Three Ways To Optimise Your Instagram
These days, social media is one of the best, if not THE best, way to promote yourself as a freelancer or business owner and allows your audiences to reach your content. Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook…these platforms allow your audience to know who you are, understand what you are trying to do, and what values you stand for. Social media allows you to showcase the person behind the brand, connect with peers and meet customers.
In this blog, we’re focussing on one of the most popular platforms, Instagram. It’s a popular platform amongst both professional entrepreneurs and general audiences. Many disabled artists or activists also use Instagram to promote their content. To help you get an extra boost on the journey to successful marketing, here are three tips to help you market yourself on Instagram.
1. Optimise your Instagram bio to your advantage
To those who have no clue at all, an Instagram bio is the first thing you will probably see when you click into someone’s account. Right under your account name and profile picture, there are usually a few lines of text that introduce you and your business.
An Instagram bio only encompasses a maximum of 150 characters. When customising your bio, you have to be very concise. Let’s take a look at the profile of Lydia Wilkins, a freelancer who creates content reflecting the needs of the autism community.
In Lydia’s bio, she starts by stating what she does. She is a ‘Freelance journalist’, hosting the ‘Conscious Being Magazine podcast’ and is creating an ‘Autism Friendly Cookbook’.
Lydia’s approach is direct. By letting her audience know what she does and what services she provides, she is creating a clear way for potential clients to communicate with her and what mutually beneficial opportunities she might be open to. She’s also tagged who she is working with, allowing her to showcase her working experience and expertise.
If you want to spice things up a little bit, you can learn from the bio of Jess Valentine, a disabled activist and artist. In Jess’ Instagram bio, after providing a brief introduction of who she is, she proceeds to include a short slogan, ‘learning, sharing, growing. She is telling her audience what she has been doing to add value and similarly encourages her audience to do the same.
These slogans, called a ‘call to action, are added towards the end of your bio to help make it look more dynamic. They usually consist of terms like ‘buy now’ and ‘shop more’ etc., just to get your audience to interact with your content. This way, instead of just being an unreachable digital avatar, you become a real person. You can get more people to support you and, if you are trying to sell products or services, learn more about your business.
A final note, if you have a personal website, brand website or blog, include the link in your bio. Instagram generally allows users to put only one clickable link onto their bio. Due to this limitation, many people choose to use tools like linktree to insert a short link to a page with many different websites attached. Tools like these allow your audience to reach more than one affiliated website and helps boost web traffic.
2. Post daily, or if you cannot, at least consistently.
If you want to gain exposure real fast, do post more and at a consistent pace. By posting more, you can get a higher reach, which results in a high engagement rate. What is reach and engagement rate, you might ask. In short, reach refers to the number of people who get to see your content, and engagement rate means the number of interactions you have received from your audience per content. The former helps you to gain exposure, and the latter is useful for adding community value and consolidating your brand.
According to an analysis done by Laterblog, for accounts under 1k followers, posting 14 times per week delivers the highest reach and engagement rates per post. For accounts with 1k to 250k followers, publishing 14 or 20 times delivers the highest reach, but posting once per week results in the highest engagement.
In short, if you are a freelancer with a small Instagram account trying to gain exposure, posting twice a day is the best option. However, if you do have other responsibilities to take care of, or your working hours cannot be as long due to your needs as a disabled individual, there is no need to be afraid. You can compensate for quantity by consistency.
Posting consistently is extremely important. If you post consistently, it will be easier for the algorithm to calculate your schedule and allow you to increase your reach. Moreover, by using analytical tools such as the Instagram Creator Studio, you can track which time periods your audience prefers to be online. By posting regularly according to your audience’s preference, you can make your posts be seen more easily.
If we look at the account of Dom Thorpe, a fitness trainer who aims to help those with disability and chronic illnesses, we can see how posting close to daily helps boost one’s profile reach. In May 2022, Dom nearly posts every single day. Whether it's videos of his fitness sessions, him doing monologues at the camera, or just general quote posts, he just manages to get content out every single day. Therefore, while the quality of the content matters, the pace and quantity of posting also play a significant role in successful marketing.
The key to being productive and keeping content rolling is to be less of a perfectionist, and not be afraid to speak up. We ought to believe that we all have stories that others will find interesting and points that others will find helpful. Only by not holding yourself back, and fully realise your identity as a disabled freelancer, could you manage to find endless things to post about.
3. Yeah! COLOURS. Designing your post and choosing an appropriate colour scheme.
So… I am pretty sure in each of us there is still a little kid that loves playing around with crayons and making a mess. Well, now is a perfect time to release that inner artistic self and be the graphic designer of your brand. Using free applications such as Canva, you can apply templates and create your graphics. Numerous blogs and videos are already online to teach people how to design their graphics as beginners. So instead, I will focus on the theory behind the use of colours.
Research has shown that colours if used wisely and in correct combinations, can directly communicate the message behind the design and presents what your brand stands for. Different colours stand for different emotions and impulses. For instance, red can make one feel bold and energetic. It serves to trigger impulse buys and symbolises passion. That’s why popular drink companies targeting the youth, such as Coca-Cola, use red to represent their brand. Similarly, white symbolises purity and nobility. That is why Steve Jobs picked white, along with the simplistic design pattern, to brand his well-known tech company, Apple.
Now, however, you cannot make all posts using one colour. It will be extremely weird if all posts are in bright red, or all quotes are in dark blue. After all, we all love a certain degree of variety. That’s where colour schemes come in. There are a few combinations that you can use.
Analogous: which comprises 3 colours side by side next to the colour wheel;
Complementary: essentially colours right opposite each other;
Monochromatic: which refers to one colour, but in many different shades.
If we look at Disability Reframed’s Instagram account, colours are used to make the posts pleasing to the eye. Ashley mainly uses warm and pink colours to fill the palette, with the complementary colour scheme applied to keep the general vibe soft. The warm and tender look suits her branding because she is trying to promote a cause vouching for diversity and inclusion, which tends to be associated with warm and light colour patterns.
At the end of the day, just be yourself.
Although I have provided a wide range of different tips and tricks across the board, the rules are here to serve you, not to constrain you. This is your brand, one that you hope to build to promote your freelance work. So, in the end, as long as your Instagram account shows who you are and what you stand for, nothing can stand in your way from becoming the next well-known influencer.
Want to know more about marketing yourself as a Disabled Freelancer? SIC recently worked with Beesting Digital to create a free guide. Covering topics such as Creating Portfolios, Building Websites, Pitching Your Services and explaining why you should disclose your identity as a disabled person when working as a freelancer.
The freelance world is difficult to navigate but we’re here to help you get started. To kickstart your journey to success, click here to get your free copy.