How the Best Auto Brands on Instagram Drive Engagement
Nothing inspires a strong opinion quite like a vehicle. For many drivers, their car, truck, or SUV is an extension of their personality much like their clothes or grooming products. Some fans are dedicated to specific makes and models, but automotive brands in general have deeply passionate devotees — and social media is the perfect place to reach them. Here’s how the best auto brands on Instagram rev up their engines and drive engagement:
- Maintaining a strong aesthetic perspective with a triptych-style profile
- Showing off brand personality with sharp, witty captions
- Letting followers live vicariously through aspirational, travel-inspired imagery
Four Wheels, Three Photos, Two Thumbs Up
Bring the dealership to your audience. Instagram’s top car accounts are major proponents of the triptych, and it’s no surprise why. The multi-panel photo approach means marketers can post every angle of their latest offering (or major throwback) with a high aesthetic value. It’s a masterclass in visual storytelling and helps draw audiences from the feed to your profile to get the full narrative. Another great perk to the triptych is it allows for a seamless transition between color stories—instead of one-off posts promoting products with clashing palettes, marketers can create a unique experience for viewers that feels intentional, appealing, and still completely on brand.
First Place in the Caption Race
Visual content might be king in the fast-paced world of automotive marketing, but snappy captions are the most effective way to stand out in a crowded parking lot. Iconic auto brands, especially American classics, hold a lot of cultural significance and even mythology behind them, and the captions section on social is the perfect space to reinforce that. From quick and quippy to thoughtfully detailed, there’s no speed limit for a quality caption and marketers need to keep up momentum when it comes to copy strategy.
Ready for a Road Trip
If there’s one thing car fans are longing for right now, it’s a road trip. Luxury sports car accounts are capitalizing on these consumer sentiments by serving imagery to capture their wanderlust. Sleek vehicles with lush backgrounds are a popular trend in the category and this aspirational content is powering follower engagement. The roadmap to success for top auto brands on Instagram is marked by dream vehicles, dream destinations, and an unapologetic need for speed. And it doesn’t stop there—incorporating predictive AI in the content selection process means marketers can discover exactly what those dreams look like and share them accordingly.
Cruising to Community Connections
A highly engaged social media community isn’t limited to likes and comments—marketers need to leverage the love for content generation, too. A recognizable, branded hashtag encourages users to post and share their own photos and videos of their favorite vehicles that brands can repurpose in-feed. Top car accounts stay in their lanes and grow their audiences from the inner circle outward.
