How to market your Community Round on Instagram

Best practices, examples, and templates

Last updated November 3, 2022 • Estimated Read Time 6m 10s

Before we get started, a caveat:

What’s true here now might not be true tomorrow. The social media marketing landscape and algorithms change all the time. (Last updated November 2022)

Who should read this guide?

If your brand and your community hang out on Instagram a lot already, then it can be one of the most strategic channels to market your Community Round. Especially when it comes to DTC and CPG brands, we’ve seen just a few touchpoints on IG fill an entire round.

Unsure if you should take the time? Here’s who this guide is best for:

<aside> ✅ Yes—market the shit out of your IG!!

if ANY of the below is true:

You already have an engaged audience there
Your users or customers hang out there
Your brand is visually driven (e.g. DTC, CPG, brick & mortar)
You don’t have any visual assets but are willing to give face in front of the camera as a founder </aside>

<aside> 🚫 Don’t bother with IG

if the below are true:

Your customers or users don’t hang out there
Your industry peers don’t hang out there
You have barely any visual assets to speak of, AND you don’t want to give face as a founder </aside>

Best practices for Instagram

Amplify: Everything you post, amplify in your stories
Ask to amplify: Everything you post, ask others to amplify in their stories
Use existing influencer content for $0: Find opportunities to include other IG users in your posts: press outlets that wrote about you, customers who gave you testimonials, influencers who gave you quotes. Craft posts with their content, tag them, and ask them (explicitly through DMs) to reshare.
Use your UGC: Repost all your user-generated content (UGC). Even if you missed the chance to repost a UGC story within 24 hours—DM your customer, ask for the content, and create your own asset if needed.
REPURPOSE! Repurpose across all formats (and even across social channels). The video you took for a reel can be repurposed into a carousel. Both can be made into a story or shared in a story.
Vulnerability pays. Sharing challenges or disappointments can be received just as well as (or even better than) success. Of course there’s always an element of curation to social media marketing, but don’t feel like everything you share has to be completely buttoned up and perfect. If you’re comfortable pointing the selfie camera at your face and talking about your progress so far, do it. If not, try writing something heartfelt to your community in a carousel or a caption.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Every slide of your Campaign pitch can be its own piece of content.