Small business owners, digital marketers, and social media managers, if you want to create a successful Instagram marketing strategy, you need to understand your niche and their content preferences.

Not only that, investing in the right tools and even professionals to create visually appealing content is what will make your posts stand out. Then, mastering the use of hashtags is your next step to optimize your content’s discoverability. Finally, if you want to go beyond organic reach, strategically placing ads to engage your target audience.

Considering those steps, I’ve put together this Best Courses Guide (BCG) with a selection of the top-rated courses from Class Central’s catalog of over 350 Instagram Marketing courses. Those courses will give you the foundation to build your instagram marketing strategy with confidence.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• Courses Overview
• Why You Should Trust Us
• How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Here are our top picks

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Courses Overview

• Together, they account for 392K enrollments
• The single most popular course has over 241K enrollments
• The most featured provider is Domestika with 2 courses
• 1 course is free, 5 are paid.

Best Instagram Marketing Strategy With Free Certificate (Hubspot)

Instagram Marketing Strategy is a free course that teaches how to build and implement a successful Instagram marketing strategy covering the basics of how Instagram works and how to use it for your business. This course is aimed at social media marketers, marketing professionals, and content creators.

This course includes study guides, practical exercises, 6 quizzes to test your knowledge, and a lively community of learners. After completing all lessons, you can then take the final exam to test what you’ve learned and receive a free certificate.

You’ll learn:

• Key components of a successful Instagram marketing strategy
• Techniques for optimizing and analyzing your Instagram business profile
• Tips for creating visually appealing and impactful Instagram content and ads
• Strategies for growing and retaining an authentic Instagram following
• Best practices for setting up and analyzing Instagram ads to align with business goals.

After completing this course, you can take How to Advertise on Instagram, also by Hubspot.

Hubspot provides a variety of courses related to marketing and sales, including:

• Facebook Ads Training: How to Build Great Ads & Audiences
• YouTube Marketing Course
• LinkedIn Marketing for Business
• Social Media Marketing
• Inbound Marketing.

Best Instagram Marketing Bootcamp with Live Sessions (Noble Desktop)

If you prefer instructor-led learning, Noble Desktop’s Instagram Marketing Bootcamp offers real-time feedback and accountability that pre-recorded courses can’t match.

What I find interesting is that this program runs both in-person (NYC campus) and online (Zoom). Even if you’re attending online, you’ll have individual attention and can see other students in the classroom. You’ll be able to interact with instructors, receive feedback, and ask questions during sessions. Plus, you’ll get access to class recordings and workbooks – pretty helpful for catching up if you miss a class or reviewing what you learned.

Key Benefits

• Small class sizes (8-15 students)
• Certificate of completion to showcase achievements
• Free retake within one year
• Detailed class files with real-world projects
• Can be upgraded to the Digital Marketing Certificate or Social Media Marketing Certificate

Noble Desktop knows what they’re doing – they’ve been around for over three decades providing instruction with industry experts. So you can rest assured your mentorship will not be with someone who just finished the course. Don’t take my word for it – student reviews on Yelp and Google praise their practical approach and instructor quality.

What You’ll Learn

• Instagram’s platform, history, and trends to leverage its social impact
• Successful social media strategy, including content themes and visual consistency, to boost engagement
• Create posts, stories, and reels while learning about editing tools, captions, and ADA-compliant photo descriptions
• Learn hashtag strategies, from research and branded hashtags to high- and low-density hashtag usage
• Build a community by understanding your audience’s needs and engagement
• Establish a post cadence to schedule consistent content and maintain a strategy
• Manage a business page, including crafting posts, reels, and stories to showcase your brand
• Instagram’s paid advertising tools and Shopify integration to optimize campaigns

Flexible Schedule Options

• 2 days full-time (weekdays)
• 1 week part-time (evenings)

“I was skeptical about taking an online course, but this is just what I was looking for. I wish I signed up for more classes because there is so much to learn! The instructor is relatable, which was one concern I had, especially coming from a place where I didn’t know much about the topic. I am much more confident about my Instagram knowledge after this course.” – Monica Golden, Noble Desktop learner.

Best Instagram Strategy Course for Business Growth with Dot Lung

If you have fewer than 10k followers, this course is for you. This course will teach you a proven method to generate brand awareness, build a relationship with your audience, and communicate with purpose. It is perfect for freelancers, coaches, consultants, and small business owners. The method can also be applied to personal branding.

You’ll learn:

• The Dragon Framework for creating engaging content
• Strategies for posting on Instagram, including carousels, images, and stories
• How to create a content calendar and measure your results
• Techniques for increasing engagement and building meaningful connections
• Tips on using hashtags, engagement pods, and bots effectively

By the end of this course you will deliver a project on “creating a month-long calendar full of engaging social media posts for your business”. Once you submit your project, you can receive comments and feedback from other students.

This course was also featured on the Best Social Media Marketing Courses.

Best Course for Instagram Influencers with Jun Wu

This class is designed for creators who want to become influencers on Instagram, build a community, and generate income from their profiles. Throughout the course, you will gain step-by-step guidance on crafting a unique voice and identity that gets respect and likability.

What you’ll learn:

• Techniques to develop a unique and memorable Instagram identity
• Strategies for creating engaging and valuable content to retain followers and attract new ones
• Business tactics to convert followers into paying customers and secure sponsorship opportunities
• Use of analytics and algorithm strategies to grow targeted followers and enhance engagement.

You will progress through the lessons with a real-time demonstration provided by the instructor: you can examine the instructor’s own Instagram account, observing firsthand how to apply the techniques effectively. This hands-on approach sets this course apart from others, ensuring that you receive practical and up-to-date knowledge.

Another popular course from Jun Wu is: Instagram Business – Sell On Instagram – for Small business.

Best Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads Course with Maggie Stara

This course will provide you with a realistic approach to Facebook and Instagram Ads with one of the most down-to-earth instructors. You also have access to a well presented workbook to guide you through creating your ads.

The class includes an exclusive downloadable worksheet, 11-pages long, to help you put every lesson into action that can be downloaded before you start the course. This useful PDF will help you identify what sets you apart, how to be strategic about what you share, and how to set goals for your work. They’re designed to use and reuse, giving you tools to rely on again and again.

By the end of this course, you can submit your own project to receive feedback from your peers and instructor.

If you enjoy the instructor style, here are some related courses by Maggie Stara:

• Digital Marketing Strategy: Profitable Sales Funnel Fundamentals
• Powerful Social Media Marketing for Beginners
• Social Media Content Creation: From Beginner to Advanced
• Social Media Marketing: How to Create an Impactful Strategy for Any Business
• Digital Marketing Strategy: Profitable Sales Funnel Mastery.

Stunning Instagram Stories Tips From a Professional Photographer, Mina Barrio

This course is focused on content creation for Instagram. As a photography/video sharing platform, it makes sense you need to understand how to work with great visuals for your content. From Mina Barrio, professional photographer, this course is for designers, illustrators, small business owners, or anyone who wants to learn to use Instagram in a strategic way to gain more visibility with their Stories.

You’ll learn:

• Strategies for using Instagram Stories to drive direct traffic and enhance subscriber engagement
• Techniques for creating and editing photos and videos that captivate and engage followers
• Utilization of advanced tools like Inshot, Canva, and Unfold for professional-grade story layouts
• Best practices for planning and optimizing content to align with specific marketing and engagement goals.

This is a self-paced course with bilingual audio (EN, ES). By the end of this course you will deliver a project on “publishing strategy for Instagram Stories and create a campaign with photos, videos and design just using your mobile device.” Once you finish your project, you can receive comments and feedback from other students.

Why You Should Trust Us

Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.

How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.

First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates. You don’t need to enroll in a university to learn about Instagram Marketing.

When choosing courses, I considered the following factors:

• Renowned Institutions: I looked for recognized institutions in Instagram Marketing
• Instructor experience: I sought instructors with extensive experience in Instagram Marketing and engaging presentation styles
• Popularity: I checked numbers of enrollments and views to find popular courses
• Course content: I examined courses that covered a range of topics and presentation styles, including the basics and more advanced topics. I watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken
• Learner reviews: I read learner reviews (when available) to get a sense of the quality of each course, leveraging the Class Central database with its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider reviews.

Then, I defined the scope for these recommendations. An Instagram Marketing course can cover various topics, so I chose top courses from a range of sub-fields.

Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks. I’m confident these recommendations will be a reliable way to learn about Instagram Marketing.