7 Steps to Host a Successful Instagram Takeover

Do you want to run a successful Instagram takeover? Here's a step-by-step guide with examples to help you get followers, engagement, traffic, and sales...

7 Steps to Host a Successful Instagram Takeover

Are you looking for new ways to spice up your Instagram marketing strategy? Breathe fresh air into your account with an Instagram takeover!

Surprisingly, Instagram takeovers have been very popular since 2012, and now they have become an integral mandate for every social media manager to amplify brand awareness.

But what’s the hype about it? Well, if I have to cite one reason, it’s a win-win benefit for everyone. And how to implement this? Let’s find out.

What is an Instagram takeover?

Simply put, an Instagram takeover is a collaborative marketing strategy wherein somebody else becomes the takeover host of a page for a brief period. These collaborations provide the audience with value, breaking the monotony from the same type of content, giving them a refreshed exposure.

The takeover can happen in various forms.

  • Post content

Out here, the takeover participant creates an Instagram post about something valuable from their brand. Say a chef can promote your product by using it in their recipe.

in feed instagram takeover example

Here’s a post takeover of Panimation by Noah Camp, a solopreneur, to share his thrilling journey with the Panimation family. Noah pens down his concerns and the support he received from the Panimation team.

  • Stories content

For Instagram story takeovers, the participant handles Instagram stories and shares value.

instagram story takeover

NatGeo partnered with Chris Burkard, the famous photographer, to cover Reyjanes volcanic eruption in Iceland. This eruption took place after 800 years and was too historical to be missed out by Nat Geo lovers!

  • Live

The participant reaches out to the host’s audience via Instagram live. An example is a celebrity doing a live makeup tutorial using your cosmetics.

instagram live takeover

Clarissa Senza took over the RedBull Italia account to give their followers a sneak peek of her long jump like never before. Now that’s some exclusive action you would not like to miss!

Now that you know what it is exactly, let me walk you through the benefits.

Benefits of an Instagram Takeover

Let’s take a look at the benefits of a successful Instagram takeover:

  1. New Followers

The exposure towards the new range of audiences helps both parties to gain a decent number of followers. If you want to spike your audience growth from a particular niche or genre, the right takeover host can help you do that.

2. Building trust

The influencer who takes over your account has already established trust. Followers of the influencers have either bought from them or are supporting them for a long time.

In such cases, when the influencer takes over your account, it informs the audience that your brand is authentic, value-packed, and genuine.

3. Break from mundane

Are you worried about your content being too monotonous? Takeovers can help you tackle that. It provides your followers a fresh style of content that adds value to the audience flaring their interests in you.

4. Boosts engagement

The experience of Instagram Takeover is no less than a virtual event. Followers look forward to something exciting every day. Takeovers pique that excitement and even take the necessary actions to increase sales leveraging FOMO techniques. It acts as a great catalyst to boost engagement rates for both accounts.

5. Spike in content creation

Your audience will cherish the behind the scene stories that you have to share. These experiences will generate additional content, so no more head-scratching for the next few days.

6. Seize special opportunities

The essence of Instagram lies in sharing stories and experiences with your audience. Special Instagram takeovers with brands allow your followers to witness something that has never happened before! And such deals are undeniably the best ones!

When your audience is well aware of such an event, they do not want to miss out on it. Furthermore, limited collaboration offers create a sense of urgency, increasing engagement and sales!

7 Steps to Do a Successful Instagram Takeover

You must be wondering why there are steps involved? Isn't this doing the same thing one does every day but for somebody else? What can go wrong?

To be honest, a lot of factors can mess this up if not planned right. It is not just handing over the credentials, and you are done and dusted. Successful Instagram takeovers happen in various styles, and each one has a specific purpose of ensuring results.

Let’s look at the 7-step so you can conduct a successful Instagram Takeover with ease.

1. Set goals

To ensure you achieve your expected outcome, you must set a clear target. Some probable targets can be:

  • Growing your audience: Exposure to a new audience group is one of the obvious goals for most. Instagram takeovers help immensely to boost the community, gain new followers, and provide greater reach.
  • Promote a new product: If you are launching a new product soon, it might be a good time to conduct an Instagram Takeover. The style of your takeover will follow the product’s theme.
  • Launch a new campaign: Want to give that extra kick to your campaign launch day? Your Instagram takeover can help you fulfill that goal!
  • Event coverage: One of the most popular Instagram takeovers includes covering a special event. Not only is it fun, but it is also a great social media strategy for engagement. Covering events from non-organizers is a secret hack to create the necessary hype.

Setting clear goals will help you build a vivid roadmap to the takeover campaign and picture its outcomes.

2. Choose a takeover host

What will be your reaction if a fashion influencer takes over the launch of a new educational app? A misfit catastrophe, isn't it?

Picking up the right kind of host is quite crucial to fulfilling the main goal that you have for your social media channels.

Let’s have a look into the types of hosts that you can invite.

Influencers/ Industry experts

Who doesn’t like the presence of an Instagram influencer or industry expert? They are the most in-demand host categories for Instagram takeovers. Ensure that they belong to your niche; so that your audience can access valuable content.

What can they help you achieve?

  • Endorse your account effectively.
  • Enhance your social media marketing metrics like engagement and interactions.
  • Make their Instagram followers aware of your brand.
  • Provide value-packed content.

Employees

If you have a team of your own or work as a team, this hosting category is a good fit for you. Popular brands often get their team members to take over their brand account and showcase behind-the-scenes work. It helps the audience gain an inside view and connect with the brand on a personal level.

What can they help you achieve?

  • Building trust and credibility for the brand
  • Increasing engagement rates
  • Showcasing more about your company culture and ethics
  • Building an authentic brand face.

Customers

Imagine one fine day; you get an opportunity to take over the account of your most favorite brand. How would you feel about them? Wouldn’t it be a dream come true?

Hosting the most loyal followers/customers or even an ambassador will establish that you value your brand followers' opinions.

What can they help you achieve?

  • Establishing the trust factor of the brand.
  • Creating user-generated content.
  • Building a strong relationship with your followers.

After you choose a host, you should zero down on the type of takeover.

3. Choose a takeover type

Having an irrelevant Instagram takeover can leave your audience puzzled. So, to ensure laser-focus over your takeover, you need to pick the form of takeover you’re going to host.

Instagram feed post takeover

Your takeover posts will create an impact on your Instagram feed forever. It is the most in-demand format as most people browse the feed.

Instagram stories takeovers

If you are concerned about the whole brands’ Instagram feed look, Instagram stories takeover is your go-to option. These are fun, interactive, and compact forms of content.

Instagram live

Insta live takeovers are a relatively new form. However, these work exceptionally well if you want to host to interact with your audience live. You can even save the live video as an IGTV video for future referrals.

Deciding the host and type makes your takeover venture halfway done. Next comes the promotional aspect. How? Let’s see that in the next step.

4. Come up with a branded hashtag

If audiences from both accounts want to view the content of your collab, they know where it will be - takeover hashtags. Brands commonly use campaign and brand hashtags in their takeovers. A takeover serves surprising benefits.

  • Keeps all your takeover’s content in one place
  • Analyzes the engagement rates
  • It will make the process of resharing easy
  • Acts as a social listening tool

Make sure you keep your hashtag short and memorable. You can also use generic hashtags like #takeovertuesday if you have takeovers quite frequently.

takeover tuesdays

Miamimomcollective has multiple takeovers and uses #TakeoverTuesdays. In this post, Ailyn Quesada takes over stories to show her typical Tuesday life with all.

5. Promote the takeover

Your Instagram takeover should be ‘worth the hype.’ But how to create that hype! Make it the most awaited event for your Instagram followers with proper promotion with the following steps.

  • Prepare a post about it before the takeover.
  • Create the hype on stories regularly.
  • Share it on your other social media platforms.
  • Share it in your newsletter with your email subscribers.
  • Help your takeover hosts to co-promote on their platforms.
takeovers on instagram

Here’s how Liz Walton, an interior design professional, announces her upcoming collaboration with the Chief Architect Software for her followers to stay tuned.

Leverage the FOMO tactics during the promotion. If your takeover is on a large scale, introduce some limited perks to have a foolproof engagement. Now is the execution time!

6. Run the Instagram takeover

After you set the stage, you need to perform the act. But here are two ways of doing it. Instagram takeovers can be either full or partial. Let me explain the subtle differences.

Complete account takeover

As the name suggests, the host gets complete access to your account along with the one-time password. It eases up the process of takeover with swift communication. Also, it feels more authentic to your audience when the host initiates Instagram live from your account.

Semi-account takeover

If you are concerned about your privacy regulations, this form of takeover is perfect. The host provides you with all the necessary content for feed, stories, and direct messaging responses. You can post it on their behalf.

However, it comes with some amount of hassle. You may have to respond back and forth from your host to your audience. It may also take a while to respond to their direct messages.

Now you need not worry about privacy when trying out Instagram takeovers. Once you execute the takeover, here’s how to gauge its results.

7. Track metrics

This is the moment of revelation! How can you know whether your takeover was successful or not? Track these metrics to find it out.

  • Make a note of the before and after growth metrics of your account. It’ll help you to analyze your follower count and audience reach.
  • Keep a check on the interaction statistics - the number of likes, comments, shares, actions taken in stories, etc.
  • If the takeover was for a product or campaign launch, track the sales metrics.

Finally, with all the above metrics, analyze if you accomplished your desired goal or not. Keep these metrics handy for your next takeover for easy tracking.

3 Instagram Takeover Examples You Should Check Out

Let’s look into some of the primary styles of conducting takeovers:

Daily vlog

Creators share content via their daily vlogs in the hosts’ accounts. You can execute this in the form of Instagram story takeovers and other content forms. Influencers whose goal is to reach more audiences use this technique.

daily vlog insta takeover

Kenika, a professional organizer, took over the profile of An Organized Life and shared tidbits on organizing a garage to make it look spacious and clutter-free.

Event night

These takeovers happen to showcase and cover a particular event from the hosts’ accounts. The target audience gets exclusive footage from the ongoing event, boosting engagement.

insta takeover examples

Elsa Majimbo, a known name on this social media channel, took over the official Instagram account of Golden Globes to announce her live talk on best performance 2020.

Launch

Brands generally conduct these styles of takeovers before any big launch. It accelerates their goals for content marketing and can be related to their product, service, or just promoting the brand in general. It also drives traffic and sales.

taking over instagram

Ethan Eckstrom, an owner and lead designer of Eckstrom Home Designs, takes over the Chief Architect Software page to show how he uses the tool in designing fine architect plans. This collaboration is the perfect example of a win-win promotion.

Conclusion

Once in a while, introducing new twists to your presence on social media platforms is a mandate. It is easy for marketers to host such takeovers as they are a cost-effective, simple, fun, and effective way to enhance audience engagement. Along with Instagram, you can have Snapchat takeovers by collaborating with mega and micro-influencers for stellar branding.