How To Develop An Instagram Brand That Sticks

I guess I’ll start off with the question, who are you and why should we care?

Building a brand has become easy post-internet. Back in the days when your community was the neighborhood you lived in, your reach was how far you could walk. Now building a community is less reliant on geography.

Community is the life-blood of a brand. The people who follow and appreciate the same values as you have the power to launch and derail your brand with impunity.

How can you develop trust, loyalty, and support from your community?

By being consistent.

The world moves fast but moves even faster online. With so many brands living on the internet, it can be tough staying top of mind in your space.

What’s the easiest way to do it?

1. Set brand guidelines

You may not realize it, but every time a person encounters your brand, he or she builds a mental picture of who you are. Over time, this perception becomes reality, and you will be known for the expression of your brand.

When your brand has a consistent look, you give the audience an opportunity to know what to expect. It can also help them recognize your brand faster, improving recall.

Learn more: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Memorable Brand Identity

Establishing a style guide, which is essentially a set of rules that define how your brand looks and acts, is the first step in developing consistency.

Pro tip: Select 3–5 hashtags for your Instagram posts helps maintain brand consistency since users can easily find all the photos with that hashtag related to your brand.

2. Repurpose content

Repurposing content helps you get more mileage out of every piece you create. Here are three ways to repurpose past content and make it more valuable:

• Reshare TikTok videos to Instagram Reels
• Turn blog posts into Instagram carousels
• Reshare Tweets through Instagram Stories

With so much content to create, it’s easy to get off track and lose sight of your overall brand message. It’s important to think about how your various pieces of content fit together into one cohesive whole.

3. Define brand keywords

Branded keywords are the words and terms that people associate with your brand.

When someone is looking for a solution to a problem, they tend to start their search through questions and phrases.

For example, if someone is looking for a software tool to help them with their content marketing strategy, they might search for “sales tools”.

In general, these kinds of searches happen at the top of the funnel — when users are looking for information but aren’t quite ready to buy.

If you are all about “sales tools”, then you want your brand connected to that word or phrase. To help Instagram recognize the connection, make content around these topics.

4. Be Yourself

We live in a world where even the pizza delivery gal can have a massive following on social media. Every second of every day, new content is being uploaded onto websites for everyone to see. Some of it is created for entertainment and other times it is educational.

Do you know what’s at the bottom of that barrel?

It’s people that try to take on a personality that isn’t their own. Many big brands try to be their customers and it usually leads to disaster when they show their “true colors.” Your audience wants to connect with an authentic you instead of a robotic brand.

“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” — Oscar Wilde

At the end of the day, it’s really about developing a consistent persona. Don’t take for granted what your community gives you. Show your gratitude by being consistent and building loyalty through, well…consistency.

Are you struggling to grow your brand online? Download our Instagram Audit for Personal Brands. It guides you through the steps you need to get your account in shape so that you set off your Instagram marketing journey with the right foundation in place.