How to Get More Followers on Instagram
Siva Yenneti
President at ITVibes, specializing in Digital Marketing & Business Growth Strategies
As Instagram continues to gain popularity, more and more businesses are taking advantage of the platform to portray their brand’s image while attracting new customers. With more than 500 million daily active users, chances are your target audience is scrolling through Instagram posts every day. However, if you aren’t already a famous Instagram influencer, you’ll quickly realize that it takes carefully curated content, a strategic plan, and a lot of hard work to increase your following.
Are You Trying To Gain More Instagram Followers?
The social networking giant is the first of its kind– Focused on highly engaging visuals with short captions, turning average people into famous influencers. Even if you haven’t started an account, it’s not too late to create a free Instagram account. Once you start your Instagram profile, make sure you’re using a business account, and your posts are public. To gain more followers, make sure you’re doing this in your Instagram strategy:
- Give Instagram Users a Reason to Follow You
- Only Share Your Best Shots
- Follow a Schedule
- Identify Your Brand Voice
- Relevant Hashtags
1) Give Instagram Users A Reason To Follow You
Gaining likes on your photo is relatively easy. The tricky part is attracting and keeping long term followers. You want to provide a short snapshot in your Instagram bio about who your brand is and what they do. Make sure this is interesting enough to attract the attention of new customers.
Pro Tip: Include a call to action in your Instagram bio with a link to your brand’s website to gain more visitors to your website!
2) Only Share Your Best Shots
Instagram is all about beautiful photos that cause users to stop and double tap the photo for a like. Read and study photography and videography best practices. Follow accounts and blogs that offer tips for sharing Instagram content that increases engagement. Shoot, shoot, and reshoot. Expect to take a dozen photos before you capture that quality photo that’s worth sharing. Whether you manage your content or hire someone to, understand that it takes practice and patience to establish your brand’s presence while sharing photos that people can relate to.
3) Follow A Schedule
Create a demographic-specific posting schedule. Who is your target audience and when do they have downtime? Remember, people use the app when they have a moment to themselves. Do some research to see when your niche is the most active. Also, take advantage of Instagram’s free analytics. Once you start posting and gain followers, you’ll be able to see what time of day they’re the most active. Create a schedule, collect and analyze the data, and adjust accordingly.
4) Identify Your Brand Voice
Your Instagram feed is your chance to establish your brand’s voice. Many famous Instagramers stick to a color theme and use the same filters to attract their niche. While others use industry-specific statistics and polls in posts and Instagram stories. You can even share behind the scenes photos of your company. Did you recently go out for a company lunch or team building exercise? Don’t be afraid to share these brand photos to help your audience personally connect to your brand.
5) Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags are everything on Instagram! When it comes to promoting your Instagram account, make sure you’re using a combination of niche specific and popular hashtags. The platform makes it really easy to track how many people each hashtag is reaching. It also provides similar relevant hashtags for you to use. Simply type in a hashtag into the search bar and you can see how many posts are being shared with that hashtag. Consider hashtags that have between 500-500,000 posts. Just like your posting schedule, collect hashtag data, analyze it, and adjust accordingly.
Conclusion
If you haven’t jumped on the Instagram bandwagon, you’re missing out on an essential, free tool for your marketing strategy. While gaining followers may seem like a chore, if you follow the above tips, you’ll be surprised at how your number of followers soar.
Are you interested in learning more about social media marketing for your brand? Join the conversation to speak with our team of digital marketing experts.