How to Build Your Instagram Following Organically
Instagram is a platform used by everyday ordinary people as well as businesses big and small. If you’re trying to build a brand for yourself or your company, it is very important to be distinctive as a high quality content producer. Here are a few tips and tricks that will allow your brand to bloom organically and help in growing your audience with more followers. This will help you reach more of your target audience.
1. Create branded hashtags
Everything you do on your account has to align and stay consistent. People normally post content that looks visually appealing and adds to the brand as a whole, but it is very important to also remember about creating branded hashtags. These will be the keywords that your followers will associate your business or persona with, and are an incredibly easy way to allow others to find and discover your account. Your hashtag can be used in influencer marketing campaigns and for all of your online marketing initiatives moving forward.
2. Research other hashtags
Along with creating some distinctive and branded hashtags of your own, try to do research on popular hashtags that are used by similar companies as yours since they’re probably trying to appeal to a similar audience. Use your competitors as research and learn from what is working for them. Hashtags are incredibly useful when used properly, try to refrain from overloading your content with them because that will discredit your post and appear as if you are desperate for attention.
3. Engage, engage, engage
You must engage with your audience, and the audiences of competitors and businesses similar to yours. Stay relevant on the latest trends in your industry, and use them as a way of reaching a greater audience that are already interested in what you have to offer. Commenting, liking, and following similar accounts will increase engagement and visibility of your own account. The more you engage, the more people Instagram’s platform will “recommend” you to!
4. Everyone loves a good story
Instagram allows for a quick 24 hour story to keep your followers up to date with in-the-moment kinds of activities! Don’t forget to utilize this great feature to showcase the progress of your company or even to send a quick thank you message to everyone following your account. Stories don’t last forever, so use this as a way to showcase personality behind the brand and let followers in on exclusive behind the scenes action!
5. Link it!
Instagram allows links in the biography section of a profile. Use it! Links are easy navigation tools that quickly bring your followers to the place where you want them without much effort. Users will be more inclined to visit your website with a click-through than if they had to open up a new web page and manually type in or copy and paste the URL into the browser. If there’s any sales going on, any interesting news article posted or any news to share — link it!
6. Switch to a business profile
By switching to a business profile, you will be able to use Instagram’s analytic tools and have detailed reviews about the response that your followers have with regards to content that you create and share. This will help you grow a larger following by understanding what it is your followers want to see from you, as opposed to providing them with content that you think they want to see. Understanding the consumer comes first, success follows right after!
7. High quality content ONLY!
People prefer when something is visually appealing. Make sure to follow this rule in order to get a greater response. Sharp, clear and beautiful images have been proven to gain more engagement because of their quality alone. If it’s not amazing, then don’t post it. One bad quality image can ruin the overall aesthetic of your profile and can disrupt the flow of gaining new followers and engagement from your existing fan base. Some tips on taking beautiful pictures and video is using a professional camera to get the clear focused image, using natural light in order to make the image appear bright and lively, and contrasting the colours to really make the image stand out.
8. Last but not least, CONSISTENCY IS KEY.
Consistency is everything. You must post regularly in order to gain more followers organically. Users follow your account because they are interested in your content, and if you post sporadically they will never know when to expect something new from your profile and may even unfollow you as a result. In order to stay relevant, you must keep up with the constantly changing trends. Users follow many accounts, and if they only see your posts once a week as opposed to a similar account that posts once a day, they will most likely be more inclined to purchase from the other business just because it seems more familiar and therefore, trustworthy. Staying relevant means staying consistent and posting regularly.
For help with developing your influencer marketing strategy please reach out to us at info@socialpulsemarketing.com.
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Steven Tulman is the CEO of Social Pulse Marketing Inc., a leading influencer marketing agency helping Fortune 500 companies increase brand awareness, improve consumer trust and loyalty, and influence consumer behavior. He is a social media marketing and sales expert, and an entrepreneur with a passion for helping companies grow through effective online marketing strategies, improved sales performance, and overall customer experience.
Links to some of Steven’s other posts:
6 Tips for Effective Influencer Marketing
The Official Roadmap to Influencer Marketing
The Future of Social Media Marketing
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