Businesses that want to use social media to connect with potential clients/customers have many social media websites they can turn to. They have their choice of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so much more. However, many businesses have decided that Instagram is the way to go. And, it’s not hard to see why.
Forrester Research has called Instagram, “King of Social Engagement”, and many well-known brands have a 2.3 percent per-follower interaction rate. This is significantly higher than Facebook, which has an interaction rate of 0.2 percent, and Twitter, which has a 0.02 percent interaction rate.
Since Instagram has more than 500 million active monthly users as well as high engagement rates, companies see it as a must for their success.
7 Ways Your Business Can Increase Instagram Following
If your Instagram following isn’t what you’d like it to be, we’re going to provide you with some methods that will help you to attain more Instagram followers.
1 - Come Up With A Detailed Instagram Approach
The worst thing you can do is post something and hope for the best. Do this, and you’re just wasting time and money. You don’t get any type of return on your investment. Therefore, it’s best to come up with a strategy that lays out what you’re looking for from your Instagram account. What will help you to attain more followers for your business?
It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out on Instagram or altering the efforts you’ve put forth, there are three things that will help you to establish a successful Instagram strategy.
Do Some Homework On The Competition
You need to look at what the competition is doing on Instagram, which will show you four things:
· Provide you with a realistic look at what your actually following could be for your business within the industry
· The content other businesses have used, and if it’s working for them
· How often your audience expects you to post material
· How other companies are handling the audience you want
Come Up With Your Story
It really doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; you’ve got a story to share with your followers on social networks such as Instagram. Enthrall your followers with content that offer some purpose and inspire them to spread the word about your business. The idea to get more followers your Instagram account.
Quench your followers’ curiosity about how you make your product, share a story that defines your brand or ensures the brand is inspirational in some way – showcase your customers’ achievements or lifestyle.
There’s no reason to limit the Instagram strategy to one or two groups. And, the successful brands will tell their stories all at one time and use various social media channels.
Come Up With Goals
Your strategy is only going to be successful if you have goals laid out. After all, you must know what you’re going after. Consider setting goals for the Instagram strategy that can be combined with your business and marketing strategies. It doesn’t matter if the goal is to boost website traffic, increase brand awareness or support a large marketing campaign. You want goals that can be fulfilled.
2 – Have A Visible Instagram Account To Attract More Followers
If you’re having a hard time getting new Instagram followers, an easy solution (although it’s typically overlooked) is to make it easy for folks to find you. Boost the amount of ways these followers can find your account. How can you do this?
Take to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or any social media network where you have an established following and announce that you now have an Instagram account as well. Use paid advertising to boost the posts so that more of the followers will come to the Instagram account.
Link your website to the Instagram account. Add the account to your email signature and add it to a newsletter. This lets more folks who know of your brand to find you on Instagram.
Increase visibility by following people and liking/commenting on pictures they post.
Make sure of hashtags, ensuring the content shows up in searches.
Embed the photos into blog posts.
3 - Develop Highly-Relevant, Super-Quality Content To Boost Your Instagram Follower Base
Here’s what you need to remember: the better the content quality, the more Instagram followers you’re going to end up with. If you post fuzzy, out of focus pictures or if you don’t post pictures that inspire people, you don’t give them a reason to follow your account. What can you do to better the content strategy for your Instagram account?
Find The Right Time Of Day To Post
Use the information you know about your customers to find out when the best time to post on the social media site. If your customers have full-time jobs, they’re not going to be checking their Instagram account between 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Instead, they’ll check their accounts in the early morning hours, at lunch and when they get home from work.
If you want to attract stay-at-home parents, the timeframe to post will change.
How can you figure out when you should post and not post? You’ll need to test the different posting times out. If you notice posts in the morning garner more attention than during the evening hours, then you need to start posting your material during the morning time.
Be Sure You Post Regularly
How often should you post to the account? There’s no specific number, but according to a Simple Measured report, 75 percent of well-known brands make at least one post a week. The biggest point to remember is that you want your pictures to show up in your followers’ feeds. You want to interact with them.
The activity you do, will become visible to them, boosting the chance for you to attain new followers. You want them to see your content – isn’t that why they began following you? If you post irregularly, they’ll become disengaged with the brand.
If you don’t have time to post regular, invest in a program like Buffer or Hootsuite that lets you schedule when the Instagram photos should post as well as their captions.
Utilize Hashtags Effectively
Be sure your captions have pertinent hashtags so that posts will appear to people who have yet to follow you, but search for pictures that relate to the industry and brand. If you’re new to the whole hashtag thing, there are some things you need to understand about how to use them.
What You Should Do When Using Hashtags
Determine What Is Popular – Consider finding a tool such as Picodash that can search for the popular service, product or industry-related hashtags
Come Up With Your Own Hashtag – You can always create your own hashtag to interest the audience. For instance, Herschel Supply uses the #WellTravelled hashtag, which the audience uses to mention their travels. This offers a sense of closeness to the community while also revealing the brand to potential followers.
What You Shouldn’t Do When Using Hashtags
Don’t Excessively Use Hashtags – While hashtags are useful in garnering attention from new followers, it can be distracting to your audience. And, it causes the message you’re trying to convey to be lost.
Avoid Any Hashtag Tricks – Sure, you may see a sudden influx of followers with tags like #follow me or #likeforlike, but they’re only temporary. And, they may also be spammers and folks who want you to follow them back. These don’t help you to create a worthwhile and engaging Instagram community. The best thing you can do is focus on hashtags that relate to your business, product/service, and photo.
Use Captions Properly - Instagram is a visual platform, which means your captions will have a big part in you garnering followers. Besides using hashtags, you need to know how and when to add photo captions
Ask Questions Of Followers – This will encourage your followers to leave an answer on the picture. The kind of engagement helps to increase the visibility of your Instagram account
Use The Tagging Feature – If you have Instagram users in your pictures, tag them in it or use the tagging feature Instagram offers. According to Simply Measured, posts mentioning other users have a 37 percent higher engagement. Ask your followers to tag other people they think will enjoy the content. This increases the awareness of your account to more folks.
Location Tags – If your company has a physical location, tag it into your photos, and ask customers to do it as well. People can click on the location and find other pictures that relate to your business, increasing the follower base for your account.
Come Up With Creative Videos
Instagram is great to use videos, which is seen as a trend that will continue to dominate the market. What kinds of videos should you consider adding to your Instagram? Anything that piques your audience’s curiosity will do just fine – do-it-yourself tips, videos that highlight your product/service, tutorials, etc.
4 – Hold Campaigns and Contests To Increase Your Follower Base
Contest
If you run a contest through Instagram, it brings more traffic to the website, helps to increase the audience you already have and potentially sell your services/products. For people to enter the contest, ask them to follow you, comment on a photo or like a photo, repost a photo or use a particular hashtag. If people don’t follow your account yet, it will help if people post user-generated material on their own account so their friends see it.
Campaigns
Be sure to include Instagram as part of your marketing campaign to increase your follower base, connecting both online and offline. For instance, you can have a teaser campaign going that’s solely on Instagram and slowly mention a new service or product. You can also use Instagram to offer live events coverage like in-store promotions, conferences or community gatherings.
5 – Assist Others To Increase Their Follower Base
Instagram is like any social media network – it’s got communities. In order to have new followers for yourself, consider following others first. Share their material, like their stuff and make comments on their post. In turn, they’ll do the same for you.
Create Instagram search streams to locate, keep an eye on and participate in communications with users. If you see somebody that’s posting content that’s relevant to you, leave a comment and ask them if you share the picture on your account. If they say yes, you need to give them credit for it.
When you reach out to the successful industry Instagram users, it can assist you to find a new audience to target and boost the following base of your account. One such tool to offer you insights about who is the influencer in your niche is called Ninjaoutreach. It will also help you to know what content they’re sharing is popular.
6 – Make Use Of Instagram’s Advertising To Attract More Followers
Do you have a social media advertising budget? If you don’t, you should. After all, a way to attract more followers to your account is to use the Instagram sponsored ads. Instagram will let most folks to buy a sponsored posts, using its ad-buying tools that official Instagram partners offer. You can log into any of these third-party sites to produce and place these ads on Instagram.
According to a Nielson Brand Effect study, sponsored posts ad recalls were seen nearly three times more than other forms of online advertising. For instance, A&W Restaurants ran an Instagram ad campaign and saw a 39 point life in their ad recall with a four-point lift in their message association.
7 – Gauge and Examine The Results Of Your Instagram Account
If you’re not seeing the followers you want for your Instagram account, you need to look at the analytics to find out where you’re going wrong – and what should be adjusted in your strategy.
For instance, you may see a link between when and what you post as well as the kind of hashtags you use and the spike in followers. Make sure to focus on these moments to attain the same results repeatedly.
Do you know of any great ways to increase your Instagram following. Please tell us your ideas in the comments below.
