5 things to avoid when creating your Instagram account

5 things to avoid when creating your Instagram account

Since its inception, OVB has helped over 1000 Instagram accounts grow around the world. We've boosted accounts in various industries like tattoo artists, architects, doctors, restaurants, ... and from our experience we've identified 5 things to avoid when creating your Instagram account.

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Private profile

It's true, sometimes we are approached by clients who want to develop their Instagram account, but it is... PRIVATE!

What does this mean? It means that an external user does not have access to the published content: concretely, your future followers, the people you want to target, will not be able to see your account, discover your products or your services... without subscribing. What I'm about to say here may be divisive, but in general Instagram users don't like to take initiative, they won't take the action of subscribing and therefore they will ignore such a profile. Also, the content will not be displayed on the "search" tab, which reduces the reach of the posts.

Be sure to set your profile as PUBLIC. This will give people who aren't following you yet a chance to read your content and may encourage them to follow you.

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The untapped potential of biography

The BIO (or BIOGRAPHY) section allows you to describe in a few words your Instagram profile, who you are, your business, and your geographical area.

This is one of the most important elements for me!

Indeed, when a visitor discovers your profile, the bio is one of the first things they will see (along with the account name and your profile picture). It is imperative that this bio represents you as well as possible in order to convince the visitor to stay on your page and follow to your account.

Many people don't know how to use this space and what to put. It is important to ask the right questions, to collect the right information and to explore it from all angles. I suggest you use a simple method: 3QOCP

3QO.... what? Let me explain. 

The 3QOCP (or QQOCP) in business is a simple and effective method to implement to analyze contextually specific situations. It helps you to analyze all aspects of a problem through open questions: Who? Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

You don't have to use or highlight all of her questions, but the more you answer her questions in your bio, the more accurate you will be in your description.

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The most important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of your future client. He discovers you, and he must understand in 5 seconds who you are and what you do on Instagram. 

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Note: when you create a profile on Instagram, also remember to choose its category. Thanks to this, the person viewing your profile will immediately know who you are, and what you do. This is perfect for creating a professional profile.

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IMPORTANT PS: I see too many Instagram accounts without a link to their site, or with a link that is misfilled and therefore impossible to click on. Think about it! Instagram is a great gateway to attract qualified traffic to your website. For me, it's more than 300 clicks from my Instagram account to the OVB agency website every month! This is not negligible. 

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Neglecting the visual quality of your articles 

Now that we have seen the biography, let's talk about the contents.

Whether it's a graphic, a photo or a video, it must be of the best possible quality. It sounds silly when you say it like that ... but keep in mind that people browsing Instagram have seen almost everything. It's imperative to stand out to draw attention to your post.

Only once you have captured the attention of the Instagram user, will they look at the description of your post and read its content.

If you need inspiration on the visual aspect of your future content, I recommend you look at what your best competitors are doing (this is not an absolute truth, but very often the content is visually top notch). Get inspired on Pinterest too! It's a great site to find interesting and quality inspirations. Finally, you can also use the "search" function on Instagram, and identify with your expert eye the top content in your industry.

Ok I have the inspiration but I am not a graphic designer! No problemo !

Use the Canva website. It's a FREE design tool whose mission is to allow anyone to design what they want and post wherever they want. Little plus, Canva offers different formats for Instagram (no need to worry about the size of your visuals).

P.S: Instagram offers more and more filters and tools to improve the visual aspect of your content. explore this track and share your best creations on Instagram directly or here: mickael@agence-ovb.fr

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Duplicate your content

We know, duplicate is easy. The problem is that if your followers follow you on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for example, and you publish the same content, they may be annoyed and not interested in repeated publications. It's best to prepare different visuals and text for the different networks.

We know this can mean extra work, but followers won't be bored and will be more likely to watch you on different social networks.

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Share existing content

Reposting content from other accounts... on your own Instagram account is a bad idea. Since the Instagram update of April 2022, the social network strongly favors original content over re-shared content.

Adam Mosseri, the boss of Instagram, announced in a video a major change regarding the ranking of posts:" if you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you repost something you found from someone else. We're going to do more to try to value original content more, especially over reposted content."

If Adam says so ... then we recommend that you create your own content. Know that authenticity comes first on this network. You are not Steven Spielberg, (and neither are we) we know it, you know it, and so does your community. Believe me, with a little goodwill, a dose of imagination and a lot of authenticity, it is quite possible to create engaging content. You are your Instagram account, whether it represents you directly or your business: be yourself, be authentic!

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