What’s a feature account, you ask?
An Instagram feature account is a grass-roots community term used by Instagrammers for accounts that are created by sourcing content using a hashtag.
Successful feature accounts are carefully curated masterpieces honed to perfection by their account owners. Let’s look at what it takes to start and maintain a powerful Instagram feature account.
What is a feature account?
As I mentioned above, a feature account is gallery created with a laser-focused niche. They are set up like any other Instagram account but the content is found from the Instagram community.
A few of the benefits of creating a feature account are:
- Build a passionate community around your blog, brand, or idea
- Craft a beautiful Instagram account without designing or taking your own photographs
- Have fun sharing your passion with thousands (or more) other people
To get started on an Instagram feature account, you first need to decide on your focus and then pick a hashtag that you’ll use to create your community and find content in the future.
Once you’ve chosen your topic, do some research to see what other accounts are already opened and find a user name that matches your theme. Some accounts have branded hashtags that aren’t the same as their user name.
Successful feature Instagram accounts are carefully curated masterpieces honed to perfection.Nail your branded hashtag
A branded hashtag is a hashtag that was created for a specific purpose or goal. It could be an event, like #SMMW for Social Media Marketing World or #GoPro used by the company Go Pro to curate and follow their communities posts.
The key to creating a great branded hashtag is to keep it authentic to your community and make it one that they would use on their posts.
Make it easy to spell and re-read it to make sure it doesn’t spell something accidentally.
You’ll want to research your hashtag options to see if other people are using it – you don’t want to compete for attention in a crowded hashtag hub.
More reading: How to Use Hashtags to your Advantage
The key to creating a great branded hashtag is to keep it authentic to your community.Get permission to share other people’s photos
You’ll want to have permission to use photos on your Instagram account that you don’t own and there’s several ways to do this. One is to put a call for posts in your Instagram bio like “use #tailwindfamily to be featured” or you could ask people to email you photos to be featured.
You can also send a direct message to them asking to feature their photo on your account. Most Instagrammers are thrilled to be featured but getting permission is still essential to stay on the right side on Instagram’s Terms of Service which state, “You represent and warrant that you own the Content posted by you on or through the Service or otherwise have the right to grant the rights and licenses set forth in these Terms of Use.”
When you post a photo on your feature account, you’ll always share the photo credit in the post and tag the photographer.
Find and schedule the User Generated Content (UGC)
With Tailwind’s in-depth hashtag research tools, you’ll be able to easily find great content to share on your account as well as monitor how well your hashtag is performing.
Looking at the popular hashtag #Flashesofdelight, they’ve had 8,992 posts in the past week with 910,402 engagement.
You can track stats like how many posts, how many unique contributors, engagement, and potential engagement. This is powerful data to take to brands when working on sponsorships and brand ambassador deals.
You can also review the trending posts in the hashtag and select which posts you’d like to share on your feature account. As a best practice, you can save this to drafts and contact the owner for permission to post on your account.
Of course, using the Tailwind Chrome extension, you can add also add posts directly from Instagram into your Tailwind Instagram feed and schedule them out over time using your smart schedule for Instagram. It couldn’t be easier to add gorgeous content to build your Instagram feature account!
Another way to grow your audience as part of a smart Instagram hashtag strategy is to find hashtags where you can be featured on their account. Instagram uses these very ideas for their own Instagram account and builds their community by featuring special content on their Instagram and in blog posts. Many feature accounts have these listed in their bio. Instagram hosts their own hashtag feature account project called Weekend Hashtag Project and the topic changes each week. Instagram’s instructions are “Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes and hashtags. For a chance to be featured, follow @instagramand look for a post every week announcing the latest project.”
Here are a few of our favorite feature accounts:
#PassionPassport started by @PassionPassport with 6,511,103 posts, 2,915 posted on their account
Here’s one of the gorgeous photos that @PassionPassport has featured:
#BooksandBeans by @BooksandBeans with 19,989 posts in the hashtag and 1,305 posted on their account
See how well their hashtag fits their content? Simple and to the point!
RescuePetsofInstagram by @RescuePetsofInstagram 266,895 posts and 4,513 posts.
This is their smart bio: To share your rescue pet, email us a photo, name of shelter adopted from, & Insta name! Adopt, don’t shop! [email protected]
#FlashesofDelight by 3,715,942 posts hosted by The Glitter Guide who has posted 7,768 posts. They post UGC as well as original content to their Instagram.
I hope this guide to Instagram feature accounts has been helpful. What are your favorite feature accounts to follow? Questions or comments? We’d love to discuss them in the comments below.
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