There are lots of Instagram profiles. Few stand out.
There are over 1 billion total Instagram accounts, but very few of them manage to capture our imagination while demonstrating the incredible potential of this platform. We’ve decided to start highlighting accounts that stand out in our feeds so we can share insights about what makes them successful. Our Social Spotlights series will give valuable lessons for marketers, entrepreneurs, influencers, and anyone else who wants to optimize their Instagram.
Today we’re taking a deep dive into the @puravidabracelets Instagram profile. Pura Vida provides items made by local artisans across the world. They partner with travelers, influencers, and creators to drive their campaigns. The first bracelets by Pura Vida were a beaded style that went all the way around your wrist, using a variety of different stones and beads. Since this initial success, Pura Vida has widened their offerings. Let’s take a look at their profile and see what we can learn.
Featured Profile Overview
The Pura Vida verified profile is off to a great start. They boast both a high number of followers and a lot of posts. In their bio, we can see their full company name, trademark, and all the reasons that people would do business with them. Some of these details include that @puravidabracelets is proud to be founded in Costa Rica. They support more than 800 artisans worldwide and invite users to tag them. Their email contact is also supplied right away, not hidden in a button or a LinkTree. The bio wraps up with a call to action, inviting us to visit their shop page.
This bio is well optimized. @Puravidabracelets is taking advantage of everything you can do with a bio field to introduce themselves to visitors, invite engagement, and even drive people to their shop. The bio also establishes their mission and history. You can instantly learn where Pura Vida was founded, who they love to work with, and how they’re impacting the world.
Their highlights are nicely segmented. Each highlight has a unique graphic that serves as an introduction to the content while also solidifying the brand’s color scheme. It’s a great use of highlights and integrates their current campaigns. This helps consumers immediately get to know the brand, the products, and more.
Taking a look at the grid, we can see that posts tend to have high engagement. The content is also fairly cohesive and very aesthetically pleasing. As we roll through, we can see high-quality shots which have been shared by users. The content itself is diverse, with tropical colors, different audience demographics, various products, and more.
This variety in content helps build community because all kinds of visitors can see themselves reflected in the feed. It’s also great from a merchandising perspective because @puravidabracelets is highlighting all their various products in real-life situations. Users can imagine themselves wearing this jewelry on date night, with their friends, on vacation, and other wonderful, aspirational moments.
What We Think Is Working
Overall, @puravidabracelets is doing a great job with their content strategy. They’ve expanded their posts beyond a narrow focus on products. Instead, their Instagram feed ties to larger messaging, creates a sense of community, and is engaging to users.
Visually cohesive campaigns are one example where @puravidabracelets is doing an amazing job. For example, it’s easy to find Valentine’s Day posts based on their red and white color scheme. However, the feed itself is also consistent across campaigns. This account uses warm, neutral colors throughout the feed. Recurring imagery brings to mind friendship, travel, and adventure. This aesthetic ties a sense of fun, community, and freedom to these products.
As we move from their main feed over to the tagged posts, we can find the user-generated content that @puravidabracelets is working so hard to encourage. We see lots of posts that look very similar to the feed posts. A bigger takeaway is that Pura Vida has created and mobilized their community. Their tagged posts are a marketing flywheel of content, so they always have a pool of amazing images to share.
Their active community knows that @puravidabracelets stands for friendship and freedom. Users love generating content inspired by this brand. Followers are also excited about the chance to be featured on the profile’s main feed. Who wouldn’t want to be featured on an account with more than 2 million engaged followers? This is a great way to accent the Pura Vida products and community.
Going back to the profile, we see that @puravidabracelets is linking directly to their website. They’re not using a Linktree or any other bio linking tool because their profile and highlights already include all their most important information. Top-of-the-funnel messaging is already featured to Instagram users, so no other user education is necessary.
What Could Be Done Better
At first glance, Pura Vida’s storefront is beautiful and highlights all of their jewelry options. This page offers a great look for a landing page from Instagram because it’s aesthetically pleasing, it aligns with their branding, and it immediately shows users the product line. The store also looks similar to Instagram with a grid of products.
One opportunity with this storefront is that Pura Vida Bracelets could feature more photos showing their products in action. Their Instagram feed is full of real people wearing Pura Vida jewelry. I would love to see this trend carried over to the store. We can find these aspirational shots when we scroll through images, but I would prefer to see these Instagram-style images first and the product shots second.
Another change we could make is by reducing some of the content on the storefront. The storefront features so many pieces that it can be overwhelming. It would be more impactful for visitors from Instagram to see only the jewelry that’s currently being featured on the Instagram feed. This would maintain a holistic experience as well as make it easier for users to find the exact pieces they’ve just seen.
We also don’t see any social proof on this storefront. Ideally, there should be embedded social posts, in-line CTAs, testimonials, and other forms of community building on this page. As a new visitor who might be learning about Pura Vida for the first time, social proof can be the deciding factor for conversion. It’s important to have this information prominently featured on a sales page to capture these new shoppers.
Analytics / Insights
@puravidabracelets posts about three times a day, which is an awesome strategy. Followers can see new content around 20 times a week, so Pura Vida is a regular and enjoyable part of many people’s social experience.
It seems like this account is mainly targeting women. We don’t see many men featured in the content. This is an opportunity to engage a broader audience and reach out to men through their posts. On the other hand, @puravidabracelets may have already found that their core audience is organically women. If they’re leaning into that demographic on purpose, this can reinforce their base audience.
Community engagement is quite high on this account with many likes and comments on each post. @Puravidabracelets is also proactive about responding to comments and engaging users on their feed. This drives their content strategy of generating more user-generated content.
Key Takeaways
- @Puravidabracelets has a strong, cohesive brand identity. Their feed highlights more than just their jewelry and shares the brand’s love of friendship, freedom, and adventure.
- They have extremely strong user engagement, which they’ve leveraged into a flywheel of user-generated content.
- All the top-level information is easy to find on their Instagram page, from their history and mission to current campaigns, products, and contact information.
- Their shopping page should be optimized to include the same user-generated content and sense of community that’s found on their Instagram account.
Tune in next week to see our next installment of the Social Spotlight Series. Join our mailing list to get Goodwin knowledge and insights like this delivered straight to your inbox!