Combining Creativity and Visibility on Instagram

You’ll be all too familiar with the trope ‘social is the new search’ by now, but have you acted on it yet? A starting point for any marketer is to look to Instagram, which started showing posts within Google search results last year.

While I covered the basics at the time of the launch, it’s important to ensure the way you’re writing aligns with this new world. But — and it’s a big but — it’s critical that you don’t fall into the trap of allowing your brand to lose its essence in the name of a metric.

I always say any business operating on social media must carefully balance the needs of the brand, the audience and the channel; what we want to avoid is leaning so heavily into the third of those that we compromise the first.

There aren’t any real gains of seeing additional people reading your content, if we lose what the brand stands for in the process.

This is particularly true given the pushback against the onslaught of AI, a concept that, while inevitable in its ubiquity, is nonetheless creating a real need for authentic, human-led and trustworthy content. Your brand tone of voice plays a huge role in that, and is not a current with which you want to gamble.

So, how exactly do we achieve this?:

1. Get to GRips with Keywords

It’s crucial you understand the keywords driving your market, and aim to integrate them into your comms. More importantly, you want to understand the keywords your audience is using within Google searches, so your business can be the one to answer them.

This of course includes hashtags, which I cover in my basics blog.

Keyword audits are a great place to start, and something you can explore yourself, or look to your agency to complete.

2. Think Like Your Customer

Don’t assume you know what they’re thinking or asking — find out!

There are myriad tools to help you better understand the queries your customers or potential customers might be searching, but you could also use your own resources: speak to customers, speak to colleagues who deal with your customers, and revisit your marketing strategy to remind yourself of the problems your product or service aims to solve.

Understanding user behaviour unlocks the kind of posts you should be posting, and can help to guide your content calendar.

3. Find a MEthod that WOrks for you

Now you have your keywords and an awareness of the kinds of posts you should be creating, there are two avenues you can take to write your content — in short, starting with the technical, then layering in creativity, or vice versa:

Option 1: Write your post with keywords in mind, aiming to answer a question. Once you feel you’ve captured this, reread and inject brand personality and ethos back in.

Option 2: Take the above, but reverse it — write your post as you normally would, focusing on brand personality, and overlay keywords and a ‘question-answering’ approach after.

When we talk about injecting brand personality, what we really mean is ensuring you retain your tone of voice — be that humorous, punchy, sincere, confident or insight-driven. It could also relate to imbuing a sense of storytelling into your comms, and essentially not allowing the post to get lost in the technical.

4. Consider the Format

Now is the time to relook at how you convey your content to customers: could you make it more appealing or readable by using on alternative style? Think how-tos, quick-fire industry guides, dare I say that 2010s throwback listicles…anything to show that your posts are truly helpful and easy to digest.

5. Review the Result

What we’re aiming for here is a harmonious balance between creativity and visibility, so read through the post.

Then read through it again. And maybe (and hear me out here) read it out loud. This old trick really helps you to understand if you sound human, or if you’re coming across somewhat stilted.

6. Remember the golden rules

And finally, keep the following tips in mind and you won’t go far wrong:

• Place your most important keyword at the beginning of your caption, as the first line of your post effectively becomes the title and description shown within the search result
• The main keywords should also go into the alt text to give it a stronger chance of ranking
• Google rewards content that is clear, concise and easy to digest — keep this front of mind when writing
• Don’t forget the visual (which leads Instagram content, after all). Those assets that generate engagement rank higher, so it pays to ensure your image or video is high-quality, and designed to be compelling

If you’d like to learn more about social media strategy, feel free to reach out to Alex Dixon, senior social media strategy director.

The author: Alex Dixon is a senior social media strategy director at WPR who specialises in using LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X to keep clients ahead of the curve when it comes to social media marketing.