How to Grow Your Instagram Account

Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms on the internet. With over 1 billion monthly active users it is one of the best places to market your brand to a large audience. More importantly studies also suggest that Instagram influences 75% of purchase decisions.Source

1-billion-instagram-users

How To Grow Your Instagram Account

  1. Post Engaging Content
  2. Use Hashtags
  3. Post Regularly
  4. Engage with your followers.
  5. Collaborate with Influencers
  6. Geo-Tag Your Posts
  7. Automation and Scheduling
  8. Consider Social Media management
  9. Instagram Ads

1. Post Engaging Content

Instagram is a visual platform and there is a constant demand for interesting, inspiring visual content. Many of the most popular topics that work well on Instagram revolve around Fashion, Travel and Food. If your target audience fits into these categories already, then you definitely need to be on Instagram. Ensuring that you have great content should be your #1 priority when growing your account. Ensure your content posted on Instagram is as visually engaging as it can possibly be. This means taking care when adding photos, adjusting the image, using filters and making sure the image looks the best it possible can be.

2. Use Hashtags

Don’t be afraid of using hashtags! Instagram will allow you to use up to 30 hashtags in one post, but studies have shown that around 9-10 is around optimum level of hashtags. Using hashtags on Instagram therefore is essential to grow your account. Unlike some other social media platforms people find your content on Instagram using hashtags.

Tip: If you don’t know which hashtags to use, there are some handy free tools that will help you to create hashtags for each post. These tools are not always perfect but they will give you an idea of what types of hashtags other people are using for any particular topic.

The Top Hashtag generator tools worth checking out

AI Hashtag generator Ingramer All Hashtag Generator Sistrix Hashtag Generator

3. Post Regularly (..But not too regularly)

**How often should you post to Instagram? ** When people visit your page they will expect to see a visual story about your brand. If you have 3 or 4 photos on there and not much engagement, then people will think that you are not that active on Instagram and will be less likely to react and engage with your content. Posting on a regular schedule ensures that you will start to build up a following of fans who are engaging with your content.

How regularly should I post on Instagram?

Post once per day as a start. Posting more than once a day may makes it hard for your followers to follow your updates. Keeping a regular time or schedule for your posts also helps to keep your followers waiting in anticipation of your next post.

What time should I post on Instagram?

It pays to be mindful of the demographic breakdown of your followers. This can help you to understand when the best time to post on Instagram is. If your audience primarily consists of UK visitors to your page, then it would be useful to post just after work, or just before. If you have a mix of Californian fans as well, for example, then you need to be mindful of their time zone.

In more general terms, Sprout Social have conducted a study (shown below) that shows the best times to post content to Instagram for a global audience. You can use this as a guide to inform your choice of time, but ultimately your followers may indicate to you the best time to post.

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Our recommendation on posting

You can post more than once a day, but in general we would advise to post just once a day to start with. That would provide you with 7 posts a week. If you post on Instagram more regularly, you may find that the standard of the content will slip. Quality over quantity is the name of the game on Instagram and you don’t want to appear as a spammer.

4. Interact and engage with your followers

When you have built up a following, it is often a good idea to start to engage with your followers more and react to their posts by liking or dropping a quick comment or DM. There are services that can do this automatically, but nothing provides more of a personal touch than a quick manually written comment or like on one of your followers photos. Anyone who is on Instagram knows the level of fake spam messages that are sent on Instagram these days. They are painful to read and also easy to spot.

5. Work with Influencers

A crucial part of Instagram marketing and getting yourself known in the space is working with influencers. Understanding and identifying the influencers in your niche is critical to getting recognised within your industry, so a quick collaboration can benefit both parties. But you will have to meet the influencer’s criteria in order to work with them. If you have a great product that you think they will like you can send it to them to review and test. This is a great way to get your product in front of the influencer’s followers, who maybe might just become your followers as well.

6. Geo-Tag Your Posts (Add your Location to your posts)

Geo-Tagging helps people find your page. If you are attending a specific event in a city for example, people can search for that particular area and find your post through this method. Geo Tagging is great for travel bloggers or for anyone who wants their visitors to be aware of their location, for example if you are attending an industry conference.

7. Automation and Scheduling

Once you have mastered the above skills you can start to incorporate these elements into automation methods. Scheduling posts is definitely worth investing in if you are time poor. It means that you can prepare your posts in advance and post them on your schedule. There are various tools that can do this and a quick Google search will help you locate the best ones.

8. Consider Social Media Management

**There are definitely companies and consultants that will manage your social media accounts for you. This is a good solution if you want more of a hands off approach to social media, but have budget to hire someone.
** As a freelancer or someone who is self employed though if you are just starting out then it is unlikely you will have the budget to fork out for these kinds of services. It is therefore essential that you learn the basics of the above to get started. With the right strategy it is straight forward to build your own following of thousands of followers in a few months, with just a little bit of effort on your part.

9. Instagram Ads

If you are still struggling to drive enough traffic to your Instagram account page after following the above, then it may be worth considering paid advertising. Instagram operates their own paid advertising platform which incorporates into Facebook Ads. You can advertise with Instagram and drive awareness to your page or website for a very reasonable price. Paid advertising is no guarantee of converting traffic, but it does mean that you can dig deeper in to creating analysis and provide insights of the type of people that will engage with your brand.