Today, we are exploring ways to grow your following on Instagram organically. That’s right, you heard us correctly, organically growing your Instagram following. It is possible!
In the early days on Instagram, you were able to buy followers/bots to increase your following. Technically, you still can, but we do not recommend it for anyone. Followers are meant to care about your brand, to engage with it. Fake followers do not care about you, nor do they engage with your brand. In the end, fake followers have zero positive effect on your Instagram profile.
Some of the below steps are a bit repetitive, but they work! Let’s take a gander.
Know your target audience
It all begins with the first two steps. You need to know who it is that you’re trying to reach. If you are having a challenging time defining your target audience, try asking yourself a few questions:
- Where are they (zip codes, cities, states, etc.)?
- How old are they?
- What industry are they in?
- When and how do they use Instagram?
- What challenges do they face?
The answers to the above questions will help you create content that is best suited for your audience, making it more likely that your content will:
- reach them,
- connect with them,
- they’ll engage with it,
- and that they will follow you.
Develop your marketing strategy for Instagram
Establishing a clear plan ahead of time helps all of us create content that is in line with our plan, working towards our goals. We all want more followers, right? While gaining more followers is a great goal, this alone does not constitute a successful Instagram account. How does gaining more followers connect to your overall strategy and objectives? Why is it that you truly want more followers?
- Increased reach
- Increase in brand awareness
- Drive traffic to your website
- Boost sales
When you dig deeper into the goal of more followers and focus on the why’s behind it, you are better able to create content in a consistent manager.
Take advantage of Instagram Reels
This is a big one, for the time being. Our last article covered Instagram Reels in more depth, so we won’t delve too deep into this article.
Instagram Reels has massive potential for organic reach and growth. Being a newer product of Instagrams, the algorithm favors it, letting your brand get in front of more eyes.
Read our article cover Instagram Reels here.
Create a brand look and story that is consistent
When you have a similar look between all of your posts, it is easy for people to recognize that a post is from you without even looking at who posted the content. This makes it easier to catch someone’s attention, pulling them into your content. When you look at your grid of posts, think of it as one single unit and make it look great (and consistent). Now, we know that not all content will fit into that look. When you have something that is outside the look of your brand, use Instagram stories to post it. That way the content is still getting out to your audience, but it doesn’t impact the look of your post grid.
Hashtags
If you’re not familiar with hashtags, you’ve probably at least heard of them. Hashtags are the words that follow the ‘#’ symbol. Why are hashtags important? The text in your Instagram posts is not searchable, but the hashtags are. Hashtags make it easier to reach people outside your audience and likewise, make it easier for those same people to find you.
You want to use hashtags that are relevant to your content, post, industry, and product/service. This way, when others are searching for a relevant hashtag, they find your post, and it fulfills their search. Instagram users are also able to follow particular hashtags. When you use a hashtag that a user is following, your content has a chance of landing in their feed.
Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, but in our experience, the quality of hashtags far outperforms the quantity of them (as with most things). Play around with different hashtags and determine what works best for your brand.
Keywords
Similar to hashtags, keywords can help your brand be found in searches. Did you know that only two text fields help your brand be found through search? Those two fields are name and username. Your username is your Instagram handle, and it is best to keep it consistent across all of your social platforms (@MackWPMarketing on IG, FB, and LinkedIn).
The ‘name” field can be anything you like, you may use up to 30 characters, and this is where you want to strategically use a keyword(s). While it is not a good idea to fill this field with several keywords, try adding your most relevant keyword to it.
Take us for example. MackWP Marketing (@MackWPMarketing) includes the key phrase “Content Marketer” within the name.
Capitalize on your Instagram bio and profile
The majority of users that visit your business profile are not followers of yours. The point is to convert them. If your bio and profile are dull, bland, inconsistent, and lackluster, why would they click the follow button? You must appeal to them, make them want to follow you.
You have 150 characters in your Instagram bio to display your brand identity and give those visitors a reason to follow you. In addition to your profile including the two searchable fields, name, and username, you are also able to include a clickable link in your bio (links in posts are not clickable).
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