Every brand knows they're "supposed" to be on social media. Fewer can tell you why, or even what to ACTUALLY post once the account exists. In that gap is where many Instagram strategies go to die… not from a lack of effort, but a lack of a plan.

The good news: you don't need to reinvent anything. While there are nuances by industry, the fundamentals are the same. If we were starting a brand account from zero tomorrow, here's the exact plan we’d use:

1. Give people a reason to follow

Before you post a single photo, answer this: why would someone follow us if they never planned to buy from us?

If you can't answer that, your content doesn't have a job yet. Every post should do at least one of the following:

• Educate
• Entertain
• Inspire
• Build community

Your answers here aren't just philosophy- they're the building blocks of your content pillars.

2. Create a content plan

Don't reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to post. Choose 3–5 content pillars - recurring topics you can rotate through. This is what keeps your content balanced and consistent instead of reactive and random.

3. Set up your profile to convert

At minimum, it should have:

• A recognizable profile photo
• A bio that clearly states who you help, what you do, and where you're located
• A clear call to action
• Your website and contact information

If someone lands on your profile after seeing one good post, this is what turns curiosity into a follow - or a click.

4. Commit to posting regularly

Say it with me: consistency beats frequency.

Posting twice a week for a year will beat posting every day for two weeks and disappearing- every time. Pick a cadence you can actually sustain, and stick with it.

5. Prioritize discoverable content

Choose formats that keep people watching, like reels and carousels. The longer someone lingers on your post, the more the algorithm treats it as worth showing to others. More watch time equals more reach.

6. Earn attention before you ask for business

Every post has one job before it has any other job: stop the scroll. Some tips:

• Use a hook- written or visual- in the first two seconds
• Create content people want to share and save, not just like
• Show your process, not just the finished product
• Tell stories instead of promoting product

Attention is earned first. The ask comes later.

One of these posts is optimized, the other is not - can you tell which is which?

7. Instagram rewards interaction

The algorithm can tell when you're actually present and engaging.

• Reply to every comment
• Respond to DMs
• Engage with other local businesses and creators
• Leave comments that say something- not just a generic "Love this!

8. Be patient

Instagram rarely rewards a new account right away, and that's normal, not a sign you're doing it wrong. Expect a stretch of experimenting, learning what resonates, and adjusting. That stretch is the strategy working, not the strategy failing.

One last reminder: Instagram isn't a digital flyer. People don't want to be sold to - they want to follow brands that feel relatable and bring them value. Don't create only content that advertises your business. Create content that earns engagement and attention (like the example on the right above 😉). The business part follows.

You may have never encountered the .webp file extension before, but you probably have encountered a website that took too long to load, or loaded in the text first, and the images after a few seconds. This is due to images being one of the 'largest' parts of a website, in terms of file-size, and taking longer to download to your computer for viewing. A few years ago, Google purchased a company who's technology allowed them to develop a more compact file type that supports both lossless (like PNG) and lossy (like JPEG) compression: .wepb

WebP images are smaller than both PNG and JPEG files, while offering no visual quality difference.

One of these images is an optimized .jpg, and one is a .webp. Can you tell which is which?

 

In the above example, the .jpg file, which was optimized with Adobe Photoshop as a JPEG at 30% quality is 85.4 kilobytes, while the .webp file, which was optimized with Google's libwebp at a quality of 50% is 63.3 kilobytes: A savings of 36%. The WebP image is on the left in case you were still wondering (keep your mouse still over the image).

.WebP has been out for a few years now, and as of writing this is supported in all browsers, except for Internet Explorer. While it may not be supported on older versions (and you should avoid using only .webp if legacy support is your goal), it will work on all recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Edge, and their mobile counterparts. You may have encountered .webp images in your everyday browsing and not have known it:

• Facebook started using .webp in 2014 and reported a 25-35% size savings for JPEG images, and 80% for PNG
• Google has been using them since inception, and has a study reporting .webp is "25-34% smaller compared to JPEG file size at equivalent SSIM index"

These size savings result in faster page loads - which - result in a better user experience. If your site contains many images, and you are looking for an easy way to reduce the size of your site's page load, exploring webp may be a good place to start. If your site only contains a few images, and your goal is a faster page load - we would recommend looking at a waterfall chart and identifying the real culprit before converting your images to .webp.

If you are reading this, then you've undoubtedly seen the term 'SSL Certificate' or just 'SSL' mentioned somewhere or other in the past few months, and you might be wondering - what is an SSL Certificate, and should my website or application have one?

SSL Certificate stands for Secure Socket Layer Certificate, which is a file that allows your website or application to create encrypted and secure connections to your users. Websites using SSL can be identified by the prefix 'https' in their URL (the 's' stands for Secure); Your browser will typically display a green lock icon or turn the URL bar green when visiting these sites.

Example of Chrome's address bar with a secure (top), and insecure (bottom) URL

One of the most common ways for hackers to steal information, and marketing companies to track users, is to intercept the data sent when they are browsing the web - this is commonly called 'sniffing'. Sniffing can easily be done on a non-SSL connection with free software - so easily, that airports, coffee shops, any public wifi you use is almost definitely intercepting your traffic to some degree, if only to serve you better advertisements.

SSL negates this vulnerability by creating a secure connection to a website, such that only the website, and your computer can understand the information being sent back and forth. So - do you need a SSL certificate? If your website has any type of form, or deals with any payment transactions, you're going to want an SSL certificate. Even a simple contact form should be secured with SSL to prevent a 3rd party from intervening. If your website doesn't have any of those - there is still a valid reason to have an SSL certificate: Google is using it as a search ranking parameter. This means that sites with an SSL certificate will appear higher in results than sites without one (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html).