How to Grow Your Instagram Followers: A Strategic Plan

Instagram is definitely one of the most used social media apps in the world. With nearly 1 billion users, it is needless to say that Instagram is nothing less than a boon for businesses all over the globe. When it comes to social media, engagement on an Instagram page shows its hold over the audience. A business with a strong foothold on Instagram indicates its popularity among the masses. It is especially a good sign to have a good engagement ratio irrespective of number of followers. This is because increasing engagement on your page will bring more and more audience to your page. And this audience paves a way to get more business. The question of growing Instagram following does not have one definite rigid answer. There are multiple factors that influence the growth of Instagram followers. It might look pretty simple. But finding a newer audience and convincing them to follow you is not an easy task. If it were easy, everyone would do it. These are some strategic ways of conducting your Instagram page to grow Instagram followers. Some of them are:

Create attractive posts:

If your posts are attractive and relatable, there is no better strategy to follow. Making your work speak for itself is the ideal way to grow Instagram followers. Content that is fresh and pleasing attracts people. It becomes too tough for people to ignore. One of the best parts of people on social media platforms like Instagram is that they are enthusiastic. This means that they readily share posts that have good material in them. They tag other people and share them on their stories for their followers to see. This is the most basic way of how to grow Instagram following.

Keep regular intervals between each post:

Contrary to popular belief, you should not be posting low-quality content every hour of the day. This is because it does not increase the followers of your Instagram account. People tend to get rather annoyed by it. There is a reason people have a spam folder in their email accounts. Posting after a long period of time does no good for the audience. They get fed up with waiting around for fresh posts. So, they move on to other accounts with regular posts. A steady flow of good content is much more effective in this respect. Rather than posting 100 sub-standard posts a day, you should post 5-6 good quality posts per week. This has shown to be more engaging and fruitful for brands and Influencers.

Custom-make your target followers:

Instagram has a number of options for businesses to bloom and boom in its environment. There is an option to create a niche of target audience towards which the posts are mainly directed at. In the ‘Audience dashboard’ option in the settings of Instagram, there is an option of ‘Ads Manager’. The next option of ‘Custom Audience’ will help you pick out the people who will be your target audience. These people convert the time and effort put into making the brand popular online into sales and profits.

Motivate people to share your content:

If your content is good, your biggest advertisers are your followers. These are the most reliable source of advertisement that a brand can create. Word of mouth from real people is most certainly beneficial. It creates genuine interest and trust among your followers. This also opens up your business to all those new people. They are viewing your posts about your products on the accounts of your followers. Moreover, it is important to motivate them. This keeps them interested in supporting the brand or business. You can do this by posting their shares on the brand’s Instagram account stories. A little recognition to them can go a long way for good business.

Check here How content marketing can help in creating good content.

Hold giveaways and contests:

A little ignition to the competitive spirit of the people can increase the number of Instagram followers. Holding small contests will give incentives for people to interact and engage in your content more. It might even be a contest to bring in the largest number of people to follow the page. Recognition and a small gift or token signify nothing but a positive response. This is a win-win situation. People always love giveaways. You can distribute samples among the most dedicated followers of the account. This is a good way of appreciating their faith in the brand.

Go for collaborations with other Influencers:

Audiences tend to show a positive response in some specific ways. It can happen when two people from the same niche of products come together on Instagram for creating content. This can generate a lot of excitement among the followers of both the Influencers. Collaboration with an Influencer is very beneficial for business. An Influencer with a massive Instagram following is a bonus. This increases the brand’s visibility among the followers of the other person. Afterward, you can tag them in your posts. You can also get mentioned by them in comments or otherwise. This is indeed helpful. This adds to the credibility and fan base of the brand. It ensures mutual benefit and a wider net for the audience from both sides to grow Instagram followers.

Interact with your audience:

Many times there is only one-way interaction by the audience in posts via comments and tags. This is not beneficial to the brand or business. However, building a sustainable followers base is not easy. This is because it requires two-way communications. People certainly feel encouraged when their comments receive replies from the brands. Moreover, questions can be solved and queries can be cleared on online platforms like Quora. This increases visibility and brings a newer pair of eyes to the business. Talking to them and knowing what they want helps to create the desired content.

Use hashtags which supplement your content:

The hashtags contain certain keywords that are essential to bringing in a newer audience. These hashtags cover the audience base that has not yet been captured. These hashtags should have relatable keywords that are relevant to the post. When people search for these keywords on Instagram, related posts come up on their screen. Usually, people look up keywords that are related to their interests or about any particular event which is currently popular among the people in social media sites. Using specific keywords related to events reduces competition with other people and posts with the same hashtags. Avoiding generic keywords really helps. Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post and you should put it to the best use.

Advertise your followers base:

In the case of a business, you can advertise your own products and services. An Influencer can also advertise the products of brands and businesses. A large base of followers can help monetize the time and effort invested in building Instagram followers over the years. These sponsored posts are very similar to normal Instagram posts apart from the tag ‘Sponsored’ on top of such posts. You can try getting your name attached to a long-standing reputed brand. This can help increase the viewers of your Instagram page and grow Instagram followers. It provides trust and reliability from the followers of that company or business.

Be as relatable as possible:

Generally, on social media platforms, people and businesses with simplicity and humility tend to have more followers. People are attracted to brands that are not rigid. Besides, they usually prefer brands with relatable values. The likability of a person increases when they are genuine and candid. But putting up a facade to gain more followers doesn’t really work. Also, an Influencer with more of commoner vibes tends to have more followers than a pretentious one. This is the ultimate answer to the question “How to grow Instagram followers?”

This blog was first publihed here.

Copyright All rights reserved. No parts of the content of this website may be reproduced or distributed in public, without the prior written permission of the publisher. All images are copyright to their respective owners and are protected under international copyright laws.

Good Read – Chatbots Impact on Digital Marketing 2019