Instagram is quickly becoming the most popular social media network, and once they copied all of the popular Snapchat features, it created a surge as everyone left that platform, electing to reside within the Instagram app since it now has all of the desired functions.
The attention is there and you can connect with an endless number of customers, but you need to know how to build your following in a way to attracts people that are actually interested in what you have to offer. Having a lot of followers that don’t interact is useless.
When you are able to create a large loyal following you can then monetize that audience and generate revenue for your business. Here are some simple tips to implement into your Instagram growth plan that will help you add quality followers.
- Identify the best posting times for your audience.
If you want to attract followers then you need to know the best times to post, giving you the highest probability of being discovered by the groups and demographics you are targeting. There are going to be some obvious peak posting times, but the only way to really know what times are best for you is to start testing and tracking.
You will need to spend some time doing this, but in the end if you are able to notice some clear hot times, in the long run it will help your efforts more than just randomly posting at times and hoping you catch some traction. Along with different posting times, test different content types. Images work great for some, while videos will perform better for some brands.
- Remain consistent with your content type.
Once you know what type of content your audience likes, stick with it and don’t drift too far away from that style or type. If you do, you will cause a disconnect and you will actually see some followers fall off.
Just because you see a viral video or a meme post that received millions of engagements it doesn’t mean your profile will see the same results. You have to create content that aligns with your brand and makes sense to your followers. If you are an e-commerce brand that sells health products and you have consistently posted beauty tips or makeup tutorial videos, suddenly throwing up a viral video of a dog will create confusion. Stay in the same lane and focus on increasing the quality and value of your content.
- Create every post with engagement in mind.
Instagram is constantly making changes to its algorithm, just like Facebook does, but throughout all of the changes one thing has remained consistent: they reward posts that receive high rates of engagement. You need to create your content in a way that it causes likes and comments to hit almost as soon as you post it.
The initial engagement a post receives is what causes it to hit the explore page, which, when combined with the correct hashtags, can get you seen by a very large audience. Then, if the content is good enough it will attract new followers.
When you always have engagement on your mind when planning your content and captions, you will stand a much better chance of attracting new followers.
- Avoid turning your feed into an e-commerce store.
People open their Instagram app to be entertained, not to scroll past posts that look like ads. If they notice your feed looks like a nonstop flow of ads they will unfollow you fast. Just like with traditional content marketing, you want to build value and focus on relationship building. If you do this, the sales are going to follow.
You can have your website link in your bio, so interested consumers can click over if they want to explore your business more. But you never want to force offers down their throat.
- Pivot according to feedback and reactions from followers.
Look at your comments and direct messages to see how your followers are reacting to your posts. If you see some negative feedback or criticism use that to make adjustments. You can’t please everyone, but you can make little tweaks and changes to make sure your content style isn’t pushing followers away. You spend a lot of time and effort to attract them, so posting content that causes them to unfollow is just counterproductive.
