Austin NARI member Cate Black Photography has this useful information to share about using Instagram for your business:

1. Post your IG feed images in three’s.

Projects may vary in style and color palette, so grouping similar photos helps the flow of your profile. Your audience can see 12 images at a time on your feed, so you want each group of 12 to flow – 3 images from left to right, and 4 images down.

Group: 12 images
Micro Groups: 3 images
4 micro groups of 3 images each = a 12 image group

The goal is to create a complete group of 12 images, by creating 4 sets of 3 micro groups that all compliment each other. You can pull similarities with the images to help them flow (ie images are very colorful, similar color palette, have wood detail, large windows, black accents, modern minimalist style, etc.) Feed photos typically need to be limited to professional photos only.

Pro Tip: If you’d like to share content that does not compliment your profile aesthetic, you can post the image and then remove after 48 hours (this allows the image to hit people’s scrolling feed without living on your profile forever).

2. Mirror your feed images on stories.

People hang out two places on Instagram: feed & stories. There are pro’s and con’s to both, but my best recommendation to ensure your audience sees your post, is to use both.Posting to your feed (where your images stay forever), is great because you can curate exactly what your audience sees when they click on your profile. One of the draw backs to feed posts (due to IG algorithms), is that not every follower is going to see every post, and not in moment (and order) you post it.

One of the things I love about stories is that your audience will see exactly what you post, the moment you post it and in chronological order. So try using both! You can mirror the content from your feed right to your stories. If someone misses your feed post, you can try to capture them on stories. Stories is also a good place to post images that are not professionally taken. (ie smartphone photos of ‘before’ shots, construction shots, job sites, behind the scenes, etc.)Remember: story content only stays up for 24 hours, so if you are posting content that you want to live forever, create a ‘highlight’ to capture and preserve that content.

3. Use a highlight album to document & share the progress of your showstopper projects.

Highlights are essentially albums you can save story content to so it can live on your profile forever. In the design + build industry, this is a great place to document construction and design progression. Create a highlight album for each featured project and bring your audience along for the ride as you design/build it. Give the album a title like ‘Tarrytown Remodel’ or ‘Modern Farmhouse’ or ‘Minimalist ADU’.

4. Make sure your IG profile is complete and gives your audience a full scope of who you are:

• Your name
• Your business name
• What you do
• What area you service
• A custom hashtag (if you have one)
• Recognition (Top publications you’ve been featured in or awards you have won)
• Website
• Address
• Call to action (Direct them to your website, landing page, email list etc.)

If you are strategic with your wording & spacing, you can fit quite a bit of information on your profile.

5. Use Linktree to house multiple links within one link on your IG profile.

We only get one link on our profile. You want to make sure you have a strong call to action that directs people to click the link. However, if you have multiple places you’d like to direct people, you can embed one Linktree link on your profile that when clicked, pops up multiple link options they can choose from. This can be used on any of your social media sites.

BONUS TIP: Use Later For Instagram to batch create your IG posts one week or month at a time. (Thank you Click & Co for referring me to this awesome tool I’m able to share!) I like to schedule a repeating time block for IG content creation – I like to create a week at a time so I can integrate reposts and share content my clients have tagged me in throughout the month and brag on their behalf. (Who doesn’t love that?)