Eight hundred (800) million monthly users reported by Facebook’s Investment Relations and a high engagement rate per viewer make Instagram one of the most attractive social media platforms available today. That’s why learning a few tips to get more followers on Instagram can bring a big return on your social media marketing investment. Here, you’ll learn a few Instagram tips and tricks to get you started.
Instagram’s High Engagement Rate
According to Forrester Research, Instagram has one of the highest engagement rates among the social networks:
One social network absolutely blew the others away when it came to delivering engagement: Instagram. Our study found that top brands’ Instagram posts generated a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%. That means Instagram delivered these brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.
6 Tips to Get More Followers on Instagram
Here are some tips to get more followers on Instagram for your business profile.
Tip #1: If You’re Not On Instagram, Start Now
Getting started on Instagram’s easy, and you can check out our post, “11 Instagram Marketing Tips – Start Building Your Brand” to get started.
Tip #2: Get Your Dedicated Hashtags Out There
In our previous Instagram post, we talked about the importance of hashtags in Instagram and provided some tips on how to get started with them. Now it’s time to crush the competition by getting your own dedicated hashtags working for you on Instagram.
A dedicated hashtag is a hashtag that you create for a specific purpose. It could be a hashtag you create for an upcoming event you’re holding, a catch phrase for a campaign you’re running, or a hashtag that you create for your business. When creating dedicated hashtags, it is best to make them short, direct, and to the point.
How effective are dedicated hashtags? With the right content, they’re very effective. Look at #pittsburghtatoo, for example, with nearly 19,000 posts. Most of them are well-framed, clear, colorful, and sharp. That’s a lot of content. During certain periods, they have had a great deal of exposure, according to RiteTag, and it generally generates a descent number of views per hour.
Tip #3: Research Your Hashtags
Hashtags mean a lot on Instagram, and doing your due diligence on them makes a big difference. You’ll find that hashtag analysis is pretty much like keyword analysis, and you can expect similar results on similar character strings.
You can learn about the volume and frequency of posts related to hashtags that you’re thinking about using by running them through RiteTag. For example, a search for the hashtag, “#iPhone8,” revealed that the hashtag might not be the strongest on Instagram, but, overall gets plenty of short-term and long-term views across different media. On the other hand, #instaiphone and #instaapple seem to be hot on Instagram.
Keyhole.co can also provide you with some great information about top posts with specific hashtags and what hashtags are most popular, via its hashtag cloud. The cloud’s largest, boldest strings represent the most popular hashtags.
Tip #4: Put Your Bio URL to Work
Your first thought on your Instagram bio URL might be to add your business home page or your own bio page URL. However, that URL will be seen as your Instagram branding grows, and you want to make sure that you make the best use of that space.
Ben and Jerry’s ice cream Instagram bio URL, for example, goes to a landing page with their new products, rather than their home page. There, they pitch their new flavors, Caramel Malt Ice Cream with Almond Toffee Pieces and Fudge Fish & Caramel Swirl, and provide a call-to-action to order them.
Tip #5: Reach Out To Niche Influencers
Start interacting with influencers from your niche on Instagram. “40% of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine, or YouTube, according to TapInfluence.
In addition, influencers are busy on their social media platforms, making them some of the people most likely to link to your Instagram profile and website if you’re providing quality content. When influencers follow you, people start seeing your profile.
If you’ve been working for some time in your field, you probably already know the key influencers in your niche. If you’re new, you might want to start looking for influencers. You can find them by paying attention to your Instagram feed, searching for hashtags in your field, reviewing relevant content within Instagram, and checking into your other social media platforms where you may already have some influencers among your contacts.
You can start engaging with influencers by responding to their posts and responses of other responders, reviewing their products, sending them products of your own, and following their pages and profiles on different social media. By establishing a reasonable relationship with socially active influencers, you’ll begin seeing why people follow them and how you can do the same.
Tip #6: Give Your Clients Ideas with Pictures
Showing your Instagram viewers how to use your products and services can motivate them to try them out for themselves. Sometimes a photo of an individual item does not provoke a strong reaction from clients. However, retailers, like Hobby Lobby, know how to group products in a way that motivates their Instagram site viewers.
Alone, against a seamless white background, most of these products might not attract much viewer attention on a website. Together, though, their colors and textures create a stronger sensory statement, where viewers can see and feel the textures and colors.
By appealing to their senses and emotions, your viewers will more likely follow your profile. They like to “hang on” to things that appeal to them, and seeing sensory-provoking photos hits their most inner instincts.
Let Us Know If These Instagram Tips & Tricks Work For You
Try these six tips to get more followers on Instagram. By posting regularly and consistently, you’ll begin to develop your own list of Instagram tips and tricks that get more followers on your business’ profile.