How to Grow on Instagram and gaining a good following can have a lot of perks. Instagram has hundreds of millions of monthly active users. So, if you can get a percentage of these users to become your loyal and engaging followers you can promote yourself very easily. Brands and companies will want to work with you because you have a solid following on the platform. Sponsored posts and brand deals can help you earn a good livelihood from the platform. Brands and businesses can benefit too from getting a lot of exposure on Instagram.
The users of Instagram are some of the most engaging social media users. They are quite active in liking and commenting on posts that they like. Also, a lot of Instagram users buy products either directly from Instagram or after seeing them on Instagram. This means that you can not only create brand awareness on Instagram but generate many leads and increase your sales. But any platform that provides such benefits will be hard to grow on.
This is why you need to have a nice strategy and focus on certain things that you need to get right to not only gain a good following on Instagram but keep that follower base and gain regular engagement. We decided to list down some tips or pointers that may help in your journey on Instagram. So, let’s get started.
Tips & Tricks to Increase Instagram Followers
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Your Content is the Most Important of All
One of the biggest reasons why a person will follow your profile on Instagram is that they like your content. They get entertained by looking at the images and videos that you post on your profile. So, before trying other promotional methods to gain more exposure you need to take a look at the content that you are creating and uploading on Instagram. This seems like something very obvious. Of course, you need to post good content to grow on Instagram.
But a lot of people still don’t grow on Instagram because the quality or the content of their posts is not good enough to keep people’s interests. So, if you have tried different methods to grow on Instagram and you are not seeing the results that you expected then maybe you need to take a look at your posts. See why it is not working or look at the posts that have generated some engagement. Think from the perspective of an Instagram user.
Why should they follow you? Think why you would follow a profile and then craft content that would make you engage with it and follow that profile. Infographics, entertaining educational content, funny posts, high-quality posts with scenic beauty, posts with attractive people tend to gain the most momentum on Instagram. So, try to create content relevant to the theme of your profile or your brand that falls under those categories and you will start to see more engagement.
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Stick to a Niche
If you have just started to get serious about growing your following on Instagram or any other social media platform then you need to start by sticking to a niche. A lot of people try to pick a broad category that is popular. They think that it will help them get more exposure and engagement but that is often not true. Broad categories have a lot more posts and more competition. If you are starting then your credibility is low and you do not have enough social proof to make people engage with your posts and follow your profile.
This is why you need to pick a niche and then keep growing in that niche and once you have reached a good following you can slowly widen your scope. Look at popular influencers from different platforms. They may have started doing one thing but once they gained a lot of followers they moved on to other stuff. This means that if you make funny videos then maybe focus more on making funny reels.
Come up with your own format and create crisp, entertaining, and funny reels. This will make it easy for people to associate you with a certain type of content and if they like that type of content then they will follow you and like and comment on your posts. Also, niches may not have high competition so you may be able to establish your presence.
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Ensure that You are Targeting the Right Users
One of the ways to grow quickly on Instagram is to ensure that your post is being seen by the right people. This may involve crafting your posts in such a way that your target audience will like them. But you need to figure out who is more likely to follow you and engage with your posts. This is where analytics, research and feedback, and trial and error methods come in.
Analytics helps you visualize the performance of your posts and your strategy in the form of numbers. You will know exactly how many people saw your posts and how many liked them and commented on them. Did any non-followers see this post? Analytics helps you understand your performance in a more meaningful way. You can also research your competitors or other popular Instagram profiles in your niche.
Observe the content that they are creating. Which posts are performing better when it comes to bringing more engagement. Next, find out the key psychographics and demographics of your target audience. This information will help you know various facts about people who will likely see your post. This can help you tweak or modify your posts in such a way that more people get attracted to them.
Also, create different kinds of content initially and upload them. See which ones are bringing you more engagement. These posts will also tell you who is liking and commenting on your post which is good information to have if you want to grow on Instagram. Use this along with the previous tip to get better results.
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Make Your Instagram Profile a Business Profile
In the previous tip, we talked about analytics. If you want to perform analysis on your Instagram data and get some meaningful info then you need to have a tool to do so. Many companies provide third-party tools and software to run machine learning or artificial intelligence algorithms to figure a lot of information from your social media data that can help you better promote your brand or profile and craft content that will be better received by your target audience.
But you can get a decent analytics tool for free and guess who provides that? Instagram. Yes, Instagram provides you with Instagram insights which is an analytics tool that gives you a variety of information to help you understand whether your strategy is working or not. Seeing actual numbers as opposed to guessing can significantly help with your understanding of the performance of your strategy.
It will help you get the most out of your strategy by making it optimal as opposed to just guessing the performance. To access Instagram insights you need to have an Instagram business profile. It is completely free of cost. You can even change your personal profile to a business profile and keep all your posts and followers intact. So, if you want to grow on Instagram this is one of the first things that you need to do.
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Knowing How to Use Hashtags to Your Benefits
Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and many other platforms have adopted the use of hashtags. It was first used on Twitter by actor Chris Messina and today it has become one of the most commonplace things to see on social media platforms.
This is very important if you want to grow on Instagram. If you try to build things down then there are basically two results you want to achieve to grow on Instagram. You need to keep your existing followers while gaining new followers. Hashtags are tools that can help you with the latter part. It can help you gain a wider reach and get you more exposure. Users who follow these hashtags may be able to see your posts.
Many of these users will be potential followers and if they enjoy what they find your post entertaining enough, they will check out your profile and if they enjoy it they might follow you. So, use hashtags optimally in your posts. Here too, if you can narrow down on a niche that has a decent following but is not too popular to attract too much competition.
You can use hashtag generators and hashtag research tools to find out the best hashtags for your post. Or. You can use the trial and error method along with Instagram insights to find out which posts are getting more engagement or impressions from non-followers. This will let you know which hashtags are working the best. But don’t make your post look spam by providing multiple hashtags. Try to keep it somewhere between 7 to 9. More hashtags may decrease the amount of engagement you get on your post.
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Post Daily and Follow a Schedule
One of the key things to keep in mind if you want to increase your presence on social media and establish yourself as an authority is to stay active. People are getting hundreds of posts in their feeds. If they don’t see your posts regularly then they will soon forget about your profile and future posts by you may be ignored. This will lead to a reduction in engagement which will reduce your chances of getting more exposure and thus, will slow your growth. This is why it is very important that you stay relevant and post regularly on Instagram, if not daily.
If you can post two to three times a day then that would be quite good as well. But do not post low-quality content because you are trying to increase the quantity. People like consuming content on social media. But they generally don’t like consuming constant trash. So, if you want them to interact with your posts you need to make them stop scrolling and provide them something of value.
If you think that coming up with content daily can be tough then create multiple contents on days you are feeling creative and then use any auto-scheduler tool and schedule your posts. This way you don’t have to worry about uploading them as the tool will take care of it. Many paid auto-scheduling tools will upload your posts to Instagram when most of your followers are active helping you gain more engagement. You can research them as well.
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Know When It is the Best Time to Post
Another good thing to keep in mind is to maximize your chances of getting the most engagement on your posts you need to upload them at times when your followers are most likely active on Instagram. If they don’t get to see your post on their feed then you will not get a lot of engagement.
Your post will be at the bottom of their feed and they might not scroll up to that place. So, when you research your target audience, find out their geographical location and at what times they are most likely to be active. Post at multiple times during the day based on your initial data. Now, using Instagram insights look at the performance of these posts.
See which ones helped you get the most auto likes and comments and the most exposure. This means that posts that will be uploaded during this interval will reach the eyes of many of your followers and so you need to post the best and most of your content during this time. There are various studies available for this as well. SproutSocial.com and Hootsuite.com have a detailed analysis of the best time to post on social media platforms. You can check it out.
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Actively Engage With Your Followers
Keeping your existing real Instagram followers is very much important if you want to grow on Instagram. Posting good-quality and entertaining content is a good way to keep them interested but another way to sort of accentuating this is to engage with your followers and audiences that engage with your posts. You need to show them that you appreciate them following you and liking and commenting on your content.
If you do this regularly and well enough then you will strengthen the bond with your followers. They will become much more loyal to you and you will get consistent engagement and exposure allowing you to continuously grow on Instagram and reach your full potential. Replying or reacting to the comments on your spots is a good way to show appreciation and engage with your clients. As, You will get Instagram comments and replies on your posts boosting the engagement rate and thus, falling under the radar of the Instagram algorithm.
Also, many followers may directly message you and you can try to reply to as many as you can. Another good way is to ask your followers to tag you on relevant posts of theirs’ and then you can share that post on your feed or story or comment or like their post. Building a loyal follower base is very important if you want to enjoy the perks of having a lot of followers on social media.
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Contests and Giveaways and Other Unique Posts
The last tip we will be mentioning is going to help you gain more engagement on your posts to increase your exposure. There are certain kinds of posts that people are more likely to engage with. Contests and giveaways are two of those posts. Who doesn’t like to win prizes or get free stuff from random people on the internet?
So, if you conduct contests and giveaways regularly then these posts will get a lot more engagement and exposure which will help bring in new followers. Keep the criteria for entering giveaways or contests as liking and commenting on the post and following your profile. Then using a random bot you can pick a certain number of winners. Don’t forget to create a post with the winners receiving the said price.
Hosting contests can be fun. Just ensure that you come up with creative prizes and contest ideas relevant to the theme of your profile. Other unique posts to gain engagement can be asking for opinions. Fill in the blanks type post. ‘Your username is your…’ format. These have worked well in the past and continue to work well with creative variations. You don’t have to revolve your whole profile around this but try to use them once in a while to get more engagement and exposure.
Conclusion
These were some of the tips that can help you grow on Instagram. These are not going to give you instant results however if you keep at them and formulate a strategy based on them and keep optimizing it then you will have a strong foundation and your growth will be much more stable. Your followers will be more engaging and loyal.
That’s what you need if you want to get some benefits out of your social media following. Brands will sponsor your posts if they find out that your followers are real and your posts get a lot of engagement. So, be patient and do smart work to have nice growth on Instagram.
