How To Decode Your Competitor’s Instagram Marketing Strategy
If you’re using Instagram for business, you cannot take it as lightly as individual users do. You have to figure out a plan, a strategy - something that will work best for you, help you get and keep Instagram followers, convert them to customers and beat your competitors while you are at it.
To get started, you will probably chart out a plan from scratch, experiment with different times to post on Instagram, read up several articles on what to post, try out different hashtags, beg people to follow you, beg some more people to follow you and then go and cry in a corner. Because, let’s admit it, marketing on Instagram is not easy.
Everything that a marketer is familiar with doing on Twitter or Facebook or any of the other popular social networks no longer applies to Instagram. Measuring ROI is difficult, tracking competitors is manual and tedious, tools for analysis are almost non-existent - you get the drift?
In this post we’ve tackled competitor tracking and Instagram marketing plan creation - primarily, what are the major factors you should consider for both.
The best way to stay ahead of the competition on Instagram is to know what the competition is doing. In keeping with our Twitter analytics blog post where we compared and contrasted the performance and marketing strategies of Pepsi and Coke, this time round we’ll use the same two rival brands to illustrate Instagram marketing.
Some stats about Pepsi’s and Coca Cola’s Instagram accounts are shown in the infographic below. These will help us keep the rest of the post in perspective.
Now that the fancy numbers are out of the way (and these fancy numbers are enough to tell us how the two brands are doing on Instagram), let’s get to the nitty gritty. We've analyzed the last ten posts by both Pepsi and Coca Cola to illustrate the marketing strategy outlined.
Decoding Factor 1: Timing
When are they posting and when should you post on Instagram
Timing is very important. As a social media marketer, this is something you probably roll your eyes at. But, do you really know what is the best time to post on Instagram for your brand’s account?
When charting out your marketing plan, you should decide on these three things:
1. Frequency: How often will you post? Twice a day? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month?
One post a day is the recommended frequency on Instagram. Decide on a frequency of your posts and set it in stone. Create images/creatives/posts beforehand to account for the total number of your posts you’d need (based on the frequency set) for the next two weeks. Always, always, plan at least a week in advance.
Pepsi: Pepsi posts very sporadically. It's latest post was on the 27th of November and tenth post (counting from now) was on the 17th of July. Essentially, in the last four months, Pepsi has posted only 10 times, an approximate average of one post every two weeks. This is one of the major reasons why Pepsi's Instagram account is not more popular.
Coca Cola: Coke is relatively more regular. It's latest ten posts were sent out in a span of 18 days, an average of one post every two weeks. If I were on Pepsi's Instagram marketing team, I'd probably sit up and take stock.
2. Days: If you decide to post on Instagram thrice a week, which three days will you post on? Will you post on weekends or only weekdays? Deciding on the days when you will post is important because it will not only instill discipline in your Instagram marketing, it will also help keep your Instagram active.
Pepsi: Pepsi is pretty sporadic as mentioned earlier. However, the few and far between posts that it does tend to do are posted on the weekends as well as weekdays. It's top three best performing posts from among the 10 latest posts were posted on - Saturday, Saturday, Sunday.
Coca Cola: Coke seems to strive for regularity, not so much on experimenting with what days work best. They have sent our photos on practically all days of the week (except Sunday). Their top three best performing posts were scheduled close to the weekend - Friday, Saturday and Thursday.
3. Time: When exactly will you post on Instagram? Timing is crucial. You wouldn’t want to send out a post at 10 am on a Monday morning, when everybody is likely to busy at work or school, would you? It has been widely proved that some time slots tend to do better than others on social media, in terms of the interactions they garner. People are most likely to see your posts at times when they are traveling, having lunch or post dinner.
Pepsi: We took timing in GMT for the last ten posts by Pepsi on Instagram. The best performing time to post for Pepsi seems to be midnight to 2 am GMT.
Coca Cola: Nothing conclusive to report with respect to timing here. Also, most of coke's posts are sent out in the latter half of the day, so it's difficult to judge which times perform best for them. The posts with the highest engagements went out at: 9.18 pm, 2.10 pm and 6.32 pm GMT respectively.
Decoding Factor 2: Kind of content
What kind of Instagram images are working for them and what would work for you
We’ll be doing a post in the near future about the kind of posts you can do on Instagram. Those mentioned below are a small subset. It is very likely that you will get loads of ideas on what to post on Instagram from that blog. If you’d like to know when it goes up, don’t forget to subscribe.
The kind of images you post has a huge impact on the amount of engagement and followers you get. Go through the kind of posts your competitors use, figure out what seems to be working for them, then chart out what type of photos you will post on Instagram.
1. General posts: These include general photographs which do not directly drive any engagement or conversions for the brands:
Pepsi and Coke do not post general photos. Most of their content is branded.
2. Branded content: These are subtly branded photographs intended to drive engagement, increase recall value or to drive a specific brand-related action. Here's an example from Coke's account:
It’s well known that goats will eat almost anything. But they’re pretty particular about their beverages.
A photo posted by Coca-Cola (@cocacola) on Sep 9, 2014 at 10:14am PDT
3. User generated content: It is difficult to come up with good quality images to post on Instagram regularly. User generated content, in terms of images posted by fans or in response to contests you’ve held are good ways to keep your Instagram active and show how much you appreciate your users and followers. Here's an example of user generated Instagram post from Coke's account:
A picture is worth a thousand words. But a picture announcing the newest member of your family calls for just one: Congratulations! (Thanks for the pic, @shai_nuhhh88) #ShareaCoke A photo posted by Coca-Cola (@cocacola) on Aug 8, 2014 at 1:31pm PDT
4. Videos: Videos, if done well, can play a very important part in making an Instagram marketing strategy successful. They don’t even need to be expensively made. It couldd be something cool you made using your own phone. But, as a business, investing money isn a cool 15 sec video every now and then should be on your agenda. Here's something Pepsi posted:
#LetsGetSpooky (made with @phhhoto)
A video posted by pepsi (@pepsi) on Oct 10, 2014 at 8:21am PDT
This is a Coca Cola video:
Celebrating 46,602 days of friendship between Coca-Cola and ice. #UltimateRefreshment #HowDidTheyDoThat
A video posted by Coca-Cola (@cocacola) on Apr 4, 2014 at 9:50am PDT
5. Promotional content: This is blatant advertising. These should be posted few and far between. If your feed is filled with promotional content, no one, besides people of your company, will be interested in following you.
There are quite a few of these that both the brands have done, though Coca Cola tends to be classier.
Decoding Factor 3: Hashtags
Which hashtags do they commonly use and how do they convert
One of the best ways to increase discovery of your Instagram account and photos is to use relevant and potentially viral hashtags. Hashtags essentially become links that go on to display all photos that use the same hashtags. There are several types of hashtags, each with their own pros and cons. We’ll cover them all in an upcoming post. Don’t forget to read about - subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss out.
1. Brand specific hashtags: These are hashtags that are very specific to your brand. They will exist in the Instagram universe if your brand is extremely popular. So, for instance, pepsi and coke are very popular and, therefore, there already exist hashtags about them that their fans use. Hashtags that are already being used by others about your brand are the best hashtags you can use in your posts.
Pepsi: Instagram's hashtag recommendations show that people are using these Pepsi-specific hashtags a lot: #pepsi, #pepsimax, #pepsicola, #pepsicenter, #pepsico. In the posts that I analysed, Pepsi has used none of these.
Coca Cola: Popular coke related hashtags on Instagram include: #cocacola, #cocacolazero, #cocacolalight, #cocacolalife and #cocacolacherry. Coca Cola, too uses none of these.
2. Custom hashtags: These are hashtags you create based on your post or current marketing campaign or just something totally random. Now, these should be used only if you are trying to market something and want to increase recall for it, for instance, a tagline or slogan, or new product.
Pepsi: This Cola brands uses custom hashtags often to market its running campaigns. Two examples include: #RealBigSummer and #BigBlueSeats.
Coca Cola: Coca Cola creates a lot of random hashtags, like these: #NeverLeaveWithoutAStraw, #CokeWonderOfTheWorld. Its popular Open Happiness campaign also has its own hashtag #OpenHappiness that it used quite often on Instagram and Twitter.
3. Common/Popular hashtags: These are hashtags people commonly use. These are good for getting your photos discovered.
Pepsi: From the photos analyzed, Pepsi doesn't seem to use popular hashtags. The only one we could find was #BRB.
Coca Cola: Coke occasionally responds to trends, for instance it posted on World Kindness Day with a post and the #WorldKindnessDay hashtag.
TakeOff - Market On Instagram 10X Better Than Your Competitors
Once you’ve set your instagram strategy based on these three metrics, there’s a tool you can resort to to ensure that your Instagram marketing stays on track.
TakeOff is a smart scheduler for Instagram, wherein it not only helps you schedule posts for Instagram, it does so very smartly. Here’s how:
Timing: TakeOff analyzes your Instagram account, your posts, your followers and creates a dynamic best posting schedule for you. It automatically posts your photos for the best time to post day after day, getting you maximum likes, comments and eyeballs.
Kind of content: Ever run out of content? Wonder what to post next? Take also has a photo search feature, wherein, it suggests free to use photos based on the keywords you search for. Your Instagram timeline will never be inactive.
Hashtags: Which hashtags will suit the photograph you are going to upload? TakeOff analyzes your caption, filters out specific keywords and smartly suggests related hashtags that tend to work on Instagram.
See it in action by using it for your brand's Instagram. Decode your competitors’ strategy and smartly code yours! Start winning on Instagram today. Download TakeOff for your Android or iPhone here: http://www.justunfollow.com/takeoff.
