Quality over Quantity: Creating High-Value Content

What matters most for growing your Instagram – creating high-value content or posting a lot of content?

There are two sides to this debate. If I had to pick a side, I’d be on the “quality” side... but there are reasons that you need to focus on both quality and quantity.

So, what is “high-value” content?

High-value content is something that SERVES YOUR AUDIENCE! Depending on your niche (see my recent IGTV on defining your niche), your content should do at least one of these three things – inspire, entertain, or educate your followers and potential followers!

When you’re creating content, ask yourself: Is this Reel, Post or Story hitting the mark on at least one of these? Think “save-able” and “share-able”.

Is your content good enough that followers want to save it to watch it again later? Is it good enough for them to share it on their stories or send it to a friend by DM?

Finding out what your followers want to see from you can help to increase your engagement rate by consistently posting good content that they are interested in. But how do you do that? Here’s two easy ways to find out what’s “high-value” for you:

1. Ask! You can take a poll or ask a question in your stories about what followers want to hear more about? Or create a post and ask your followers to comment on what they like most or want to hear more about, this or that? Give them choices because otherwise, you may hear crickets.
2. Review your analytics! This is a great way to find out what content your followers are engaging with the most. Then you’ll know what kind of content performs the best.

Look at the captions in your best performing content – are they long or short captions? Are your recommendations about places you’ve been with your dog, or training tips that work (and don’t work) working well with your audience? Check out your last 9-12 Reels, or feed posts to see if you’ve gotten any meaningful comments, shares and saves. And be sure to respond to the comments to start a conversation. Don’t just look at likes, that’s not going deep enough.

Look at the images or video in your best performing Reels – you will most likely find that your better-quality photos and Reels will grab more attention than a lower quality photo or video. How’s the lighting, is the image blurry, are your photos all the same? You may need to spice it up a bit and get a better camera or a new iPhone or Android to take better pictures.

If you’re trying to inspire your followers, you need to get real, be authentic and stop trying to please everyone. Seriously you can’t be all things to all people! 

Talk about what matters most to you, what you enjoy doing with our dog and show this in your content. Give followers insight into your business with a behind the scenes look and explain why you started your business or non-profit, what’s working and what’s not.

If you’re struggling for new content ideas, look at what other people are doing. What makes you stop and watch someone’s Reel, read their post, or respond to their story? It’s perfectly ok to use other people’s ideas as long as you make them your own. You can even @someone to credit them for inspiring your content. It’s a great way to give someone a shout-out and support other creators on Insta.

Also, be sure to look at trending Reels, TikTok, Google trends, and search tools like Pinterest for what’s working now. Another idea is to look at hashtags in your niche for content ideas. Again, these ideas are just for inspiration – the content that will work best for you is content that reflects your values, style, and niche.

BUT…

I did say there are two sides to this argument. While you’re hard at work trying to produce High-Value content, you’ve got to keep two things to keep in mind:

1. Done is better than perfect

• Creating great quality posts and Reels is important but spending too much time on content creation can also stall your growth if it keeps you from posting often.

• Give your audience what they want, whether it’s entertaining, inspiring, or educational content. And don’t worry about being perfect. No one is.

2. Post often and regularly 

• Try to post as often as possible to keep your followers’ attention. That might mean 2-3 times a week or several times a day. You can and should hop on Instagram and engage with other peoples’ content even when you’re not posting.
• Create Reels, stories, and feed posts regularly. If you post once a month and expect your followers to hang around and wait, you’ll be surprised when you check in next month and find that you’ve lost a lot of followers.
• Don’t expect people to engage with you if you don’t post often. You’ll stop showing up on peoples’ feed if you’ve been AWOL for a while.
• It’s better to have a smaller account with highly engaged followers than a large account that doesn’t post regularly and has a low engagement rate. Yes, large accounts will still get lots of likes, but you don’t need over 100K followers to make money on Instagram. Micro-influencers have lots of opportunities.
• Many accounts will unfollow “inactive” accounts – so again, if you don’t show up and post your content, you’re going to lose followers.

And finally, don’t forget to include a CTA (Call to Action) in your posts, Reels, IGTV, etc.  You’ve got to ask your followers to SHARE and SAVE this your because the power of suggestion works!