7 Deadly Sins That Are Damaging Your Instagram Profile
If you’re new to using social media for a business and particularly the dark art of Instagram, here are seven things you might be doing that are killing your success.
A Bad Profile
Make sure you use a good quality, clear image of you (preferably in your scrubs/work uniform that show you’re medical!) for your image.
Your Username: The name of your business as accurately as it can be (it’s not always easy if someone else has already taken it) but try not to confuse it too much.
Name: This is the searchable bit so ideally you want to describe your business here rather than repeat your business name. But you could put your own name here along with what you do. If you don’t put your name here, make sure you do in your bio.
Bio: You can use this section to talk more about the treatments you offer, state your qualification or tell people why they should choose you! You should also put in a call-to-action such as ‘book me’ or ‘book now’ just above the your booking link which will appear below the bio section. Check out what we do on Glowday’s consumer IG account.
2. No Consistency
Post every day and try to do early morning or in the evening when your audience is more likely to be on social media. Not posting every day isn’t a disaster, you will still steadily grow your followers and audience, it will just take longer. If you post something and your average reach is 50 people, times that by 7 days that’s 350 people who will see your content in a week. Three times is just 150 pairs of eyes. Sure there will be cross-over but overall the more you post, the more people you’ll reach, the more engagement you’ll get, the more followers you’ll welcome.
3. Lack Of Engagement
Follow people and like their posts, comment on them and interact - don’t post and ghost. Your posts will work harder if you spend 30 minutes before you post engaging with other accounts and 30 minutes after. IG is clever, it rewards people for effort. We don’t know how, it just does!
4. Not Showing Your Face
People buy into people, people don’t buy into business. You need to appear in your content, you need your followers to know you. It doesn’t always have to be video, or stories, you can use static images too. But you have to show up!
5. Messy Branding
Don’t obsesses too much about this but having an identity does elevate your profile, particularly when you’re trying to attract new patients. This isn’t saying you should heavily curate your feed and get tied up in knots with a format - and certainly don’t be too abstract and ‘arty farty’ so that viewers have no idea what you do and stand for when they hit your profile. But do consider your feed as shop window, what does it look like when new people land on it? Do your brand colours reflect your personality? Are you using consistent fonts and backgrounds in your grid posts so there is a bit of identity and consistency? Don’t overthink it and let the content do the talking, not the branding - but consider your feed from the eyes of a new person who lands on it. Does it reflect you? Does it tell people what you do at a glance? Does it make people want to click and poke around?
6. Not Using Highlights
Use your highlights to tell everyone what they need to know about your business. Prices, treatments, location, clinic photos, before and afters. If it’s not easy to find, they’ll just go somewhere else! Make it obvious.
7. Repelling Reels
Just do them. They are the content that Instagram wants most, the content it prioritises, and that content that it wants you to do. Teach yourself how to do them (loads of videos on YouTube can show you how) and they don’t have to always feature you and they certainly don’t have to always be a pointy finger and text bubbles. Reels are simply edited videos - it is just video cut up, that’s all! So ANY video content can be used to make a reel!
