Have your team takeover the company Instagram account! [FREE Checklist included] — STOICA

It’s time to bring your team into the spotlight and involve them in creating fun, original, informative content for your company, no matter if you are B2B or B2C. The truth is that any company is made of its people and the value each of them brings to the table. So why not make them part of your communication?

One fun way to involve your team is letting them run your Instagram account for a few days!

Here’s why we think you should do it:

• Your company restates its trust in its employees
• Your audience and potential clients get to see your amazing colleagues they might be working with / buying from
• You become more approachable
• Your brand story gets to be told through people who have chosen to work within your company, thus becoming more trustworthy
• You create real value, educate your audience or just show that you can have some fun behind the scenes
• You increase your brand awareness and grow your community
• The content you are creating gets a fresh vibe, as each of your colleagues will leave their personal mark

If you already have an Instagram account, you can run “takeover” campaigns involving not only influencers, but also your first brand ambassadors: your colleagues! You might have your doubts, especially if you are working with a tech team, but with some short, crisp clear guidelines, you can get them creating content!

Here’s what you should take into account, as a marketing representative or even business owner if you plan to go for this approach in brand story sharing.

Set your own strategy

Before going to your team or colleagues and convince them about the power of such a campaign, it is vital to make things clear for yourself. Prepare your explanation, arguments and words! Don’t use the regular marketing terms you’d use with a fellow marketer, as your goal is to get people on board and not confused.

Questions to help you get going:

• Why is this important for your specific company?
• How often are you going to hand over the Instagram account?
• Are you running a one time campaign or are you considering something on the long term?
• How is this aligned to your bigger communication strategy?
• Which departments should you start with? 
• What would your audience appreciate (seeing behind the scenes, learning something new, fun content etc)?
• How do you measure results? 
• What are the emotional and rational arguments that could convince your team?

Everybody is in the same boat

Your team can bring a lot of value, if they understand your goal, their impact and the company’s messaging and target audiences. Before diving in, take time to shortly remind them about all these, about your company’s mission and purpose. If you have one, share the branding book or the main takeaways from it, such as:

• These are the type of pictures we prefer (some companies clearly mention they only use photos featuring people)

• This is the font and main colors we use
• This is our value proposition and our mission
• Our logo has to / doesn’t have to be featured on all pictures
• We don’t accept this type of content

Also, keep in mind that not everyone has the skills for this, so it’s better to calm down concerns or even accept a No from those who don’t feel comfortable and wouldn’t feel at ease doing this. 

Big Clear expectations

To have things going smoothly, you must be clear about what you are expecting from your colleagues:

• How often do you want them to post?
• Do they have the account for one day / one week / one month?
• What should they talk about, what are a few topics they could create content around?
• When should they post?
• Who should they tag?
• What type of content should they create (see below some ideas)?
• How many / which hashtags is imperative to use? Have you created a special hashtag for this occasion?
• What are the results you want to see?

Making it as easy, simple and clear to them will only give them that extra boost and confidence to try a take over!

Kick it off

After having decided to start your first “Team takes over the Instagram account” and sharing this intent with them, it helps:

1. To send them these short guidelines, after adjusting them for your own company
2. To be there for them, without giving the feel of supervising them

Remember that for most of your colleagues, managing the company’s Instagram account might seem something big, so having you there for support is vital. At the same time, when handing over the account, you show them you trust them, so don’t shadow them too much.

Also, it would be great to brag a bit about this and promote your colleagues and the news about the take over on other communication platforms!

Types of content

Instagram can be a highly creative platform, supporting multiple formats of content – from photos, to recorded videos, lives, reels, carousels and don’t get me started on all the filters, gifs, emojis, surveys, tags it comes with!

Depending on your goal, here are some examples of taking over campaigns you could go for:

• Spend a day with – each member can introduce themselves and post about his/her regular day either at the office or at home, if you’re all working remote now, about her/his habits 

• Learn from – have your team talk about their specific activity, answer common questions, go live with your followers and discuss about particularities in their field or about their general experience

• Celebrations – if your company celebrates an important moment, you could have more team members post about their perspective on that moment

• Favorite tools – what if various team members would talk about their favorite tools and their experiences with each of them?

• More relaxed content – if you are working with remote teams, why not have them talk about the cities they are living in, traditions, food, working spaces, efficient working tips or freelancing?

Give / Get Feedback

As with any campaign, the debriefing part is vital. Remember that you already decided how you’ll monitor results and you should communicate them to your team as well. This will give them a feel of real appreciation and will support the decision of continuing or stopping this type of campaign.

When giving feedback, make sure you are:

• Specific – talk exactly about what happened, people don’t appreciate ambiguity
• Empathetic – never attack a person, but discuss a certain action they did
• Open – if you are able to offer support in the future, do it

Getting feedback from your colleagues is of equal value, because it will give you a better understanding on what worked, what’s to be improved and who has real potential to keep doing this!

When receiving feedback, look for:

• Facts – what exactly went well and what went wrong?
• Emotions  – how did people feel doing this?
• Future plans – are they willing to get involved again or was it a one type experience for them? Why is that?

Useful resources

If your team wants to go for visuals that are not just photos or videos taken by them directly, here are some tools you could recommend:

To create visuals

• Canva works great for cool visuals and its free version has many easy-to-use, no-designer-skills-needed features
• Ribbet is another great visual content creator that requires no previous knowledge

To create videos

• Vidyard has even a screen recording feature that helps you prove a service or the features of a product.
• Loom is free and lets you record and share video messages of your screen, cam, or both. 

To discover the best hashtags

There are various websites that find the best hashtags associated with a specific term, some free, some requiring a small fee (Flick, HashtagsforLikes, Tailwind etc.). Our recommendation is that if you have already identified certain #, to send them directly to your team.

To write correctly

• Grammarly – a free Chrome extension that suggests the correct form of a word or punctuation changes
• Hemingway app – also a free app that helps you write easy to read content

Here it is, the most important tips you should know when handing over the company Instagram account to your colleagues, especially if they are not marketing savvy. Good luck and feel free to share your results with us at office @ stoicastg.wpenginepowered.com.