If you run an equestrian business or have a horse farm that you want to show off to the world, Instagram is a great place to start. With millions of animal accounts on Instagram, it’s a wonderful way to find new fans for your horses and invite people to your barn life online.
In this article, we go through 5 steps of creating a branded Instagram profile for your horse barn.
Why do you need a branded profile?
Because a branded profile gives your business a unique character and personality. With a compelling brand identity, you can attract far more interested and targeted traffic to your horse barn business, and gain loyal customers.
It starts by creating a business profile on the platform instead of a personal one.
1. Start with a professional Instagram business account
Instagram gives you two kinds of profile options: personal and professional.
Source: Instagram
The professional business profile on Instagram comes with unmatched benefits that are not present with a personal account. These include:
- More call-to-action buttons
- More fields for contact information
- Access to analytics
- Ability to boost posts
- Shoppable posts
- Ability to add links to Stories
- Ability to schedule posts
- And more.
To set up a professional profile, you can either create a new business account on Instagram or switch to a professional profile by accessing Settings from your existing profile. Due to limited real estate on this page, we cannot go into details of how to set up the profile itself. So here is Instagram itself helping you make the switch.
Once you make the switch (or create a brand-new profile), make sure to add all the relevant details you can. Use your business logo as your profile picture, specify your business category (entrepreneur, internet company, product, etc.), add your contact information, give your website address, add your location, and include a short bio.
Adding these details gives your audience a snapview of your business. Who you are, what you do, and how to get in touch with you. If you ace this step, your Instagram profile has the chance to become a proper lead generation tool for you.
2. Brand your content
Now that you have created your business profile, it’s time to start creating branded content that you can post.
Branded content refers to the presentation of content in such a way that viewers can immediately see it as yours. It includes using your brand colors and fonts and general style over and over in your content so people can start seeing the connection. By being on brand and following the brand theme you can gain high recall for your logo design, brand colors, brand fonts, and other visuals.
It also allows your brand to display its unique character and voice.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn5nGDNrCtS/
Let’s see how it’s done.
- Use Logo Design tool to create a professional-looking barn logo with horse iconography. Symbols such as galloping horse or a horse in a shield icon will give your brand a relevant visual environment.
- Make branded templates for your feed posts such as pictures of horses, quote posts, and product photos.
- Add your logo to your Stories so when people find you through Explore, they can spot you as a business and may decide to engage with you further.
- Discover your brand voice and make sure all your content aligns with that. Figure out if your brand is more about horse sports, love for nature, outdoors space, barn life, or something else.
- Keep the content engaging and fresh. Post content that people can benefit from and feel inspired to share with others. If your content is engaging or entertaining or has ecommerce value, it will be more popular with the audience.
While branding your content is critical, it’s even more important to first make sure your content is of the highest quality — which takes us to our next step.
3. Take clear, sharp, and high-quality photographs
Most of what you post on Instagram will be visual — photos, Stories, Reels, and such.
Source: Instagram
So, when you are taking photographs or creating graphics for your page, make sure they are of high quality. For pictures, avoid the zoom feature as it can deliver blurry results. Also, avoid stock photos as much as you can. Instead take original photos of your barn, your horses, and the things you want to feature on your barn account.
When you do need to use a stock photo, customize it. Add a text overlay, turn it into a graphic, overlay product images, or crop them to turn into a tiled graphic to make it more branded.
An additional tip: create a beautiful, thematic Instagram grid feed. When someone checks out your profile for the first time, they’ll see the most recent 6-9 photos. So, when you post them, think of how all of them will look together on the grid at a glance (as we’ve shown in the image above).
4. Show them the #barnlife!
Use your Instagram account to give your customers a peek into horse farm life. It’s still a thing where not many people know about the daily happenings of the lifestyle. Your unique take on your horse barn or what you are doing with it, and the services or products you offer, can introduce more people to this lifestyle, and make them curious to try it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Co-VSlqMVnQ/
Things you can do include:
- Giving a tour of your horse barn
- Introducing the horse(s)
- Recording a Reel where you saddle up a horse
- A cool video of your horse galloping around the land
- A photo dump (or video) of ‘A Day In the Life of a Horse Barn Owner/Equestrian’
- A funny farm story
- And more
You can then engage your customers further by asking them questions or posting polls.
5. Plan and schedule your posts
To keep your customers and followers coming back for more, you have to remain consistent with your horse barn account. Frequent delays are as bad for Instagram engagement as bad quality visuals.
Ensure you follow a regular posting schedule by using tools that allow you to plan your content days in advance. SocialBee and Later are some of these tools. Instagram has released its own in-app scheduler for basic scheduling. Using these, you not only schedule content in advance but also manage your other social media all from the same place.
By following a scheduled content calendar, you will be able to visualize how your content strategy looks and where changes might be needed. It also frees you up from the admin side of handling your Instagram, and allows you to think of creative ways to present your horse barn business to the world.
Conclusion
Instagram is a great place to start and grow your business. To make the most use of it, share only the most high-quality pictures from your account, use your horse barn logo as your profile picture, and don’t forget to leave your website address in your bio on the profile. In short, make it easy for people to know what you do and how to reach you for all you have to offer.
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