Instagram is a platform that, with a well thought out strategy, has the potential to boost a brand's digital impact through community building and social selling. Brands with a strong Instagram presence drive more sales, attract more customers, and have more awareness among consumers than those that don’t.
Achieving a substantially sized, engaged audience on Instagram can seem like a challenging one - luckily for you, we’ve compiled our 5 best tips to organically grow your following.
1. Find your niche
Off the bat, it might sound counterintuitive. Shouldn’t I be trying to reach as many people as possible?
Your audience will grow at a quicker pace and stay more engaged if you zero in on your area of expertise. Find a niche audience that resonates with your content organically and you’ll have to work less at keeping them interested.
People are consuming more than 10 hours of content per a day. Writing for a niche audience makes people reading your feed feel more connected to the brand and what you’re sharing. You’re more likely to stop scrolling on something that relates to your values, hometown, personal goals or demographics, then something written for everyone.
2. Hashtag Strategy
Posts with a hashtag get 392% more comments than those without.
Oftentimes less is more - experiment with which hashtags are the most discoverable for your industry. Narrow down the most relevant and engaged with hashtags and include those on every post.
If a piece of content happens to fall into a different category, do a little bit of background research and discover hashtags related to that category so that interested audiences are able to discover your content.
Engage with posts that contain your most used hashtags. This allows your brand to gain visibility and traction, and therefore gain followers who are interested in your content.
Also consider using both macro and micro hashtags. It can be hard to compete with #photography but going back to point one, you’re much more likely to connect with the right audience if you use a local hashtag like #MinneapolisPhotography. Experiment with both and see what drives the most engagements.
3. Get Creative
How your account appears visually is the first thing a potential follower sees upon viewing your profile. Make sure it captures their attention. Check out this blog post to read more on a cohesive Instagram feed.
Creativity matters in captions as well. It’s important to make sure your text isn’t a lengthy paragraph that will deter your reader from taking the time to dissect it - divide your text into short sentences that are quick and easy to understand. And make sure you’re adding value, in some way, in each post.
4. Encourage engagement
Start a conversation with your audience and give them a reason to engage. It’s important to use action words toward the beginning of your caption so that they don't get lost.
Examples of clear calls to action include “Visit the link in our bio”, “leave a comment on this post”, or “subscribe to our newsletter.” Get creative and land on a CTA that aligns with your goals for social media.
5. Be Consistent
You’ll build a level of trust with your audience in sticking to a consistent publishing schedule.
Changing up your frequency of posting, whatever that may be, will likely result in a decrease in followers and engagement. Decide on a schedule that is maintainable for a long period of time and do your best to stick to it.
Your main takeaways: get creative when planning out content. Find your niche and engage with them. Stick to a consistent schedule and make sure to plan a hashtag strategy.
Have you had success on Instagram? Share your tips in the comments!