work with Instagram strategically. We at present have over 100k followers on our Instagram business relationship so we know just how powerful this lively, visually-rich social platform is in helping indie beauty connect and gain an edge.

If you lot'd similar further training on Instagram for indie dazzler, roofing step-past-step instructions on its various features, detect out about our members-only site, The Lab at Formula Botanica. It offers in-depth preparation modules released monthly on formulation, natural ingredients, beauty industry trends and indie beauty business tools including Instagram and Pinterest.

Want to employ Instagram strategically to market place your indie beauty make? The @FormulaBotanica vii strategy tips will get yous sorted. #beautybrands #instagramforbusiness #indiebeauty Click To Tweet

Strategic Tips on using Instagram for your indie beauty brand

1. Never rely on Instagram (or other social platforms)

While it's of import to apply Instagram for your beauty brand, the first indicate to stress is don't rely on it as your just face to the world. Social media may seem a gratuitous way to promote yourself, but you have little command over your content once it is published on one of these platforms. The major Facebook, IG and WhatsApp outage in early Oct 2021 showed but how reliant we are on these apps to run our lives and our businesses.

Nosotros've seen some well-known brands – including those of some of our Formula Botanica graduates – be blocked by Instagram and in event have their accounts taken offline at whim. You never know if and when you might fall foul, often erroneously or inadvertently, of Instagram's content or user rules. It can take time to get your concern business relationship back live. Instagram tin can exist tiresome to respond and vague almost why your business relationship was blocked in the first place.

It's all-time to own your own abode on the internet in the shape of your ain website, and run Instagram and other social platforms as marketing channels alongside. Instagram can be free to use, but nothing is a gratuitous luncheon. For peace of mind, spend time and coin investing in your own website and e-shop.

Tip #1: Never run all aspects of your indie beauty business concern on social platforms. Bring that business home to a website y'all own and control.

2. Create an Instagram strategy

Instagram, as with other social media, can be very time consuming; either considering you spend hours creating those earth-shaking, heart-communicable posts for your own business, or because yous are scrolling down your feed and commenting on other people's posts.

Apparently, according to some latest statistics, the average user spends almost ii.5 hours a day on social media. Facebook tops the rankings with Instagram taking an average 28 minutes a day.

These figures are interesting for two key reasons: time is money in business organization, so don't waste information technology; and be enlightened that if the boilerplate user is on Instagram for 28 minutes, at various times in the day, they need to find y'all, be attracted to and interested in what you mail, and stay around to become loyal, active followers.

This means you demand to think of time on Instagram every bit time spent working on your business, then you need a strategy on why and how to apply it best for your concern goals. Information technology's not enough to mail service pretty photos and graphics each twenty-four hour period and call back your ideal customers will observe you. Think very conspicuously about what you want out of Instagram. For example, piece of work out how your post content tin can:

1. Build awareness of your brand and products.
2. Actively engage people with your brand.
3. Build a community of engaged followers.
4. Convert your followers to potential customers.
5. Reward their loyalty.

To make headway using Instagram strategically, you need to know who your ideal customers are and ensure you create content that appeals to them. We encompass more than on content below and talk nigh customer profiling in our podcast on 10 tips on branding your beauty business organization.

Call up through your posts with laser precision. This does non preclude you lot from being yourself, being spontaneous, showing behind-the-scenes content and so on. In fact, all these types of content are valued specially equally customers similar to find out about the indie founder backside the brand. Merely, exist enlightened of the strategic role each piece of content plays and how it tallies with the brand tone and style you wish to portray.

One time you lot've been using Instagram a while, use its own analytics too as Google Analytics or like research tools to monitor your own website. You volition start to assemble valuable data on who is following your posts and at what times of day and to discover out how much traffic your own website is gaining from Instagram vs other social media. Get to dear statistics equally much as the photos and videos you lot post on Instagram.

Tip #2: Treat Instagram merely every bit you would any other valued marketing endeavor. It is a platform demanding goal setting and measured outcomes. See Instagram as strategic content marketing.

iii. Be on-brand on Instagram

If you take invested in your branding for your packaging, website and more than, then elements of your brand need to translate into your Instagram posts. Your brand needs to be instantly recognisable to your followers through its consistent employ of colours, manner of imagery, and through your tone of voice.

If you are still working out what your branding should exist, Instagram can be a useful place to test out some ideas and see what works. Don't worry, yous can ever archive old posts. If you archive rather than delete posts, you will still be able to view them and their stats in your archived library which is only accessible to yous. They will be removed from your grid but exist available for you lot to see them or add them back live once again if needed.

Your imagery whether graphics or photos need to exist the best you can create. You don't need to be a pro photographer, but practice brush up on mobile phone photography skills and on how to do the ultimate flat lay photograph. Product photography is a skill requiring an agreement of light and depth of focus. Remember, glass bottles reflect the surroundings and white product containers tin be bland to photograph. But don't get overboard on photo props as small-size photos will look too decorated if you lot crowd out your production.

It can be tricky to come up up with a standard, only yet flexible look and experience to your posts. Use complimentary online tools like Canva to create templates for grid post and as story, reel and video covers. Accept you e'er wondered how some Instagram photo grids are in the same hues or take the same lighting? These types of effect tin can be created using mobile apps to do some photo post-processing. Popular ones include Adobe'south Lightroom and pre-set filters. At that place are many more and so just find i to accommodate. Of grade, you can edit visuals within Instagram also.

Being 'on-brand' on Instagram doesn't mean you tin't throw in some spontaneity and mix things upwards. Only plan filigree posts to see exactly how they will sit next to each other and so you can retain a cohesive brand experience, even if some posts are different in mood, colour or topic.

Tip #3: Try to stay on-brand by using consistent, cohesive colours and style of photography and a personal notwithstanding professional brand vocalism. Feel free to mix things upwardly every and then ofttimes but non so equally to distract from your make messaging.

iv. DIY or outsource your IG account?

Content is king. This is as true today equally when social media first arrived in our lives. Even more and then given the noise online and the limited attention span nigh of united states take while flicking casually downwards our media feeds. Content is not costless. It requires planning, dedication, creativity, consistency, time and money.

Most indie dazzler founders offset off running their own Instagram accounts and some practise and then even when their businesses grow. May Lindstrom, whom nosotros interviewed for our Greenish Beauty Conversations' podcast, says she still does her own daily posts even though her brand is now an international proper name. If yous choose to outsource Instagram content and administration, yous will need to spend time drafting some make guidelines and briefing your social media hire to ensure yous get value for money and are happy with the content.

Our advice is to run the business relationship yourself, at least to start with, so you become a feel for the platform, your followers, a sense of what works all-time and so on. You lot will in any case be meliorate placed as the founder to do video or lives and to show backside the scenes of your brand.

Tip #4: Both routes – DIY or outsourcing your Instagram account – have learning curves. The route you choose might depend non just on the cost merely also on how visible a founder y'all wish to be and how of import your personal voice and touch is to running your marketing.

5. Create compelling content

Content is just compelling if it hits the marker with your target followers and potential customers. Remember, you are running Instagram to market place your indie beauty make and products, so think twice before documenting your personal life in posts.

Indie founders thrive off showing followers behind the scenes, but inquire yourself if posting upwardly every meal out or the daily antics of your pet help or hinder your make. For example, we have heard of non-vegan founders of vegan-lifestyle-compatible brands posting upwards meaty meals and getting a lot of negative comments as a result. See our podcast 'Should vegan brands be run by vegans' for more on this specific result.

Exist enlightened as well that if you take a personal account curious followers may make the connection and check you out there likewise. If yous have your branding sorted out, you will instinctively know what content is in line with your make mission and volition assistance your marketing.

Now, let's focus on the types of content Instagram lends itself to and the genres of content you lot could rotate on your business relationship to peak followers' interest and continue them coming back for more. Here are some ideas of topics:

Behind the scenes – show your lab space, products in production, and hop on to practise 'lives'.
Product – highlight your products (but non in every post). Show them being formulated (as a behind-the-scenes look) too as in their final packaging.
Inspiration – showcase new ingredients or a new formulation in the making.
Lifestyle – peculiarly useful if your make/products accept links to your region, country or the landscape around you and then on.
Teaching – talk near aspects of your formulation/business ethos, about the properties of central ingredients, and give your (make) opinion on trending issues such as sustainability or upstanding sourcing.
Demonstrate your products – practice 'lives' and short film clips demonstrating how to utilise your product.
Testimonials – apply permission-marketing to postal service upward your all-time customer feedback.
Events – testify you, your team and make out and about at markets and trade fairs, for example.
Quotes – from yourself or find relevant inspirational quotes.
Community building – create posts to foster customs amid your followers. Engage them and solicit their opinions by asking questions (binary ones work well) and use polls.

Tip #5: Rotate categories of posts to maintain followers' interest and to keep your feed fresh and on-bespeak. Don't focus only on, for case, your products all the time as this would seem as hard sell and spammy.

6. Plan content but prove up every 24-hour interval

To make the most of Instagram you need to evidence upwardly regularly – ideally daily – and be consistent in your tone, visuals, arroyo and so on. But, consistency does not hateful doing the same matter each day. The best way to keep a remainder of posts is to rotate posts in the categories we mention above. To go along track of your content themes, apply a calendar. This can be a unproblematic Google or Excel canvass or an app.

Content can be scheduled directly to Instagram from Facebook Business organization Suite and Creator Studio for free. This includes scheduling stories to Instagram too, admitting with less functionality and fewer features than posting manually.

There are likewise Instagram apps that help you typhoon posts to schedule. Some are so-called official 'partners' of Instagram and therefore less likely to fall foul of their posting rules. Some apps around include Hootsuite, Later Media, Tailwind, Plannthat, Buffer and a lot more than. About have a gratuitous, if limited plan, and tiers of pricing to suit pocket-sized to large businesses. Exercise your homework before paying for a scheduler. Commencement, go used to the commitment needed to run Instagram daily, as it still takes time – one twenty-four hour period a month for case – to populate a scheduling app in advance.

But, Instagram has the prefix 'Insta' in its name for good reason; it prefers and rewards new, fresh, daily content that is posted manually. It likes to recall its roots. While scheduling apps and planners tin take the strain out of daily posting, as you can load them up months in advance, do post transmission, spontaneous content as well.

Imagine you scheduled a mail and found that news' events overtook it making it seem inappropriate. You lot need to monitor your account daily and change your content to be sensitive to events both local and international. Likewise, you demand to monitor comments daily and answer in line with your brand voice and ethos. Replying to commenters promptly is proficient Instagram practice and will make your followers feel appreciated and even if yous don't agree with them, yous need to respond courteously and 'on-brand'. The more comments you have, whether your replies or those of your followers, the better a post will perform in terms of accomplish to your followers.

Tip #half dozen: Schedule content to give yous freedom, but show up every twenty-four hour period in person to administer your account, keep on summit of comments and to continue things 'instant'.

vii. Content types on Instagram: which to choose?

Keeping upward with all the different terms social platforms use to describe content types tin can be frustrating. As each platform tries to rival the features of its competitors, y'all find like content forms simply with different names across various social media. Confused? Well, y'all're not alone.

I overriding point to make is that video is male monarch these days. This is the instance across all social platforms and we run across statistics suggesting that video posts accept over 50 percent more date than static photograph posts. In mid-2021, Instagram announced it was actively favouring video content and leaving behind its roots equally a photo-sharing app once and for all.

This means that you volition need to go adept at creating video and getting comfy going live on Instagram. Gone are the days of thinking you can post a single pretty photo a day and go traction on the app.

With this in heed, allow'due south go over Instagram content forms and what they are best suited to:

Grid content

The filigree is the main 'home' of your account and where followers arrive if they click through on your Instagram username or from elsewhere, such as on your handle in a annotate. The grid is the identify you almost notice the cohesion of an business relationship and tin can get a feel for its overall branding colours, photographic manner and voice. Originally, the grid was for static photos only, but now information technology takes iii types of content:

Photos: unmarried photos or multi-image posts allowing the user to swipe sideways to see up to ten slides.
All-time suited to: regular daily posts and showcasing your brand. Any topic.

Reels: short-class video clips upwards to 30 seconds long that loop. They are similar to Tiktok clips. They do non expire, different Instagram stories (see below).
All-time suited to: very short backside-the-scenes clips or very short face-to-camera clips. Topics: informal, fun facts, edutainment/infotainment clips.

Video: these can be upward to 60 minutes, merely shorter is better to capture attention.
Best suited to: longer, more educational or stance pieces, but don't aim to mail service up more than 20 minutes of video. Shorter is still better. Ideally, post longer videos on YouTube and do a curt prune equally a promotion to mail on Instagram.

Other types of Instagram content

Stories: these are short photo slide decks or videos visible for upward to fifteen seconds per frame. Stories tin be less polished and lend themselves to backside the scenes, instant views of your life, business, production demos and and then on. They are highly engaged with and y'all ofttimes volition notice a greater number of views on stories than on grid posts or even video posts. There is a way to go on them effectually longer than 24 hours; cull them as 'highlights' and they volition keep in a folder on your profile. Yous can create on-brand cover graphics for each highlight category. This makes your profile page look more professional and cohesive.
Best suited to: informal, more than spontaneous content. Fun, edutainment/infotainment content and behind the scenes / founder lifestyle.

Lives: are obviously existent-time live video. They can be saved as videos on your filigree one time recorded. When someone is 'alive', they announced as the outset icon on the story timeline (only with a purple ring around it instead of pink to indicate a 'live') at the top of the home feed. Depending on users' notification settings, your followers may go a notification about you beingness live. Y'all can co-host a live with some other business relationship, which lends itself to discussions, opinions, collaborations and chats with squad members, partner retailers and then on.
Best suited to: quick opinions, behind-the-scenes, talking near and demonstrating new products or ingredients, showcasing new things in your lab, talking alive from events, Q&Every bit, and collaborating with another Instagram business relationship.

Tip #7: Use a variety of Instagram post types but acquire to dear video and how to be a natural in front of your mobile phone photographic camera.

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Liz is Formula Botanica's Content Coordinator and joined our team in August 2020. Liz worked as a professional blogger, journalist and site developer for many years and was also role of the Formula Botanica pupil community. Read more about the Formula Botanica Team.

How Indie Makeup Companies Use Instagram,

Source: https://formulabotanica.com/instagram-for-beauty-businesses/

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