How-to grow your Instagram following
Feb 20, 2020
Here are 10 simple ways to up your gram.
1. Focus
This one is super important. Your audience is facing information overload. What is the one thing they will get from following you? Look at your strengths, find your niche and post content that consistently reinforces your unique point of view.
2. Consistency
Post consistently on Instagram. Brands that get into a regular flow with Instagram posts tend to see the best results. If you can keep up with posting great quality content 7 times a week or more - go for it! But for most of us, that can be a little overwhelming. So pick how many days works for you, keeping in mind, quality over quantity always wins the long game.
3. Overall Feed
The overall look and feel of your feed plays a role in whether visitors decide to follow you. Ideally, your content will be all brand-aligned, so that someone looks at it and instantly knows it belongs to your brand.
4. Hashtags
The right hashtags and location tag can expose your image to a large and targeted audience. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, but a study found that nine hashtags seem to be the optimal number for getting the maximum engagement.
With Free Apps on your phone like Focalmark, and AutoHash, you can easily get quality, relevant hashtags for your Instagram posts.
5. Linger Effect
When people spend more than just a second on your post it will flag your content as engaging and be shown to more people. So post videos, carousels or long and interesting captions to give your audience a reason to linger over your post for just a bit longer.
6. Stories
Stories are seeing a lot more engagement than on the feed so spend more of your time and energy on creating stories that you're audience love. Over time Stories will start to have less reach, as the space becomes more competitive but for now use this opportunity to get the most out of it.
7. Reposting
UGC is about finding the best content posted by your customers and reposting it onto your own channel, giving credit to the creator. This has so many benefits for your brand. 1) It's a great way to get new original content 2) It's basically a customer testimonial that can help drive sales 3) It encourages others to do the same and tag your brand in the hope of being reposted.
8. Collaborate
One of the best ways to grow your audience is through collaborations with others. Questions to ask yourself before collaborating are: What value will this bring me? Will I reach a new audience? Is it the right audience for me? How will I measure success? Do we share the same values?What does it cost? eg. Opportunity cost, sharing your database, impact on brand reputation.
9. Engage
The more engagement a post receives within the first hour of posting, the more likely it is to be shown to more people by Instagram. Make sure to respond to every comment, well because that’s just good manners, and as a bonus it doubles the engagement under your post.
10. Analyse
What time should I post?
Should I be doing more video?
What should I post?
You can find the answers to these questions in your insights. Take time to regularly check-in with your Insights and you'll start to get a much better idea of what's working and where you can make some tweaks that will see you grow.
- H x
Is your IG profile set up for success?
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