If you are starting out on Instagram with an objective to make use of it for promotional or business lead generation purposes, simply posting photos and waiting for response may be a pretty depressing affair. All your excitement and hard work are only paid back when you get a handful of hard-core followers rather than just a few random likes.
This article is aimed to give you an overview of the top ideas that marketing experts now use to increase the number of followers and get them to interact with their posts. You may notice that many of these ideas discussed below will focus purely on increasing the engagement in terms of comments and likes. The philosophy is simple, lasting engagement will naturally lead to solid followers.
While executing these strategies, always keep in mind that there is no alternative for regularly posting creative and engaging content with a keen focus on your audience’s interest. You can feel free to use these tips liberally, but don’t forget that engagement should always be your core objective.
Instagram marketing tips for generating more followers
#1. The first thing you can do is to start liking all the random pictures posted by the account holders in your target group. A study has proven that for every 100 likes you randomly put, your chances of increasing number of followers improve by at least 6%.
#2. Always use hashtags that are well known to your target group to get followers. Some examples include #instafollow, #FF for Follow Friday, #l4l for Like for like etc.
#3. The saying ‘quality beats quantity’ is apt on Instagram. You should always post only the best images on this platform. Those who simply post hundreds of worthless images will fail to gather followers.
#4. Do parallel promotion of your Instagram account through other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc. Share with people what benefits they will enjoy upon following you.
#5. Conduct some contests on Instagram. The smartest way to do this is to post some well-designed images to promote your contest and ask them to like the photo to participate.
#6. Search for your target group using the most popular hashtags as mentioned above, and follow them to get them to follow you back.
#7. Researchers have shown that the best time to post photos is around 2 am or 5 pm in terms of getting responses and adding followers.
#8. Ensure that you have created an authentic and complete bio. While doing so, include the most ideal keywords, hashtags, and back links to your sites.
#9. Use interrogative sentences as captions. This is will instantly ignite curiosity and help increase engagement.
#10. Be consistent in posting. Always know why you are posting and whom you are posting for. Have a consistent approach to using the platform, and you will see the number of followers increasing organically.
#11. You can also integrate tempting calls to action with your captions. Try to engage your Instagram followers by prompting them to take further action.
#12. It is best to post on Sundays as researchers have shown that the posts on Sundays have more visibility than on weekdays.
#13. If you are a local business, it is ideal to use geotagging on your photos. This way, other users who post in your region will also see your post on the locations page. This is an ideal way to catch the attention of local users.
#14. You can go to the settings on Instagram and click on the gear icon on the upper right of the screen to see the option of ‘Find and invite friends’ and click on ‘Suggested Users’ to follow the most relevant target people.
#15. Make use of the Mayfair filter. As per the Maven’s Fortune 500 Report on Instagram, it is identified as the most useful filter for business marketers.
#16. You can also use Piqora to identify what sort of photos tend to get the highest degree of engagement. Post more of that sort to enhance your number of followers.
#17. Don’t hesitate to post often. While many marketers think that posting too often will lower the level of engagement, research suggests differently. As per a study done by Union Metrics, there is no direct relationship found between the number of images posted and the level of engagement.
#18. Try to combine similar photos into a single collage to ensure optimum engagement. You can make use of tools like PicFrame to combine photos and videos.
#19. Engage effectively. Any of the random tips and tricks won’t compete with real engagement on Instagram. Like photos and leave thoughtful comments. Increase the number of people you follow regularly and effectively engage with them.
#20. Request influencers to tag your products or mention them in their posts. This can work like magic and result in tons of new followers.
#21. You can effectively use scheduling apps to pre-schedule Instagram posts. As discussed, posting consistently is the key to success on this platform.
#22. Tag people in your posts. With this, the photos get displayed on their feeds and are likely to reach more users naturally.
#23. Include the word ‘comment’ in your caption. Studies have shown that this can end up with a significant increase in the number of comments you get on posts.
#24. Another study has also shown that the photos with faces receive 35% more likes and comments.
#25. Photos with blue prominence get about 20% more likes than those with orange and red prominence.
#26. Similar to that of Sundays, images posted mid-week such as on Wednesdays also seem to prompt considerable engagement.
#27. You can try sharing behind-the-scenes images. Candid photos help in conveying the actual personality and culture behind a brand. For example, share the images with the actual people behind your products or logo.
#28. Invite guest posts. You can request your followers, especially those who are influencers to post on your account as guest. It is a surefire strategy to enhance engagement.
#29. Try to create a unique brand hashtag that will encourage your followers to use it. It will help increase your visibility and acceptance.
#30. Try to promote your Instagram account to email subscribers by sharing images or offers on your e-mail newsletter with a link to your Instagram account.
While approaching Instagram for business promotion, you need to plan well, prepare, and then act. As with any other strategies, being intentional is the key to success on this platform too. Also, remember that having a huge number of followers should not be the only objective, but you should be able to create a lot of enthusiasm in them to engage and interact to convert those followers into real customers.
Author bio: Walter Moore is a digital marketing consultant with expertise in Instagram promotions. He posted many blog articles on different ways to enhance Instagram followers and engagement.
Make use of good instagram tools like hashatory. Its for finding hashtags for your post.
Interesting Joie! I’ll have to check that out. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks For sharing. It contains a lot of information. We need to learn new things from these blog.