While some people still use Instagram as a timeline of their eating habits, more and more brands venture into the territory of Instagram social media marketing. No wonder, with the right technique and thoughtful Instagram marketing strategy, you can build a strong and dedicated following. Ultimately, this could mean way more business – new clients, leads, and brand recognition.

Here’s a roundup of five smaller brand accounts that show an aesthetically pleasing style and interesting visual content curation that works well on expanding their audience. Look forward to some Instagram marketing tips as well.

#1 Brit+Co

Followers: 236k

Brit+Co is a media company from the sunny state of California that educates, informs, entertains, and inspires creative women. Brit’s Instagram content includes tiles with motivational quotes, handwritten messages, and humor together with lifestyle photos.

Brit+Co speaks to the audience through emotional content — short and straight to the point captions meant to be inspirational, fun, engaging, elicit positive emotions.

They use informal language and pop culture references to better connect with the audience. The color scheme is consistent throughout the feed and so is the grid, with a chequered pattern of photos and images. It’s all part of the brand identity. It also translates into their Stories, which Brit+Co use for reposting and linking useful content, posting behind the scenes of photoshoots.

Posts come by 1-3 times a day accompanied by brand hashtags #Britsgram and #britandco, as well as others related to the post content, such as #GFF #GirlGang #womensupportingwomen, or #womenencouragingwomen.

You can see that their brand mission reflects even in their one-sided communication with followers — mostly through images and sweet messages, uncovering their call to action (CTA) as one meant to inspire self-care rather than comments. Yet, it doesn’t affect their ever-growing following and post likes (up to around 4,000 likes at the moment).

#2 Privacypls

Followers: 110k

Privacy Please is a clothing brand featured on the Revolve website. Their content includes a lot of lifestyle photos and pictures of fashion bloggers and other public personas wearing their clothes. Each outfit post contains names of the clothing articles for reference.

They post no more than once a day. Most of their grid is dedicated to their influencers. Although they can be viewed as celebrities, they give the brand a face and for a sense of community, not just a gallery of women’s wear photos.

All pictures look like they have the same filter and give off a sunset vibe (sunshine hitting the face, pink hues, warm tones). In photography, it’s common practice to use warm tones for taking pictures of women.

The brand’s language is informal and includes puns (controversial, but a lot of people like them). Privacypls let pictures do all the taking, resorting to short captions and brand-related hashtags #revolvearoundtheworld and #bybabesforbabes. They ignite more positive reactions rather than conversation, yet the photos are well liked by the audience — up to 1,400 likes on tiles with people. Instagram does like a face on their photos. In fact, faces are 38% more liked than other types of content.

#3 Bulletproof

Followers: 283k

Bulletproof produce coffee, food, and supplements and, same as the produce, their Instagram account is targeted at people who follow the keto or paleo diet. Once or twice a day they post pictures from their campaigns, nutritional facts, recipes, infographics, fun little messages or humor related to their market.

Bulletproof speaks the audience’s language adopting an informal style of writing, emojis, and pop culture references. They usually respond to followers in the comments with words of encouragement or addressing any questions concerning the brand. The infographics, like in the image above, are most well-received scoring up to 3,000 likes. Although, some posts on their page receive up to almost 9,000 likes.

They don’t conform to a particular style though part of their content reflects a shade of their brand color — orange. The content goes along with short captions or followup explanations for facts, as well as the brand (#bebulletproof #bulletprooddiet #bulletproofcoffee) and diet-related hashtags (#paleo #keto#ketodiet #ketorecipes #healthydesserts #healthysnacks #recipes).

Bulletproof Stories link to educational articles, tips, and recipes to further connect with the keto and paleo community.

#4 Beyond.clothing

Followers: 30.8k

Beyond Clothing is a men’s wear brand that offers active and static insulation garments.

They post several times a week including pictures of the customers with the #BeyondExplorer, as well as limited offers and product descriptions with brand hashtags #beyondclothing and #gobeyond. You can hear a sense of pride the company has when talking about the people featured in their posts and sometimes the messages ignite a conversation in which the brand actively participates in.

They don’t have a specific grid style though most of the photos show their clothes in active use. The pictures are cool toned which is also a common practice in photographing men. They are constantly posting pictures of people in the wild so their posts usually get the same amount of likes (500 on average).

The brand uses Stories to link their website which makes the path to purchase much easier. The shop is also tagged on the pictures. If you click on the picture, you will see the name along with the price for the item — a new Instagram feature. According to statistics, Instagram influences around 75% of user purchases, so — a great Instagram marketing strategy to increase your sales.

#5 Lululemon

Followers: 2.8m

Lululemon is a brand of activewear for both women and men. They post varied content a few times per week. It’s usually outfit pictures, sponsorships, new in stock photos updates, holiday greetings, photos of their ambassadors, behind the scenes, self-care, and motivational messages. Most of their posts are also accompanied by the brand hashtag (#lululemon).

The language is simple and informal with a tone of encouragement. Some of the posts get as many as 50,000 likes though there is no consistency in what kind of content is more.

Just scrolling through some posts you will see Lululemon active in the comments section. It’s common to see their replies to requests about the designs or to issues that customers are receiving and simple interactions. They also have a bigger audience and, thus, more likes and comments.

The Stories feature links to new items in stock as well as workout ideas — a great motivator for people to buy their clothes and stay active. The also use the Instagram feature, like Beyond Clothing, that allows you to tag your shop in the pictures.

Wrap up

As we can see, many brands focus mainly on emotional content. It’s engaging, interesting, and when people can associate positive emotions with your brand, it’s proven to bring you more of the desirable business effects, including audience and profit.

Another strategy that can improve the effect is posting links to the brand website or shops. It simplifies the path for the clients and boosts sales.

On the other hand, some things are not proven to play a significant role in the number of followers and reactions, like the diversity of content types, or using different color schemes. It’s something to test individually for a separate project.

The reason Instagram works so well is that visual information so is easy to consume. A good picture makes up for most of your success.

It’s great if you’re a good photographer or designer who can create incredible content. But if you’re not there yet, you can find hundreds of beautiful images for your Stories and Instagram Feed in the Depositphotos Instagram page or find your winning visuals in the weekly thematic collections. And if you are a pro, you can still use the platform to sell your artworks to others.