The Do's and Don'ts of Instagram Dispensary Marketing

Cannabis brands that approach Instagram without a clear strategy either plateau quickly or risk getting flagged by the platform entirely. This webinar with Eduardo Silva lays out the specific do's and don'ts of Instagram marketing for dispensaries — what to do to grow, and what to avoid to stay on the platform and keep your account healthy.The session covers the behaviors, content types, and practices that build a strong and durable Instagram presence for cannabis dispensaries, as well as the missteps that put accounts at risk. Social media managers, dispensary marketing teams, and cannabis brand marketers who use Instagram as a key channel will find this a direct and experience-backed reference.

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Key Insights

Cannabis content marketing builds compounding organic traffic: each published piece of quality content adds to your search visibility, creating an asset that generates traffic indefinitely unlike paid advertising that stops the moment you pause spending.
Educational content that answers the questions cannabis consumers are actually searching for - product comparisons, consumption guides, effects information, local market coverage - is the highest-performing content type for cannabis SEO because it aligns with real search intent.
Dispensary-specific local content - blog posts about your local cannabis market, staff picks, local event coverage - builds community relevance and local search visibility that general cannabis content cannot create.
Content quality matters more than content volume - one thoroughly researched, well-written article that answers a specific cannabis consumer question comprehensively outperforms five thin, generic posts both for SEO and for brand credibility.
Cannabis content must navigate compliance requirements that vary by state - specific claims about effects, medical applications, and product comparisons may be restricted in some markets, making state-specific compliance review part of any content publishing process.

Expert Answers

[{What is cannabis content marketing?}

Cannabis content marketing is the practice of creating and publishing useful, educational, and engaging content to attract cannabis consumers to your website, build brand authority, and convert readers into customers. It includes blog posts, buying guides, strain and product guides, consumption education, local cannabis news, and other content formats that serve real consumer needs. Unlike paid advertising, content marketing generates organic traffic from search engines that continues to accumulate over time, making it one of the most cost-effective long-term growth strategies for cannabis businesses.

{What kind of content should cannabis dispensaries create?}

Cannabis dispensaries should create content that answers the questions their potential customers are searching for. High-performing cannabis content categories include: strain guides and reviews, product category explainers (what are live resin cartridges?), effects and experience guides (best products for sleep, best strains for focus), beginner guides (how to use a vape pen, cannabis dosing for beginners), local market content (best dispensaries in [city], cannabis events in [city]), and staff picks and dispensary-specific curated guides. Educational content that is genuinely useful performs better than promotional content for both SEO and reader trust.

{How does cannabis content marketing improve SEO?}

Cannabis content marketing improves SEO by creating pages on your website that are optimized for the specific keywords cannabis consumers search for, building the topical authority signals that tell Google your site is a credible source on cannabis topics, generating the internal linking structure and website depth that improves overall domain authority, and attracting natural backlinks from other cannabis and related sites that reference your content. A consistent content publishing program that targets real search queries compounds in effectiveness over time as each piece adds to your overall search visibility.]

Webinar Highlights

00:00 - Why Content Marketing Belongs in Every Cannabis Marketing Strategy

The session opens with the case for content marketing as a compounding, long-term growth channel for cannabis businesses and how it complements paid advertising.

12:00 - Keyword Research and Content Strategy for Cannabis SEO

This section covers how to identify the specific topics and keywords cannabis consumers are searching for, how to evaluate keyword difficulty and traffic potential, and how to build a content calendar around search intent.

24:00 - Content Formats, Quality Standards, and Publishing Process

The webinar covers the content types that perform best for cannabis dispensaries and brands, the quality standards that separate SEO-effective content from content that fails to rank, and how to build a consistent publishing process.

36:00 - Measuring Content Marketing Performance

The session closes with the metrics that best capture content marketing performance, including organic traffic growth, keyword ranking changes, and the content-to-customer conversion tracking that connects content investment to business results.

Frequently Asked Questions

[ {How does cannabis content marketing work?}

Cannabis content marketing works by publishing useful, educational content on your website that is optimized for the terms cannabis consumers search for. When a potential customer searches for information about a cannabis topic - a product type, a consumption method, local dispensary recommendations - well-optimized content from your website appears in search results and brings them to your site. From there, internal links to your menu, product pages, and contact information convert a portion of those readers into customers. The compounding nature of SEO means each piece of quality content adds to your visibility permanently.

{How often should cannabis dispensaries publish content?}

Cannabis dispensaries should aim to publish at least two to four high-quality blog posts or content pieces per month to build meaningful SEO momentum. Consistent publication matters more than high volume - an irregular publishing schedule that produces occasional content underperforms a steady cadence of two solid pieces monthly. Quality should never be sacrificed for volume: thin, poorly researched content does not rank well and can actually hurt your credibility. For dispensaries with limited content production resources, focusing on fewer, more comprehensive pieces that thoroughly answer specific cannabis consumer questions is the better strategy.

{What makes cannabis content rank on Google?}

Cannabis content ranks on Google when it thoroughly satisfies the search intent behind a specific query, is well-structured with clear headings and easy navigation, includes the relevant keywords naturally within the content, demonstrates E-E-A-T signals (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) through detailed knowledge and accurate information, and is supported by a website with reasonable overall domain authority. For cannabis specifically, content that is clearly educational rather than purely promotional, includes accurate product and effects information, and is written with apparent expertise consistently performs better than thin or generic content.

{How do cannabis dispensaries measure content marketing ROI?}

Cannabis dispensary content marketing ROI is measured through a combination of organic traffic growth (tracked in Google Analytics and Google Search Console), keyword ranking improvements for target terms, leads and online order conversions attributed to organic search traffic, and the customer acquisition cost savings that organic traffic generates compared to paid channels. Because content marketing compounds over time, the best way to evaluate ROI is through trailing 90-day performance compared to prior periods rather than evaluating individual pieces in isolation. Dispensaries that have built substantial organic traffic libraries often find that content-driven customers have higher lifetime value than paid-channel customers because they arrived through genuine interest.

{Does content marketing work for cannabis despite advertising restrictions?}

Content marketing actually becomes more valuable for cannabis businesses precisely because of advertising restrictions. While cannabis advertising faces significant limitations on mainstream social platforms and search engines, content marketing is governed by Google's organic search guidelines rather than advertising policies - meaning a well-optimized cannabis educational article can rank on Google Search even when paid cannabis ads face restrictions in that same environment. Content marketing also builds brand credibility through demonstrated expertise in a way that paid advertising cannot, which is especially valuable for cannabis brands building trust with consumers who are new to cannabis or skeptical of marketing claims. ]

Webinar Full Transcript

[ {Full Transcript}

good morning good afternoon if you're joining us from the east coast we will be getting underway here in just a moment we'll wait for a couple more of our attendees should join and we'll get started wonderful thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to join us for this webinar on instagram once again my name is eduardo silva here quick introduction on myself um today we're going to be speaking about the do's and don'ts of instagram dispensary marketing and um you know how to get likes score leads and grow your brand and also today we'll be covering the vital things you need to know to safeguard your account and reach more potential customers as we get started here once again eduardo silva i'm the vp of sales here at foot traffic i'm really really happy that you decided to take some time out of your day to join us um if you are in the east coast good afternoon to you if you're on the west coast good morning and thank you for your time once again we're certainly really happy to be sharing some more industries uh uh topics and uh today's is probably one of the most popular ones we hear quite often of individuals wanting to learn more about so let's uh keep moving along here a quick background on foot traffic we are a dispensary digital marketing firm out of the united states but we cover all of north america we've been in business for five years now focusing solely in the cannabis space this has been our domain since day one five years ago when we kicked it off in southern california during the medicinal um dispensary movement there and then later on through the recreational delivery and now throughout all of north america as well as in canada so we're really really happy to be part of the industry and being able to share some value-adds as we continue to grow let's get ready for a webinar here today so a couple housekeeping items we will be moving through a lot of content that our team has worked tirelessly to put together so do take a moment to grab your cell phones either put it facing down so you have less distractions turn off your instagram account for a moment and also maybe put it on do not disturb finally do familiarize yourself with the interface okay on zoom so we do have a q and a function here uh we did already have one question come across so go ahead and feel free to ask any of these questions in the q a button this is where our moderators and panelists will be able to answer those questions live okay and while you ask those questions we will continue to move forward with the content here so make sure you do stick around we do have a deal here for whomever is attending today which we will be sharing with you towards the end of the webinar why instagram now we all know what instagram is by now but it has quickly grown into one of the most popular social media platforms in the world its ability to connect people around the world with beautiful visuals and thoughtful captions has created a unique community instagram is a visual storytelling that sparks the imagination and allows branch to connect with customers in a different way it's a great platform for brands but it's also a great platform for individuals and often these individuals like to share the things they are enjoying including your products and instagram is one of the best discovery engines for cannabis dispensaries it's top funnel which means that it is the beginning of the impression with any client out there and ideal for brand awareness only not for generating e-commerce sales not to be confused with that okay so it is a brand awareness platform and so we do need to create that distinction from day one now let's talk a little bit about the dangers of instagram at the same time many dispensaries have learned the hard way that there are that there seems to be a double standard for dispensaries here having your account shut down or shadow banned is pretty common for dispensaries dispensaries can invest thousands and thousands of dollars building up their following create content only to have it stripped away if your account is shut down you lose access to all of your followers you don't own that information the same way you own your customer database of email addresses and phone numbers okay instagram owns that account and data you can also lose your photos if you don't have them saved elsewhere so do create a plan b here it's really important if you are shadow band which is a term that i just learned today as a matter of fact shadow band is quite interesting because your instagram account becomes less effective you can continue to post but your images won't show up on their hashtags so let's talk about how to avoid these dangers and safeguard your account so you can build brand awareness start with a bio okay your bio is your introduction to the world at the same time because of instagram's draconian view on cannabis you can't be 100 up front you will want to create an instagram um or interesting bio on instagram that doesn't mention cannabis marijuana weed or anything nicknames like mary jane okay um you also want your bio to say that your content is only for 21 and up people okay or audience members some something along the lines of san francisco dispensary giving you a behind-the-scenes look at our community and providing education 21 plus only should be fine just make sure to infuse anything you write with the brand voice which is the next step we're going to be talking about now tracking your stats which is our number two recommendation here if you're not sure what's working or if certain types of posts are better for your audience you need to track your stats how many likes are you getting how many comments which posts are performing well for your different stats once you know what your customers want to engage with you one second here looks like we just had a little bit of a of a glitch one moment all right all right it looks like we're back so number two track your stats once you know what your customers want to engage with you on you can create more posts like that if you don't track you will end up posting blindly this could slow your follower growth and just stall your engagement overall if you convert your account to a instagram business account you will gain access to more data and analytics but you will also put your account at risk so we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along here the other do number three is take it off the platform convert your followers into email and sms subscribers remember what i said earlier you do not own this contact information of your followers so it's important for you to actually create this b plan right engage with them outside of ig as i already mentioned you don't own this follower information so if your account gets shut down you will lose the ability to stay in touch with them to avoid this make sure you regularly share your sms opt-in phone number such as text herb to 61199 right as an example or encourage people to join your private sms list or include call to actions to join your email list this way you will always have ways to market to them outside of ig now number four engage with your followers social media it's all about connecting so don't just post and run make sure that you respond to comments and to create posts that makes people want to comment right and engage with them dial into what's happening in your area and in your industry ask for opinions ask for feedback you can even just ask for silly weed jokes right the point is to get people talking and creating a conversation and don't be selfish engage with your audience outside of your own instagram profile and engage with your audience on their profiles consumers love to wake up in the morning and find that they have favorite local dispensaries commenting on their posts it builds brand loyalty it keeps you top of mind with your followers and it's just overall great practice have you ever been on instagram at 5 p.m on a sunday evening well it's pretty dead if you have so people are more active on instagram at certain times find out what time it's for it's best for your target audience and make sure that you're posting uh on your profile during those times so that you will actually get your audience to see your post otherwise your engagement will suffer and a pro tip here so instagram users are very active on the thursday friday and saturday nights and after work during the week so schedule your posts around the right times to get in front of your audience also future coven people are spending the most time online in history and that means that more activity is actually taking place on instagram so more of your followers actually up there engaging right this is a golden opportunity to reach your audience as well as grow your following so number six do use the story feature there are some people that actually do some uh pushback here for some uh users when instagram rolls this actual uh roll this feature out right the storage features uh it seemed like it was just going to be kind of a competition with snapchat it wasn't going to be actually uh growing as a practice but people love them and they watch them all the time if you want to get the attention of your audience right you can actually use these stories and because they're actually on the top of the app when you launch it it's a great way to get content in the front of your audience faster and the great thing about stories is that it's informal and you get to show behind the scenes maybe a look around your brand the butt tenders uh at the front of the line and really kind of speak with your audience on a more personal level post a few stories throughout the day for maximum visibility and have fun with it and here's a pro tip for you reach 10 000 followers on your account and you can actually enable the ability to launch the swipe up campaigns with a link to a third-party website this can be a landing page for your customers to join their community by providing their email address and even a phone number outside of ig so great way to use this moving right along here hashtags some people love hashtags some people hate them and if you are a hater it's time to get over it and start using it right away because hashtags are a popular way to browse post and build community your followers can even choose to follow hashtags now so post using those hashtags and he will show up right on their feed as soon as they pop up into the the app there so if you're not sure where to get started here's a couple ideas for you first you should have your own dispensary hashtag that's kind of a given which could be your name uh and you should use industry and local hashtags so that you will actually show up for those individuals local check what your other dispensaries are using check what your followers are using and find the hashtags that are most in line with your brand and just go to town really use these hashtags because you once again can i can't stress enough because hashtags can also be followed right so it's a great way to drive that engagement our eighth do here on uh on this list of of dues that we're sharing with you is consistency with your post getting a post up every day is hard and it takes a lot of time that doesn't mean you should just power uh you know through these posts whenever you're able to get through them if you don't post consistently or engage with your followers regularly you won't get notice nowhere you actually build any brand loyalty people's attention span are so short now and we all know this if you don't create a consistent present presence your followers will just move on and you will lose all of the brand equity you've been working so hard to create to make sure you're consistent create a plan and a post schedule create a theme you should create a strategy by the quarter maybe an implementation plan by the month week or even down to the day you don't necessarily have to post daily but you should post several times per week number nine eu yes there are certain things you should and shouldn't post about and we're going to talk about those in a moment however despite those don'ts if you will you should still be you use your brand voice and style are you snarky funny helpful silly informative if you don't know develop this persona dial into the tone you want to convey and make sure it aligns with your brand and your overall vision then make sure that everything you post aligns with that now let's talk about what you should do and not do or excuse me what you should not do on instagram because you just went over a list of dues okay so the first don't do list prices this should be sort of self-explanatory for those of you who have already tried to list your dispensary on uh instagram um so if you want to keep your active account don't list the prices product availability or information about upcoming sales the whole issue with cannabis on instagram is that it's still classified as schedule one drug at the federal level if instagram thinks you're trying to sell cannabis you are done don't post these things uh in the image or in the comments unless you want to lose your account the instagram community guidelines clearly state that the buying or selling of illegal prescription drugs even if legal in your region are not allowed and this is a direct quote another one here for you don't do number two okay don't link to your products your menu or a store locator just like you don't want to post prices you don't want to link to a cannabis for sale link remember instagram is meant for brand awareness not driving sales the minute you start promoting the upcoming coming vendor they sale you put your yourself and also your account at risk a follower can actually report you and for good reason your post will be taken down uh or even worse your account will be shut down and then you will lose all your followers once again right you do not want to risk this unfortunately that also means that not linking to your menu or your store locator there is no direct e-commerce benefit here but once again we do have a try to strategy for you to actually engage with these individuals outside of ig to drive further sales right in your e-commerce but yes this is probably what people want to see when they do click on your bio right is go directly to your products and perhaps the smart thing is to just not do this instead you can link to educational pages like your blogs you can even send followers to a landing page to become a part of your community by providing their email or phone number this information is fine promotions are not don't just power uh through posting um and just don't post whatever throwing pictures up without thinking about the implications is always a bad idea just remember that and everything you post will reflect on your brand create a style that represents your brand well and is in line with your brand voice think about the styles of the images that you're posting as well as words of your choice okay that do meet your persona it's okay to be irreverent and use slang but you just need to make sure that it aligns with your brand for example if you're a medical dispensary and you're using slang it may not seem authentic don't post stock images instagram is a visual platform as we've discussed in the beginning because it's all about the imagery and the emotions they evoke you need to create and post original work to really get noticed take pictures and make videos and have your butt tenders do the same you can do shorts at work and use images that your staff is willing to share that shows them doing things like hiking or which showcase beautiful spots in your community this is always great use as well i mentioned earlier that you shouldn't post pictures of products now you probably know that there are plenty of accounts out there within the cannabis community that show pictures of different vape pens edibles and other products there are also plenty of accounts that post close-ups of flowers now do you realize that this is a gamble yes you can do it and again without mentioning sales availability or pricing but there is still a chance you will get shut down if you want to be as safe as possible don't post any product pictures is one of the recommendations here if you don't mind living on the edge however a little way how many people uh pick product pictures you want to feature and how you want to approach it make sure you aren't promoting anything for example if you just wrote a blog post about concentrates and you can show a close close-up shot of a of a dab and mention in the caption that you have some helpful info on your blog don't mention cannabis don't mention consuming it don't mention buying or selling it and maybe this will actually be safe right i can't say it enough uh this is the biggest issue that dispensers have with instagram you can't overtly sell on this platform instagram is meant for brand awareness and loyalty not for sales no consumption our last don't today don't post images of people using cannabis this comes across as promoting the use of illegal substances now we know that legally consuming cannabis is fine but instagram has chosen to follow federal law on this topic since he operates across the entire world platform right save yourself the stress of having your account erased skip the picture of people enjoying a joint and packing a bong okay once again reference to community guidelines provided by instagram if you want to go into a little bit more depth on this topic stay private is another potential option here i want to address one more concern i've heard from the spencers about their accounts should you keep your account private or make it public if you want to control who sees your content make your account private this will lessen the chance of your account getting erased but it will create more work for you and it will likely reduce the number of followers you will get it's also a good idea to look at every flowers or followers excuse me profile to confirm they are 21 and older before approving them to view your private profile you don't want an underage following your private your dispensary profile this is really big if you have a public account you also have the option to have a business account this can be a hit or miss on dispensaries because you don't want to seem like you're selling or promoting cannabis you want um you know to be careful with this so you may not want to have the business account after all if you you don't want to really play this risky maneuver if you choose to have a business account um in order to have access to the features like analytics or kind of some more advanced profile settings that it comes with just make sure that you stay within the do's and don'ts so you keep your account safe and sound now these do's and don'ts aren't a guarantee that you won't get shut down um but they should help you reduce your chances of having your account taken away and i hope you guys have found it helpful and you know if you were seeking a some insight as to how to really monetize and drive more ecommerce engagement we did put a deal here for the attendees today which is a free trial of google ads now you may be thinking what's the correlation between instagram and google ads well google ads just happens to be a way that you can engage probably the same audience but just in a different platform that really makes up 93 of all internet search traffic across north america right and you can do this in a very localized manner and foot traffic has actually been doing this compliantly for the last five years so if you have been dancing around with the option of potentially leveraging google ads or doing some advanced advertisements you really drive up your e-commerce presence uh this could be your chance right just get started uh test the waters no obligation here um and uh you know we can get you set up fairly quickly so we're going to turn over to q a now if you want to navigate to the section here on the zoom panel so if you go to the top there q a share any questions you have on the topic we would be certainly happy to address these now one question that already came across was will we be actually providing this recording available after the webinar and yes absolutely will be available on our website um so do uh navigate to foot traffic dot co forward slash webinars and we'll be happy to um share that information with you and we do have some questions coming across here do you get notified when you have been shadow banned a new word that i discovered today shadow band and the answer is unfortunately no you do not get notified and this is really terrible right once again if you do not want to risk any of this this is why we provide a lot of this do and don't information right because ultimately you're investing a lot of time energy as well as money right into driving engagement and if you do that and you get shadow ban and your posts are not really making its impact that's a really hamper your your capability of being impactful there right so once again uh you will not get notified be here and also do keep in mind that if you get shadow band another point here your analytics comments and likes will be drastically reduced so you won't be getting access to that looks like we have yet one other one here how would you know if you get shadow band that is a great question um let me check in here believe we do have some some um best practices around that give me one second and we can also answer that question for you offline too to save time that is a great question and the answer is you will not get notified you will probably hear from either one of your followers perhaps even one of your team members that follows your profile that's probably going to be the best way where you're going to actually post something and somebody probably in your team who's following you will be able to inform you how little visibility they received and or no notification whatsoever that um that post was even placed on your account so that's usually how that works unfortunately other questions great question so far one more question here and on google ads can you track analytics on google ads and absolutely yes i will say that one of the greatest things about google ads is that you see real time results okay and the beautiful thing about google ads is that one you um can link the ads directly to your menu uh that's what we do for our clients and in addition to that um you know it's real time results right uh and he appears when your clients are actually searching on google for relevant terminology and keywords right so that's really really important so you're getting in front of individuals you're getting the top of their results when they are most active and interested in buying your product great question there so full analytics capability we'll share more information with you if you'd like to find out more offline and once again i want to thank everybody great questions great participation from the the audience here so just to recap we will be posting this on foot traffic dot co forward slash webinars if you would like to recap it and if you would like to get in touch with us we will post a link here now on how to get in touch with us and um you know happy to take any questions offline as well provide you some insight ask you some of the other marketing tips that we may be able to share with you in order to improve your presence online engagement with your audience but i want to thank you again for taking the time out of your day out of your afternoon if you're on the east coast to join us have a wonderful day and thank you again ]