Using Instagram as a Design Agency

Instagram is a valuable tool to showcase your work as a design agency. This not only raises interest in your company generally, but can have very real benefits to your bottom line.

Today we dive deeper into the platform’s role at your agency, as well as some tips for maximizing its usefulness.

Why Instagram Is Useful as a Design Agency

The most obvious answer is that Instagram acts as a portfolio of your work. Maybe you just completed designing a website for one of your clients and want to display the process. Perhaps Instagram acts as more of a fun way to showcase the different talents your individual designers have. Regardless, using Instagram as a design agency shows the world what your company is capable of. This can have a direct effect on the number and quality of clients you are able to sign.

However, Instagram is also great for driving top of funnel engagement. This basically means that you are creating more awareness of your brand. It can drive more traffic to your website, creates a connection with your audience and can even be better for long term SEO.

This makes Instagram quite similar to Youtube. You might not have as high a customer conversion rate as your sales page, for example, but Instagram is still getting your agency in front of more eyes. In the age of information overload where your audience has more choice than ever, this attention is essential.

Tips for Using Instagram as a Design Agency

1) Start with your master plan

What is it you are trying to achieve through Instagram? What are your main business goals, and how can the platform help?

You need to be clear on what your objectives are (give this guide a look if you are unsure of what those are). This will help you plan what you are going to post, how often, and who will be responsible for running your Instagram account. So be sure to take a step back before you get started. Meet as a team and discuss what your main goals are…and then go from there.

2) Follow best practices

The best plan requires intentional action. If you’re using Instagram as a design agency, you want to prioritize sustainable audience growth. This requires following a certain set of best practices. Here are three of the most important:

• Prioritize engagement over number of followers. While a growing follower account is usually a good sign, it doesn’t mean much if they aren’t engaged. A smaller audience that is more active will always be more valuable to your agency. We cover this way of thinking in our ultimate guide to building an audience.
• Never buy followers. It’s simply not worth it. Buying followers will make your account look good in the short term, but it’s far riskier in the long term. It’s also unlikely to result in increased engagement!
• Interact with your followers. Respond to comments and start a conversation. People like to feel like brands actually care about them, and an active presence on your own social profiles is one of the best ways to do that.

3) Understand Instagram’s features

It can be tempting to simply post graphics that your team has made and call it a day. However, if you don’t strategically use all that Instagram has to offer, your agency could be falling behind.

How often do you share a story with your audience? This can often be more engaging than your regular content, especially if you show your followers some “behind the scenes” clips at your agency. How about shoppable posts? Depending on the services your agency provides, this can also be a valuable addition to your strategy.

Check out this up-to-date guide to Instagram features for more ideas. 

4) Use the right tools 

Related to Instagram features are the tools that you can implement. It’s often the case that a design agency is so busy with client work that they forget about their own content. While this is understandable, it’s also a big risk considering the usefulness of Instagram. Even with their workload, agencies should still be making time for their own marketing plan. Indeed, it pays dividends.

That’s where tools can help. They take some of the stress off having to plan your Instagram strategy and can bring useful automation into the mix. This makes it more likely that you stick to your own content plan over the long term.

Here is Shopify’s guide to Instagram tools that you might consider.

5) Optimize your content for your audience

While this is our last tip, it may very well be the most important. Like anything in business, it’s essential that what you are doing is what your audience is looking for. This is where audience research comes in. What is the sort of Instagram content your followers enjoy? What collects the most likes and engagement? This is the sort of content you should be aiming to produce more of.

You might also consider looking at what your direct competitors are doing on their Instagram page. What is working, and just as importantly, what isn’t? You’d be surprised how much inspiration you can get from just a few minutes on another company’s profile.

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Are you an enterprise, nonprofit or small business looking for help on your website? Give us a shout! We provide a free consultation. Email us at info@lughstudio.com or call us at (718) 855-1919!