By Erin Rodrigue

Instagram likes to keep marketers on their toes. Just this past year, we’ve seen a speedy roll out of new features, an expansion into video, and a plethora of new shopping options.

But it’s not only the platform that’s evolving — the audience is too. Now it’s up to marketers to evolve their Instagram strategy to better align with audience preferences, behaviors, and habits in 2022.

Here, we’ll cover five main challenges marketers are facing on Instagram and the best strategies to solve them.

5 Instagram Challenges Marketers Face

1. Knowing which hashtags to use – and how many.

From the platform that gave us #ThrowbackThursday and #WednesdayWisdom, it’s no surprise that hashtags play a huge role on Instagram. But they can also be difficult to crack — how many should you use? Should you stick with the popular hashtags or target more niche ones?

HubSpot and Mention’s 2022 Instagram Engagement Report answers some of these questions.

For one, while it may sound counterintuitive to avoid popular hashtags (like #travel or #photography), it’s better to lean into niche communities. The reason? Even though niche hashtags have fewer posts, they typically have a more dedicated community following them.

In fact, the report found that hashtags targeting specific interests and communities — like geographic locations and TV shows — garnered the most engagement.

When it comes to the number of hashtags you include your post, one thing is clear — the more the better. The report finds that using many hashtags doesn’t seem to harm post performance. But a word of caution here — always keep your hashtags relevant to your niche. Otherwise, you may reach the wrong audience in an effort to increase engagement.

2. Securing budget for Influencer Marketing.

For many marketers, influencer marketing seems out-of-reach — after all, don’t you have to spend big bucks to partner with mega influencers? Think again.

While it seems like a best practice to partner with influencers with tons of followers, HubSpot’s Instagram Engagement Report says your efforts are more worthwhile if you partner with influencers that may have fewer followers but a more engaged community (known as micro influencers). Another study even found that the fewer followers an influencer has, the better their engagement rates tend to be.

Micro influencers provide smaller, highly-engaged audiences without the hefty price tag of a mainstream celebrity — making this type of marketing more accessible to a variety of brands.

With 97% of marketers planning to increase their investment in influencer marketing on Instagram this year, now is a great time to give it a try.

3. Posting at the right times.

Timing is a detail easy to overlook in your marketing strategy. But with social media algorithms favoring recent content, it’s more important than ever to target the right people at the right time.

The HubSpot’s Instagram Engagement Report offers some clear insights on timing your posts right:

• Content posted between 6 …read more

  Source:: HubSpot Blog