Ever wondered what the four most effective types of Instagram content are? **Spoiler alert** Not everything has to be a sales push. When it comes to impactful and engaging IG content, brands should focus on four pillars: education, inspiration, entertainment, and conversion. By balancing your Instagram content amongst these four areas, you’ll cultivate informed, engaged, and loyal customers.
That’s the beauty of social media after all, isn’t it? Brands have the ability to really interact with consumers rather than simply “spray and pray” by inserting an ad into a magazine or hoping for the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing. With social media platforms like Instagram, brands can curate content for specific audiences, directly engage with individuals, collaborate with influencers and other brands, and learn from their app analytics. It’s a continuous process but one that can help develop lasting, meaningful consumer-brand relationships.
So let’s dive into these primary four content pillars. What are they? How do they function? And What are some examples?
The 4 Primary Content Pillars
1. Educational Content
Educational content teaches or imparts new and exciting information on the reader/viewer. This education can be about your brand’s origin story, a product/service itself, the industry, expert testimonials and personal reviews, the problem your brand strives to solve, or the impact your company has had. The purpose of producing educational content is to foster trust and build relationships. Ask yourself, “What value are we offering our followers?” Educational content includes:
Tutorials and guides
Interactive games or simulations
Live streams and webinars
Articles and blog posts
Infographics and visual aids
2. Inspirational Content
Inspirational content comes in two forms. The first directly relates to your products and services via before-and-after pictures, testimonials, and personal stories. The second kind of inspirational content centers around messages that your brand wants to associate itself with. Inspirational content includes:
Quotes and affirmations
Moving or empowering stories
Storytelling visuals
Case studies and testimonials
3. Entertaining Content
Entertaining content isn’t all fluffy and pointless. Not only does it grab people’s attention, make them laugh, and get them to follow you, but it also cultivates a sense of relatability and connection. This helps build positive relationships, increase searchability, and boost media shares and comments. Examples of entertaining content include:
Memes and GIFs
Social media trends and challenges
Quotes, anecdotes, and inside jokes
Content related to current events and pop culture
Contests and giveaways
Special events
4. Conversion Content
Conversion content literally calls upon viewers to complete a specific CTA (call-to-action). This is different from a sales pitch in that a sale is not always the desired action. Conversion content is the place to illustrate what differentiates you from your competitors—and why customers should go to you. Examples of CTAs include:
“Subscribe to our email newsletter.”
“Tag a friend for a chance to enter our giveaway.”
“Enter code SALE for half off your final purchase.”
We recommend the standard breakdown of splitting up your content: 10% entertainment, 10% inspiration, 40% education, and 40% brand-specific content. However, this isn’t ‘set in stone,’ and your brand’s percentages might differ based on your industry, audience, and goals.
How The Content Calendar Club Can Help
Coming up with content across all four categories can be overwhelming, especially if you’re running a small or brand new business. That’s why we created the Content Calendar Club—an exclusive subscription-based group where you’ll receive our favorite trends along with caption prompts, story ideas, and carousel direction delivered bi-weekly.
The Content Calendar Club is the social media support of your dreams. It’s exactly what you need to design a strategic, consistent posting plan for your brand.
There is SO MUCH CONTENT on social media that it can be hard to devise content that actually stands out. Coupled with an ever-changing algorithm, it can feel like you’re always playing catch-up when it comes to IG best practices. Should I post long captions or short ones? Are still images or videos preferred? What’s more important - follower count or engagement rate? The landscape keeps shifting. What’s a brand supposed to do?!
The answer, my friends, is the Content Calendar Club. CCC provides you with:
Carousel, reel, post, story, and caption prompts for one post every single day laid out in a PDF content calendar
The choice between service OR product focused business models (because a business coach can’t be making the same content as a florist)
Insight on how to repurpose your content on multiple platforms
A private support group on Facebook for extra access to ask questions and get feedback
Unlimited access to our shop of eBooks, guides, and templates
Exclusive access to book 1:1 services with Amandina at 10% off
Content Calendar Club membership is only $47 a month (with the ability to cancel membership at any time). You’d best believe this is a one-of-its-kind deal.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or social media manager, the Content Calendar Club will ensure you’re never stuck feeling ‘behind the curve’ again.
It’s finally time to stop feeling intimidated by social media marketing.
Totally agree on the power of video, carousels, and user-generated content! To make these types of posts even more engaging, I’d recommend using https://www.movavi.com/support/how-to/how-to-add-picture-to-video.html. It’s perfect for adding dynamic graphics, text, and effects to your videos and photos. It’s super intuitive, so you can enhance your visual marketing strategy quickly and create content that really stands out on Instagram!