If you want to take your Instagram marketing to a whole new level or you might see that something is not working the way it should and you’re not getting results…
…it might be worth it to perform an Instagram audit. Doing an Instagram audit from time to time is going to give you a look at what works and what doesn’t work so that you get real results.
And that is why in this article, I am going to reveal to you what you need to do to perform an Instagram audit that will work.
So, are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in…
Audit Your Instagram Profile
The first thing that you need to audit is your profile. If you’re not getting engagement or people don’t click the link in your bio, then chances are that there is something wrong with it.
So, what are some of the things that you are going to do? First of all, you need to take a look at your profile picture.
Is it professional? Does it clearly show who you are so that people can notice it in a microsecond?
This is an extremely important step as it is going to have a strong impact on how much attention your content is going to get and how many people will follow you.
Your profile picture is a big part of the first impression that you make and if it fails to be good then it is going to be a struggle.
The second thing that you need to pay a big attention to on your profile is your username and your headline. Some Instagram gurus are going to tell you that you should include a keyword in your username (I did as well), however, after years of experience I changed my mind.
Your username should be just branded. That means it should be, in an ideal case, nothing but your or your brand’s name. If that’s not possible because the name is taken, use the simplest and easy-to-remember alternative.
For example, I picked an alternative @filipkonecny06. That is simply because my normal name is taken.
The place where you want to put the keyword for SEO reasons is the headline. That way you are going to make yourself easily searchable for new people by typing into the search a certain keyword while also being searchable for your current followers.
Another thing on your profile that you want to carefully audit is your Instagram bio. Your bio should do 3 main things. In the first line, you should clearly say what you do and have some form of authority…
In the second line, you should make a promise to those who will decide to follow you…
In the last line, you should have a call to action so that people click the link in your bio and enter your sales process.
Doing an Instagram audit for this as well is extremely important as it is going to have a giant impact on how many people who visit your profile you’re going to convert into followers.
The last thing you need to do an Instagram audit for on your profile are highlights. Highlights can be a great tool when it comes to selling your products and services and also converting profile visitors into followers.
You should have at least 2 types of highlights on your profile:
- Authority and Relatiblity Highlights
- Promotional Highlights
A relatability highlight is an ABOUT highlight that reveals your background and tells your story and an authority highlight can be for example a highlight showing your achievements. When these highlights are in place, people who see them are way more likely going to follow you and they are also way more likely going to trust what you have to say.
The second type of highlights are promotional highlights. This is basically going to be a sales message split into many stories that are going to be highlighted with a link sticker at the end asking them to enter your sales process.
These highlights are going to sell your products and services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
And they are going to do it automatically. So, performing an Instagram audit on that is more than worth it as well.
Audit Your Instagram Content
There is no question that your content is 80% of your success on Instagram. If your content is bad, there is nothing that’s going to help you.
And that’s why it is so important to perform an Instagram audit for it.
1. Audit The Content Formats
One of the first things that you want to look at is what content format is performing the best for you and then start to utilize it more. If, for example, your audience loves reels but you mainly focus on sharing carousels, then it is definitely time to change that.
Now, if your audience hates reels and you are sharing them, then it is time to figure out what other content format they might like so that your content performs, reaches people, and gets you new followers and customers.
So, always pick the right content format and utilize it.
In case you’re wondering, you can find most of the data in normal Instagram insights, however, if you want, you can use a tool like Flick for advanced analysis.
But that is just the beginning…
2. Content Types
This is even more important than content formats. Besides just the right content formats, you also need to audit your content for content types. That means, for example, quizzes, educational carousels, fake-tweet carousels, explanation reels, trend-based reels, etc.
This is going to be really important to do across all content formats and see what performs the best.
Go through the statistics of a past few months and decide what content type is performing the best on your profile and what your audience likes the most.
Then terminate the other types and start focusing mainly on the best one to milk as many results out of it as possible.
3. Audit The Captions
Your post captions are a really big part of your Instagram content and it is going to matter a lot whether the captions are written the right way or not.
That’s why you want to get an idea of what writing style performs the best by looking at all of the past posts that you shared and see the results the captions generated.
If a lot of people commented under the post the phrase you asked them to comment in the caption or it is a single-image post and people engaged with it + took action, these are all good signs.
Use the best style in your future content so that it performs.
Audit Your Instagram Engagement
This is the last part of your Instagram audit and it is really important that you do it carefully…
If your Instagram engagement is low, it is going to be caused just by 2 factors. The first one is that your content is not great. That is not likely going to be the case if you performed the Instagram audit right.
The second one is that your engagement strategy is not great.
That is why you want to do an Instagram audit for it as well.
When it comes to engagement, you want to engage with 3 types of audiences. The first type of audience is the cold audience.
These are people who don’t know you at all.
The second type of audience is the warm audience. These are people who follow you and know you.
The last type of audience is the hot audience. These are your biggest supporters, customers, and leads.
You want to engage with all of these 3 types of audiences every day. Reply to comments, comment on posts of leading industry accounts, comment on posts of your followers, and on and on.
It really matters and it is crucial that you do an Instagram audit for this as well.
Filip Konecny 