Instagram is more than just a social platform — it’s a powerful tool to refine your brand voice, foster meaningful engagement, and drive traffic with smart link-in-bio strategies. But with so much content vying for attention, standing out requires more than just great visuals. By following inspirational brands that lead the way in creativity and innovation, you can gain fresh ideas to elevate your own Instagram marketing strategy and make a lasting impact in your niche.
Inspiration can come from likely — and unlikely places. While data, AI and more offer excellent insights into which content works best for you, diving into your feed first-hand is helpful to see how content looks on the native channel. These brands are producing thought-provoking content and are leaders on Instagram.
Here are some of the best accounts to follow for inspiration.
We’ve discussed Jaqcuemus’ inventive, AI-generated out-of-home marketing campaigns before. Still, its Instagram feed is a treasure trove of inventive visuals showcasing its products in eye-catching, unique ways. Their brand voice is uniform and bold throughout their Stories, Reels and feed content. They use Story content to share a mix of lo-fi and hi-fi content that invites users into the world of Jacquemus with playful, lively imagery.
Asos is a UK-based retailer that carries a wide assortment of products from home furnishings to clothing and makeup — and their feed, Reels and stories follow suit. They tap into Instagram trends like brand ambassador partnerships, product close-ups that lend themselves to displaying the tactile experience of a product, haul-focused UGC and more. Asos’ Instagram account is great inspiration for using creator-led UGC in a variety of ways.
Create cultivate is geared towards women-owned small businesses, but marketers of any size can benefit from their colorful feed. You’ll find advice from entrepreneurs, social media statistics (nice reminders as you scroll through your feed) and webinars aimed to help women succeed in business.
Liberty London is a UK-based department store featuring luxury brands that showcases their campaigns with thoughtful Reels highlights showcasing window displays, products and cool features, like their Reel with an art historian to discuss artwork that inspired Liberty London fabric prints. Liberty London’s feed is a masterclass in visual brand cohesion while promoting a number of different products, brands and campaigns.
This is a fun account with humor targeted towards digital marketers. They cleverly use Instagram Reels trends, which is great content to relate to and inspire your use of Reels trends in content.
Dazed is a magazine and Media and Publishing company that shines a light on a plethora of topics contained in its magazine pages. They feature carousels that touch on upcoming and existing cultural features, stylized images from photoshoots and more. Another interesting feature they use to their advantage are Instagram Guides — a collection of existing, curated Instagram posts and text — that touch on everything from the best art shows to attend, Winona Ryder and Raf Simons. Get inspired by their Guides and look for opportunities to educate your followers with Guides content.
Ad Week’s Instagram account is a must-follow for digital marketers. This is a great way to stay on top of industry trends, interesting advertisements, competitors campaigns, and everything else related to digital and traditional advertising.
Dash Hudson’s Instagram Insights contain everything you need to plan, schedule and monitor your content performance. Instagram Insights include an at-a-glance look at Story performance, Instagram UGC opportunities, Dashboards that let you organize content by campaign, performance (posts with the highest engagement or impressions, for example) and more.
The best account type on Instagram depends on your organization type and goals. There are three types of Instagram accounts — Personal, Business and Creator. If creator marketing, influencing or promoting your professional industry are your aims, a creator account is best. If you’re a brand or organization, a business account is best, while the best account for individual users is a personal account.
The best Instagram accounts to follow will depend on your industry, niche and goals. For example, a beauty brand focused on building a community should follow influencers, other beauty brands with a strong sense of community, and even Instagram accounts that offer social media strategy tips.
Instagram competitive analysis will help you determine which competitors you should monitor and look to for inspiration, along with industry benchmarks to measure your own performance against.