Marketing

How to Repurpose Blog Content for Instagram Marketing

December 16, 2019
By Guest

As one of the fastest-growing social media networks with the most engaged user base, Instagram has become a powerful marketing tool for both B2C and B2B companies. Over 25 million companies and 200 million Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily. That’s why Instagram marketing is a key digital strategy component for many industries.

Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to cut through the Instagram content noise and reach your target audience. If you want to hook your potential customers and promote your product or service, it’s important to share interesting, useful, and eye-catching content.

When you sell services rather than products, it can be particularly daunting to come up with visual content ideas. What’s the solution? Repurpose blog content for Instagram marketing.

Not only does it maximize time and effort, but it also helps to reach and engage new audience members on other platforms. Here are the best proven ways to use blog content on Instagram.

9 ways to repurpose blog content for Instagram marketing

Promote a Blog Post on Instagram

The days of relying on blogs to share our thoughts are far behind us. Today, most people express their opinions and beliefs on social media, which means it’s harder to grow your blog audience unless you promote it.

If you use Instagram for business, you can kill two birds with one stone: announce your blog post on the platform to republish your existing content, and drive website traffic and attract new blog readers. Check out how HerBakingLab Blog did it:

Instagram post by HerBakingLab

The Instagram caption is limited to 2,200 characters, so you can’t share more than a teaser of your blog copy – and users don’t come to Instagram to read. It’s a great idea to post an eye-catching visual, write a short caption including direction to the link in your bio, and provide that link to drive traffic to your latest post.

Use Quotes from Success Stories

The idea of posting quotes on social media platforms isn’t new. If you want to spark interest in your evergreen content, choose a quote and create a simple graphic for Instagram to grab the attention of your followers.

Let’s take Sellfy, for example. After publishing Justine Blanchin’s success story on the blog, the company transformed it into an Instagram post. They put an enticing quote on the image, tagged the featured person, and summed up the story, inviting users to read the full interview on the blog:

Instagram post by Sellfy

When you share success stories on your blog, you provide readers with customer testimonials that encourage them to give your product or service a try. To turn your Instagram followers into customers, you can share quote images to hook your potential customers. You can use royalty-free stock photos, add an overlay, and add your quote to create custom images that suit your Instagram feed.

Testimonials are vital content for B2B companies! Learn more: How to Generate B2B Leads with Instagram Marketing.

Make the Most out of Data Visualization

It’s no secret that people love visuals. According to Forbes, 65% of people are visual learners, so it’s easier for us to perceive visual information. When it comes to Instagram marketing, sharing compelling visual content is a must.

If you publish handy infographics to communicate complex data on your blog, that’s great. If you resize your infographics to fit a picture on Instagram, that’s even better. Here’s how it can look:

Instagram post by ML India

When you combine data and statistics into an easily understood image, it delivers wonderful results as Instagrammers understand in a quick glance whether they are interested in reading the full blog post. Plus, it’s another Instagram post idea that your audience will love.

Share Insights via Instagram Graphics

Most people start reading business blog content when they are looking for an actionable solution to a problem. Here’s the deal: blogs that aim at solving problems and answering questions are popular among readers; no one is interested in mediocre content.

When it comes to repurposing blog content for Instagram, it’s important to prove your community that you have valuable insights, tips, and tricks. The best way to do it is to use Instagram graphics to share insights. A good example of this strategy is how Hubspot highlights key takeaways from their blog posts on Instagram:

Instagram post by Hubspot

When you share insights on Instagram, you get an opportunity to grab the audience’s attention and prove your niche expertise. It helps your brand stand out from the crowd on the platform, attracts new followers, and gives them a solid reason to trust your company.

Use Your Research to Create a Collection of Posts

To keep your audience engaged and involved in the communication, you should be publishing at least three Instagram posts a week. For smaller businesses with limited resources, it can be daunting to come up with that much unique content. Luckily, you can divide your existing blog content into several Instagram posts.

To successfully produce interesting posts that look cohesive in your feed, you need to create a collection of posts. Check out how SocialPilot repurposed its list of social media statistics to create this collection:

screenshot showing 6 instagram posts by social pilot

Splitting one image into several Instagram posts is a great way to publish more on your profile without much additional time and effort on content creation. The secret is to stay creative. Repurpose your research in a series where each post has its purpose, and all of them also work together to form one cohesive story.

Turn Interviews Into Customer Testimonials

Living in the digital era, 87% of customers do online research before making a purchase decision. With so many sponsored posts and ads, it’s no wonder modern customers seek social proof. When done right, Instagram marketing can increase customer retention which means growing your business faster.

Since most of us are interested in like-minded people, interviews make for strong content. If you publish interviews on your blog, they can easily lend to customer testimonials like this:

Instagram post by Keap

The company creates a short video about the ‘hero’, who shares his success story with viewers. Since 92% of mobile users watch videos without sound, the company adds captions to make it easier for viewers to understand the brand message. Not only does Keap use the power of storytelling to hook the attention of followers, but the company also provides followers with social proof to increase brand loyalty and trust.

Link Back to the Blog Post from Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories have rapidly gained in popularity according to Business Instagram:

    • 500 million users create or watch this short-lived content daily
    • One third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses
    • 96% of marketers get positive results with Instagram Stories ads.

Simply put, this ephemeral content gives brands a new opportunity to reach their potential customers and interact with them.

If you use Stories in your Instagram marketing, Tailwind is a perfect example of how to successfully use Instagram Stories to repurpose blog content. With almost 44k followers on Instagram, Tailwind has access to the clickable Instagram Stories feature that allows the company to add a link to any website page:

Instagram post by Tailwind

Once the company publishes a blog post on their website, it creates a series of Instagram Stories to generate buzz around the post. They include a clickable link that gives interested followers an opportunity to read the full post without leaving the app. When you publish short-lived content, it’s easy to repurpose blog content for Instagram with wonderful results.

Add the Best Blog Posts to Instagram Stories Highlights

Short-lived content is good, but making your best Instagram Stories permanent is even better. When Instagram announced Instagram Stories Highlights, it gave users an opportunity to curate collections of their best Instagram Stories content.

Since these albums appear right below the bio section, it’s easily discoverable and therefore it helps to improve customer experience. If you repurpose blog content for Instagram Stories and you want to reach an even wider audience, add your best blog posts to Instagram Stories Highlights.

Take a look at Sprout Social. The company has a separate Highlights album where it keeps the best blog posts in one place:

Instagram post by Sprout Social

The company creates eye-catching visuals that not only show the blog category and blog title, but also include their branding and a clickable link that redirects followers to the website.

Create Long-Form Videos for IGTV

If your target audience spends a lot of time on Instagram, chances are your customers prefer content they don’t have to read. That’s why it’s important to create various visual content types – including images, videos, and audio.

Once you have a well-researched blog post, you can create a series of short videos for Instagram Stories, or one long-form video for IGTV. Check out how Wordstream did it:

Instagram post by Wordstream

Modern users love video content, and IGTV allows you to upload a longer video that tells viewers everything about your blog post, and includes a clickable link to your blog.

For a variety of reasons, repurposing blog content for Instagram helps to grow your business. No matter what blog content type you publish on your site, there are many ways to make the most out of it, reduce content marketing costs, and to never run out of Instagram post ideas.

Now that you know how to repurpose blog content for Instagram, it’s time to work on your own Instagram marketing strategy.

Hugh Beaulac

Hugh Beaulac is a content strategist behind MC2 website who also contributes to marketing blogs from time to time. With over 6 years of digital marketing, Hugh also helps SMBs grow online. Follow him on Twitter to read his latest articles.