Over the years, Instagram has slowly risen from a simple picture sharing platform to the next big thing in marketing. Instagram is now the gold standard for product promotion and no longer the place to share simple cat and baby pictures with your pals. Got a product you want to sell? Post it on Instagram. Launching an event? Make sure it’s on the Gram. Releasing a new song or show? What are you waiting for? Post it.
Instagram is so important when it comes to selling products that even politicians use it to sell their policies. Michelle Obama and her husband were, in 2018, the two most followed political figures. What do you think got them there? Simple, the audience.
To be successful on Instagram, you are going to need followers and their engagement, lots and lots of it. Social signals from your followers and visitors increase your Instagram credibility. They show that your viewers like what they see, literally. And they are more likely to buy into the idea or product you are selling.
Besides quality content, you will need to find your perfect audience to go along with the posts. How are you going to go about increasing the number of your followers? Read on and discover these exciting tips and tricks that are sure to get you those ‘double-taps.’
1. Instagram Equals Content
This is pretty obvious from the word go. Even as you are joining Instagram, your main aim is to show your audience what you have got. If your followers like what they see, then the likes and shares will follow and the number of followers will grow. Simply put, the greater the content, the more the engagement.
For pictures, make sure they are the highest quality possible. The same goes for video clips. Do not overdo the filters. Sure they can spice things up, but too much of something is not good. Other tricks you can use on your content to get your followers’ attention and likes are focus, superzoom, and colors.
Focus on the foreground of your image while blurring the background. Superzoom brings content closer for the user to view it dramatically. For colors, blues get significantly more likes than red ones.
2. Time Is A Vital Factor
Just like TV ads, you can tailor your posts to appear at ‘peak’ hours. Well, not everyone is always on Instagram – your followers might be from various time zones and you have to focus on the major group. Some of your posts will get viewed more times than others because of timing.
If you want to get many followers and guests viewing your material, try to get this right. It isn’t exactly easy to do so, but some strategies will help you know when’s the best time to post. Generally, around lunchtime is best since a lot of people are on breaks.
For further precision, study your audience and their habits. Test out different times to see what will work and what won’t.
3. Promote Your Hashtags Outside Instagram
This kind of promotion will get you not only likes but additional followers. Spread the information in the papers, billboards, on websites, etc. There are many more people who aren’t on Instagram, plus others who have never seen or heard about your products. It would serve you well to attempt to get them in the loop about your stuff. Make sure your hashtags are original and really relate to your brand, product or name before you start mentioning it here and there.
4. Be Consistent
Besides great content, consistency is still a vital aspect surrounding getting as many likes as possible. If you are posting fantastic content once in a while, your followers will get bored and look for great content elsewhere.
A lot of Instagram gurus will have excellent content on hand. Emulate these guys and keep the content flowing to attract new followers.
5. Get As Many Followers As You Can
For you to boost your popularity, you need people to enjoy what you are posting. You need followers, as many as you can gather. Sure, people can still like what you post without following you. But your followers will help increase your reach across Instagram. The more followers you have, the greater your Instagram network.
Great content brings more followers. Also, first impressions matter immensely; that is why everything on your profile needs to be made to impress. Your feed is the most prominent item on your profile. People will skim over it and decide whether you are worth following, so make it worth their time. Your profile picture also needs to be exquisite and attractive.
6. Write The Best Captions
Captions tell your followers more about your posts. If the picture or video is captivating, then be sure that your viewers will want to read through the caption. Do not disappoint them.
Other social media platforms like Twitter limit users’ captions. Over here, you can make it as long as you want. However, make it a worthwhile piece.
Engage your readers with the caption. Ask them questions, mention your followers, and add a bit of humor in the post. Also, consider shorter captions. Punchlines from movies, TV shows, and other notable people are entertaining, especially if they mirror the post. Remember, sometimes less is truly more.
7. Paid Or Organic Promotion?
There are many strategies on how to gain more and more of a following on Instagram. You can start with running your first Instagram ad campaign from the built-in marketing tool with only a few dollars – about $10-15 would be enough to make your first steps with it and to figure out how it works to get your first results, either with automatic promo tool or doing it manually in Ads Manager.
Getting more following with an organic method is very challenging. It would surely take much time because you will have to communicate with lots of users daily. The majority of instructions recommend the same things like to put comments and likes on other people’s posts, to master the hashtags, and to start conversations with your visitors and followers on their pages and your own one, and be active on it. Do we consider the results of following this promotional strategy to be predictable? No. It really depends on the topic your account follows, on the style and quality of photos and videos you are going to post, your copywriting, photography and image-retouching skills, and finally, how experienced you are in the world of Instagram. I would not expect an amazing result right away from an organic strategy if you are new to Instagram, but it’s worth a try.
Another way to gain more fans on your page is to do it in several clicks. There are hundreds of websites that may be a scam and you will not gain anything and will lose your money. Many of the accounts that would follow you will be fake, known as bots. They may unfollow your page hours after joining it. You can use this paid strategy to power-up your list during the initial period, but don’t let it carry you away.
The Conclusion
Growing the number of your fans is integral to your success on Instagram. These tips will be useful as you develop your account. Whether you will follow the long organic process or opt to buy Instagram followers to improve your metrics, either way, these guidelines will help you boost your ranking. Take time each day to communicate with your audience. Follow these tips and see your brand or company grow in leaps and bounds.
