Grow your Instagram Account
We live in a world where if you’re not online, you are irrelevant. But in such a world, how do you make sure your brand stands out amongst the scores of others competing for your target audience’s attention?
Your social media is, in today’s age, the ultimate measure of your brand’s success. A large social media account not just verifies your brand’s reliability and goodwill, but also opens up windows to many new opportunities.
Of course, getting your account to such a level is no easy task. Luckily for you, we have a few tips today that might help you get those figures soaring!
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Go public!
This might seem like a no-brainer, but honestly, it’s the most basic—and often the most forgotten—social media tip.
If you don’t have a public account, people just aren’t going to find you! It’s that simple!
The past year has seen a surge in the number of monetized accounts going private because the owners feel it would give their followers a sense of exclusivity. Whether that’s true or not, no one is going to request to follow you if they don’t know what your content is all about!
Do not make this rookie mistake and think that, by going private, you’re doing yourself and your brand a favour. Trust me when I say this—you’re not!
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Interact!
As a content creator, you may be wholly focused on putting up amazing content on your Instagram.
While of course, good content is key to social media success, you’re missing out another essential detail—consumption of content!
You are not the only creator within your genre or niche. Find other creators and interact with them online! Get them to notice you, network, and watch your engagement stats fly.
How does this work? Well, it’s quite simple. We tend to pay more attention to or are more likely to compliment someone who compliments us. As a result, the more posts you like on someone’s profile and more genuine comments you leave, the more likely they are to like and follow back!
Not only does this mean you’re getting one extra follower, you’re getting one extra comment on your next post! This one follower can quickly turn into hundreds, depending on the amount of accounts you make time to interact with.
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Competitions!
Instagram contests are everyone’s favourites. Free to participate in, usually dependant on luck, and involving fun rewards, what’s not to love?
As the host of an Instagram competition or giveaway, you have all the power resting in your hands. The requirements are quite simple: Acquire something that is popular in your niche (for example, an item of clothing from an eagerly awaited clothing collection if you’re a fashion blogger), publicise it on your Instagram, and express your willingness to give it away as a prize to the lucky winner of a giveaway … if the participants follow you and post about you on their accounts.
This is the part where you benefit—the higher the number of entries, the higher the number of free shoutouts you get! Also, it’s a quick way to boost followers if you’re falling short.
Giveaways are not the only form of online contests you can conduct. Depending on your genre, you can get super creative and have fun!
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Be regular on Stories!
Lately, social media users’ habits have shown a strange trend. Many claim that, whether they have time to scroll through their whole feed or not, they will definitely watch most of the Instagram like bot Stories at the top of their feed.
There are many theories as to why this is the case, one of the top claims being that too many social media posts at one go can be too overwhelming. However, the end result is the same—you’ve got to use your Stories well!
Not only are Stories a great way to give your brand a personality by posting fun emojis and polls, they also do not allow your followers to put you out of their minds. You will literally always be at the top of their feeds!
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Call-to-action
This is a buzzing term at the moment, and not without reason! CTAs on social media posts genuinely work!
Whenever you post a relatable meme, be sure to end your caption with ‘Don’t forget to tag a friend that would find this funny!’ or something similar.
This strategy puts a suggestion in the user’s subconscious mind, and often, without even noticing they’re doing it, the user will follow the call to action without protest. This will work wonders for your engagement!
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Location-tagging!
This tip is not just for your vacation photos and nights out!
Whenever you post a picture, always tag the location it was taken at. This is because, as you might know, Instagram has this fun little feature in which you can check out a location tag just like a hashtag in the explore feed.
This was built so that users could find all pictures taken in a particular location in one place. Of course, this won’t work if you have a private account, so please make sure to turn that setting off!
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Collaborations!
These are key in the content business. Work with other Instagram-famous creators to build a project that will be consumed by both their followers and yours.
What this does is expose your content to a whole new audience, in terms of the follower-base of your collaborator, and vice versa. If the kind of work you do is similar, there’s a high chance their followers will become your followers as well!
Win-win, right?
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Promote your content on your stories!
The average Instagram user follows about 250 accounts. This means a whole lot of scrolling through feeds to look at all the posts. What with Instagram’s algorithm being updated to one where users are more likely to view posts by their friends at the tops of their feeds first, it’s very likely they may never stumble upon your carefully crafted content at all!
This is why it’s important to ensure that you share your own post on your story right after you upload it, so that you can tell those interested that you have a new post up! This increases the chances of them checking out your post and interacting with it all the more.
If these helped you, be sure to check out IIDE’s social media marketing course, that helps you learn exactly how to position your brand online!