When we took over the management of Neovision Optometrists‘ Instagram account, we unfollowed 7000 of the accounts that they followed. Yeah, you heard that right. Due to the wrong use of bots, their following list had become a mess that bordered on the profane. We dropped their following count all the way to zero so that we could start from a clean slate.
We believe in telling real stories to real people. And what better way to do that than on Instagram? Unlike other platforms, Instagram is still the best platform for engagement. You can see great results with a small account when you act like a human and not like a bot. For this specific client, it makes even more sense.
The Neovision group of optometrists consist of individually owned practices. Each practice is committed to serving its local community with the best optometry services. Their bottom line grows with every pair of feet (or eyes) entering their practices. So it’s about building loyal relationships with real people living their daily lives.
Enter Shané Louw, our in-house Instagram guru. After painstakingly unfollowing every single account, Shané has been using the account as if it were her own. She will, through the lens (pun intended) of the client’s brand story, like and comment on posts that she loves.
Since she took over, we have seen steady growth in followers by people that we consider as potential customers.
Instagram can make your brand beautiful.
For all of our clients, we see Instagram as a beautiful platform to tell a brand’s story in a visually creative way.
That’s where our in-house master of all things pretty, Laura McCarroll, comes in. As our head of design, Laura helps us to align the visual storytelling on a platform such as Instagram with each client’s brand identity. Instagram works really well to give the world a quick glance of your brand identity. For this, it helps if you have a talented graphic designer being hands-on with your account.
We recently completed a new website project for this same client. As it goes with big projects like this, brand identity tends to get fresh attention. Laura was pretty hands-on with the new website and as a result, facilitated changes in the way we’ll present the brand’s identity going forward. These changes are already evident on their Instagram account.
Give your hard work a boost
As with all social media platforms, you have the option to advertise or boost your content to reach your marketing goals. Instagram is constantly improving this feature and by switching your Instagram account to a business account, you will be able to make full use of their in-app advertising options. But with Instagram being part of the Facebook family, we still prefer to use Facebook Business Manager as the platform from where we manage our Instagram ad campaigns. From this platform, you are now able to set up campaigns that make use of your existing Instagram posts. In the past, this was not an option and the only way to advertise with actual Instagram content was to use the in-app advertising option.
From an agency perspective, we see these three elements as important building blocks for a healthy, growing and engaging Instagram account: