Starting anything new is always difficult, including a new Instagram account. When starting your account you will want to gain interest and followers as quickly as possible. Although your end goal on Instagram should not be to have the most followers, it is a good metric to track. The more Instagram followers you have the more opportunities your account will have for engagement. Which in turn helps your posts have a further reach which will then continue to grow your followers. With more followers comes more brand awareness and more future customers/clients, which will help you meet your revenue goal. Lastly, the more followers that you have the more likely you are to land collaborations.
Although having a larger Instagram following can help you and your business, you should never buy your Instagram followers. Artificially collecting followers or engagement is against Instagram’s Community Guidelines. That means that your account could get banned if it is found to have bought its followers. Also having fake/unloyal followers will lead to a lower engagement rate for your account and also gives you no opportunity to change followers into real customers. Now that you know the basics let’s get into tips on how to organically grow your Instagram followers.
Profile Visibility
Before doing anything else you will need to finish your Instagram profile. You should start with your Instagram display name. You should obviously have your brand name displayed but you should also have a brief description of what your business does or a tagline that pertains to your business. In the description you should include keywords that your target audience will most likely to search, while still sounding relatable. You then will want to use your Instagram bio to add more information on your business with more industry-related keywords. In your bio, you can also add your business’ social proof such as how many happy customers you served, or awards you’ve won. You should also be adding branded hashtags to your profile bio to help new customers find more of your products or user-generated content.
Introductory Posts
Since your Instagram is new there will be nothing showing on your feed. People are way less likely to follow an account with no posts, so you should have posts planned out for as soon as you finish your profile set up. You should introduce the business, the team, your products, ect. You can post these during business hours and don’t focus too much on their engagement. The posts are more so to make your profile look trustworthy and inform your new followers about your business.
Hashtags
You will want to research hashtags to use for your future Instagram posts. Follow Instagram’s recommendations for the type of hashtags to use as well as the amount. For a deeper look into hashtags refer to our previous blog here: https://valiant3communications.com/post/how-to-use-instagram-hashtags-in-2023/
Geotag
If you are trying to engage with a more local audience then the geotagging feature on Instagram is amazing. This allows you to get on the radar of the best potential customers. You will want to research the most popular geotags in your area and continue to rotate through them for your posts’ locations. One thing to be cautious of is geotagging something irrelevant to your posts.
Aesthetic
Although having an aesthetically organized instagram page is not as popular as it once was, due to the separate tab now for reels, it is still important. The more recognizable your brand is the easier you are to remember which in turn allows your content to pop on a busy Instagram feed. Create a style guide for your Instagram with color schemes, fonts, the overall tone, and filters that you use for your content, you can also add templates to use for reels and stories.
Call to Action
Even if Instagram users are liking and sharing your content they are less likely to follow an account without a call to action. Put these Call to Actions in your captions, posts, and dialogues. Make sure to give you potential followers a reason to follow through on this call to action by promising them something. For example, you can offer exclusive sales, first look at products, or exclusive Instagram content.
Recreate Content to Attract Followers
The more you post the more data you’ll have on what content works and what doesn’t for your social media. Use your Instagram insights to gain knowledge on what type of content is the most successful as well as what days and times are best. Through these insights you are also able to see what type of content attracts more non-followers. Once you have gathered all the corresponding information, content creation should be a breeze.
Engagement
Make sure that you are responding efficiently to any user that engages with your content. Engagement is a huge ranking signal for Instagram which means the more engagement your account receives, the more you can improve your visibility and grow your audience. Even if you are unable to devote multiple hours a day to engagement, have a team member ready for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour after a post goes live to engage with Instagram users.
During this time you can also engage with other companies’ content on Instagram. Create a list of ideal brands that compliment your business, as well as influencers within that space. Adding thoughtful comments will allow your page to get on their followers’ radar. You can easily see these different brands’ content by adding them to your favorites list.
Partnerships/Ads
If you have followed all of the above recommendations and still are struggling to get in front of your ideal potential followers you may want to consider a partnership or paid ads. There are two options for partnerships, the first is partnering with a complimentary brand and the second is partnering with an influencer. The third option is to run Instagram Ads for added reach.
Collaborating with a complimentary brand will allow you to get in front of their current and potential followers. Take the time to create content that will benefit both of you such as a project completed using both products, create a recipe, a co-branded giveaway, ect. You then will post the content using the Collab tool on instagram which will make the post visible on both your feeds. This should help to improve your brand’s visibility significantly.
Collaborating with influencers is your second option and this allows your products to get in front of huge new audiences. Just make sure that your target audience aligns with their current followers. Find the Instagram influencers in your niche by utilizing the search option and then follow them. Begin to engage and build a relationship with them before you DM them and ask to collaborate.
Running social media ads does cost money so if you do not have a marketing budget try the above methods of gaining followers. If you do in fact have an advertising budget you should still be using the above tools but you should also be running ads. Create organic content that introduces your brand and your products. It is good to test a few of these out on your current audience to see which performs the best. Once you’ve decided on which post to use you will “Boost” it. When you boost the post be sure to click the more profile visits option and then choose your target audience. If your current audience is highly engaged you can use the automatic option and Instagram will target similar groups to your current followers.
While running the ad you should be continuously checking that the cost per follower matches your budget. If you’re gaining a lot of profile visits but not many followers consider updating your bio or posting more organic content to gain the potential followers interest.
Conclusion
In conclusion, gaining Instagram followers is hard especially when you are a new account. Gaining 1,000 followers will not happen overnight and it will take some work but by implementing the growth plan above you are bound to succeed.