How to appeal to consumers through the power of images on Instagram

Increasing your engagement and growing your business on social media go hand in hand. Understanding your target audience and the social media content trends should be at the forefront when planning and posting content. 

As a social media management agency, and experts in the health, fitness and wellness industry, we manage platforms for a number of our clients. We continue to perform and review social media analyses to help grow our clients’ platforms and businesses.

Instagram continues to take the social media world by storm and it’s certainly important to keep up to date with the hottest trends. However, it’s important to remember that trends can be subjective depending on your target audience, community and industry. While there are other highly successful consumer platforms like TikTok, Instagram still leads the way for consumers to find out information about brands.

Later.com, the all-in-one social scheduling platform, has recently revealed a fantastic report on 10 of the hottest social media content trends for 2022. So when using graphics on your social platforms, it’s worth considering these design elements to maximise your content. From this report and from our own social media analysis, here’s what we’ve discovered. 

Here are Later.com’s Top 10 Social Media Content Trends and examples: 

  1. Fluorescent Colour Palettes 
Fluorescent Colour Palettes
  1. 60s and 70s Iconography 
60s and 70s Iconography
  1. Contrasting Fonts 
Contrasting Fonts
  1. Maximalism 
Maximalism
  1. Cloud Motifs 
Cloud Motifs
  1. Risograph Effects 

Risograph Effects
  1. Bubble Fonts 
Bubble Fonts
  1. Modern Gradients 
Modern Gradients

9. Futuristic 3D Shapes

Futuristic 3D Shapes

10. Grit and Grain 

Grit and Grain

The overall analysis is that a modern-retro theme seems to be popular throughout the report, perhaps highlighting consumers’ appeal for vintage, and 60s and 70s themed posts. 

There is no denying that these graphics are unique and incredibly spectacular in their own way. However, how well do they fit in with your line of business or industry, will they perform as highly as you would like? Just because they are trending, does this mean we should be using them on our posts? Is it a one-size-fits-all strategy?  

The diversity of the health and fitness industry 

Although we specialise in the health and fitness industry, our scope of work doesn’t stop there. As you all well know, the health industry spans a number of different sub-industries such as food and drinks brands which are totally different to gyms, studios or athleisure wear brands. 

In the past, we worked with the wonderful, plant-based food brand, Gosh! to deliver a successful advertising campaign. Now, as you can see, it’s graphic central. This is because using graphics is perfect for the food industry, it allows you to educate the consumer quickly and easily on the benefits of the product. Whereas graphics succeed in this area of the market, the fitness industry has something else to say about this… 

Gosh! Plant Based Food

In this example, readers were quickly able to view all of the ingredients that comprise the Beetroot burger. The whole point of the campaign was to educate consumers that Gosh! Food was all plant-based, with no unnatural ingredients in. Our campaign was very successful in raising awareness of Gosh! with the right target audience. 

Let’s talk all things fitness 

From our experience as experts in the fitness industry, we have found that for our fitness clients, especially gyms and studios, pictures with real people are more successful than graphics. It seems that consumers prefer seeing real-life content to graphically designed content. Perhaps this is because it is real and that they can identify better with the person/people in the image, or more clearly get a picture of your brand, what you sell and the experience you offer. 

Images and pictures also engage with the community and your audience as they bring an approachable and reality factor to the table. Though graphics are an excellent way of putting across information and keeping it contemporary, there is a consumer demand to see and interact with images of people. 

David Lloyd Reformer Pilates

Our Analysis 

Although Later.com reveals the top 10 social media content trends for Instagram, which is extremely insightful and useful to be incorporated in some shape or form in your feed, it’s important to note that this report is not industry-specific, rather it’s a general report to cover across the board for all industries. 

Therefore, as an agency that specialises in the health, fitness and wellness industry, our research and analysis highlight the diversity in how graphics perform depending on the industry. Whereas graphics perform highly in industries such as the health and food sector, for the fitness industry, photographs of people are more successful. 

We analyse, adapt and research current social media content trends, and constantly modify our strategies to reflect the posts which work more successfully for our clients’ brands. We understand that trends are not a one-size-fits-all strategy, it takes analysing and research to grow a successful business and this is what Action Group is all about. 

As an agency, we’ve got in-house designers and creative campaigners who will be able to come up with extremely informative and aesthetically pleasing graphics/photographs that will engage customers better. We’ve also founded a fitness modelling agency, Action Fitness Models where they all hold real fitness credentials and capabilities making it easy for us to deliver fantastic shots, executed perfectly for our photoshoots. 

Whether your brand is in the fitness or health and wellness industry, if you’re looking to grow your business or would like some expert social media to support your marketing, PR, advertising and consultancy, we can help: info@action-group.co.uk

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