A 2019 report by Mention notes that 71% of US businesses use Instagram and that more than 80% of businesses consider Instagram engagement the most important metric. Companies can use the platform to engage with current followers, showcase their products, and deepen brand loyalty. Instagram organically provides a massive amount of potential customers, which most businesses can reach without spending much of their budgets on advertising. According to Instagram’s internal data, 90% of people on Instagram follow at least one business, so it makes sense for companies to tap into Instagram for social media marketing. One way to expand your reach and connect with a different target audience is by hosting an Instagram takeover.
Why Run an Instagram Takeover?
As the title suggests, an Instagram takeover is inviting someone else to take over your Instagram account for a certain amount of time. You can also invite your guest to spend the day hosting your Stories or do IG live from your account. During the takeover, your guest has free reign to share whatever they want, though often they are providing insight into your company’s services or product. This kind of collaboration is a win/win for both you and your guest. It can be a way to amplify another voice on your platform, reach new followers, share fresh content and simply shake up your normal feed. Guest takeovers promote community and communication. Those taking over your account can give your followers a sense of authenticity and trust.
Let’s dive into how you can host a successful Instagram takeover!
1. Identify Your Goals
First things first: you need to decide on the purpose of the takeover. Do you want to promote an upcoming event? Use it to showcase your product or services? Gain followers? Engage your community and create excitement around your brand? Solidifying these goals will help shape your strategy—and help you determine the best way to measure your success.
If you are promoting an event, you may want to measure how many people register to attend it or how traffic to your website increases. If your goal is promoting a product, your measurement of success may look like conversions, sales, or people signing up for your company newsletter. If you’re looking to increase brand awareness/get more followers, you’ll want to keep an eye on how many you gain throughout the takeover, as well as views and mentions across different accounts and channels. If you just want to cultivate engagement and provide some fresh and fun content, you’ll measure your success by the number of interactions such as likes, comments, views, and direct messages.
Regardless of your goals, an Instagram takeover is a fun and innovative way to reach them.
2. Pick Your Guest Host
Creating content with other people diversifies your social media strategy and offers viewers something new and fresh. Finding other people or channels that align with yours and inviting them to take over your account for the day can be a great way to connect with viewers and gain subscribers. There are a few different types of people you can invite to host an Instagram takeover on your account.
Influencers
Bringing an influencer in your industry to host your account is a savvy way to endorse your product or brand. Recent research says that one in five American consumers have made a purchase based on an influencer, so why not feature an influencer on your Instagram account? Hosting an influencer for your takeover helps grab the attention of another follower base, promote your brand, gain credibility, expand reach, enhance brand awareness, and drive sales.
The content of an influencer takeover should be relatable, align with your company’s values, and provide a chance for you to connect with your niche audience. On the other hand, sometimes it can be beneficial to have slightly different audiences from your host to reach even more people, and maybe even gain some followers that are outside of your traditional target audience. That’s the beauty of the takeover! Both parties are exposing their online communities to something new, fresh, and different.
Influencer marketing as a whole is expected to continue to rise in popularity this year. Because many users see influencers as everyday consumers just like them, influencer takeovers come across as spending the day with and getting recommendations from a friend. Influencer marketing hit over $13 billion in 2021, and will only continue to move upward. Having an influencer host your Instagram takeover is a popular and savvy way to expand and promote your product or brand.
Employees
Employee advocacy is a force in the social media marketing world and is a fantastic choice when deciding who should take over your Instagram account for the day. Rather than seeking out influencers or culling through user-generated content to find something that fits with your brand, capitalize on what you have at your fingertips: your employees. (Just make sure they’re happy!) When satisfied employees help out with an Instagram takeover, they are acting as brand ambassadors. Talking up the company, sharing content from the brand, or gushing about the amazing product gives your followers a sense of how reliable and authentic your brand is. Showcasing your employees is a smart choice for an Instagram takeover.
Community Members
Inviting satisfied customers and/or community members to take over your Instagram account shows you value what they have to say. In a sense, this type of Instagram takeover is like a longer-term testimonial. Showcasing real people, not influencers, offering their personal opinions on products or services is another way to give more accountability to your brand. Providing these real-life endorsements adds to your company’s trustworthiness and builds brand recognition.
Instagram takeovers with customers or community members help cultivate the relationship between your business and your followers, further solidifies your online community, and creates user-generated content (UGC). Bottom line: real people lead to more real people. Think of these Instagram takeovers by customers or community members as organic publicity for your brand—while having the opportunity to amplify people within your community. It’s a win/win.
And the numbers don’t lie: a recent survey revealed that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view UGC as authentic compared to brand-created content. Gain your followers’ trust (and ultimately their business) by inviting customers and/or community members who are relevant to your business, product, or brand to take over your Instagram account.
3. Be a Guest on Someone Else’s Instagram
Just as hosting someone on your Instagram can help your brand, it can also be beneficial for you to be a guest on someone else’s account. Showing up as an influencer, industry expert, brand ambassador, or community member on another account is a great way to get to know a different audience and to show off your business, brand, products, or services to a new swath of users.
4. Select Your Takeover Type
Once you've decided to move forward with the takeover and chosen the guest, it’s time to decide on the format and length of the takeover. Let’s take a look at the different ways to plan your takeover.
Posts
One takeover method is having your guest create posts for your Instagram grid. These more polished posts can be content created by your guest, some copy or images you provide for them, or a mixture of the two. You can work on the takeover posts together, or leave it completely in the hands of your guest. Instagram posts takeovers normally last from a day up to a week.
If you’d prefer to keep your grid as is, consider hosting your takeover in Stories.
Stories
Instagram Stories are photos or videos that disappear 24 hours after posting. They’re not shown in the newsfeed, but at the top of the app when you’re logged in. According to Instagram internal data from 2019, each day Instagram Stories are used by 500 million users, and a third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses. An Instagram Stories takeover is a great way to take advantage of this fun, free, and ephemeral option.
Stories offer an important and unique element of Instagram marketing: a chance for your current and potential followers to get intimate, behind-the-scenes perspectives of you and your brand. Turning over your Instagram Stories to an influencer, employee, or community member is the perfect opportunity to showcase authenticity, which resonates with most users.
Instagram Stories takeovers typically last one day, offering your special guest a chance to connect with your community in an immediate, organic way. You can also save selected Stories into collections (called Highlights) on your page. This way, a 24-hour-long Instagram Stories takeover will be available for as long as you want.
IG Live
Instagram Live offers yet another method of hosting a guest takeover, providing an authentic way to introduce your special guest. From there, the takeover could include fundraisers, a Q&A session, or simply give your guest a chance to be in community with a new audience.
Since it’s happening in real-time, Live awards a chance for your guest to have a genuine dialogue with your followers—and any of theirs who show up! IG Live can be a fun way to connect the audiences of both you and your takeover guest. These types of takeovers tend to be an hour or less.
5. Promote the Takeover
Now that you’ve decided on your goals, picked the host, and worked out the takeover type, it’s time to promote the takeover! In addition to sharing information about it on both your Instagram account and that of your host leading up to the event, it’s a good idea to promote the takeover on all your other social media channels so that you have the most potential for folks to tune in. This could mean announcing it on X (formerly known as Twitter), making posts about it on Facebook, encouraging people who visit your website to check out your Instagram account, sending an email blast to your list, and sharing video teasers about the takeover on your YouTube channel. Don’t have that many channels to cross-promote the event? Don’t worry! Use what you have and go from there. Just be sure to keep your friends, followers, and fans well informed.
You and your guest can work together on the content so the images and copy are similar across all of your platforms. Helping each other promote the event will lead to more folks tuning in, and ultimately more people engaging with the host and your product or brand. Don’t forget to create a branded hashtag, which can help generate conversation and buzz before, during, and after the takeover. Plus branded hashtags make it simple to find all the content related to the takeover on your channels as well as the host’s, making saving and sharing content super easy.
6. Run the Takeover & Analyze Your Results!
Whether you’re handing over the password and having your takeover guest post directly through your account or having the guest send you their posts for you to put up on their behalf, here’s hoping you hosted a successful takeover.
And how do you determine if it was successful? Once it’s completed, take a look at the performance. You can dig into your Instagram analytics to see if the results matched up with your goals from the first step in this process. Did you gain followers? How many? Did folks engage—commenting, sharing posts, interacting with stories, and/or tune into your IG Live? Did people buy your product or sign up for your email list? Whatever your goals were for the takeover, compare those metrics before and after to determine results.
Be sure to thank your guest. Hosting a takeover is fun and interactive but it’s anything from easy! Honoring your guests’ time with a shoutout after it’s all finished, gifting some swag from your company, or choosing another special way to show your appreciation is always a good idea.
Learn Instagram Marketing
Want to learn more about how to make Instagram part of your marketing strategy? Enroll in Noble Desktop’s Instagram Marketing class. This course focuses on advertising on Instagram as well as how to build a following by creating resonant content. The course delves into the Instagram algorithm and how to use it to develop content and posting strategies as well as increase engagement. Students will also learn best practices and how to leverage tools like Instagram Stories, marketing, and advertising. You can attend this course in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or live online from anywhere in the world.
Individuals ready to dive into other platforms beyond Instagram can look into Noble’s 30-hour Social Media Marketing Certificate. The curriculum gives participants a comprehensive overview of the industry. Hands-on training over five distinct units allows students to master various elements of social media marketing. Certificate program participants will learn how to determine the right social media platform for their goals, develop a successful social media strategy, and create content that increases engagement and drives sales. Expert instructors teach participants how to gain a following and underscore the importance of market positioning and using social media analytics to improve results. Noble even offers students a chance to retake the class for free within a year to drill down on challenging concepts or refresh their skills.
You can also find local and/or live online social media marketing courses, bootcamps, and certificate programs in your area using Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me tool.
Other social media marketing resources offered by Noble Desktop include its blog which has detailed articles about various social media marketing topics, and the Intro to Social Media Marketing seminar on YouTube, which gives in-depth descriptions about various social media platforms and strategies.