Approximately 1.4 billion people use Instagram monthly, with over 500 million people posting on social media. It’s an important place if you are trying to develop your online presence or have a business to promote. Followers and likes are the hard currency on Instagram; having as many possible is essential to succeed on the platform. However, more than quantity is necessary when it comes to Instagram followers. You must ensure that many followers are genuine and willing to interact with your posts.
If you are wondering how to get followers and ensure they are real, active, and willing to engage and share, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, you will find actionable steps that can help you improve your follower count while ensuring they are genuine account holders.
Optimize Your Account
First, you must fully optimize your account to ensure it has the best visibility and reach. Pick a username that is in line with the name of your brand or business. Use simple phrases or big words that may be easy to spell or remember. You should also avoid using numbers and hyphens in your username for SEO (search engine optimization) reasons.
Ensure your social media accounts use the same username with the same logo, images, official website links, and color schemes. This can attract new followers by giving them an excellent first impression.
Make a Schedule
Making a schedule is an effective way to maintain focus and dedication to your Instagram account. You should update your Instagram account at least once a day. You should update your Instagram at least two or five times so your users are entertained and engaged. Set aside specific times in the day and during the week when you will post on Instagram and stick to those times. You can go one step further and research the best and most popular times to post based on your niche or market.
Although it is a good idea to post throughout the day during busy days on Instagram, you must be careful to get the balance right between posting too little and oversharing. It can appear spammy to many users if you post and share too many too quickly. This could annoy some people or make people want to unfollow you.
Consistency Is Crucial
Be consistent when building your online presence and using Instagram. Regularly uploading videos, posting pics, and posting updates can help get the traction you need. Your users will learn quickly that you are an Instagrammer who posts regularly and will be more inclined to follow, interact with, and share your posts.
Look at Your Competition
To build a list of active and real followers, you must understand what your target audience wants. Take some time to research your competition on Instagram and other social medial platforms. Look at how they communicate and connect with their audience. Study the social media platforms they use with Instagram and how often they post something new and share something. As you get more familiar and comfortable with your industry, you will find it easier to implement an effective social media marketing strategy.
Follow the Leaders of Your Industry
In addition to researching your competition, you should also study the leaders of your industry with high follower counts, concentrating on those with thousands and even millions. Follow these social media account holders to gain helpful insight into the kind of content they usually post, the schedule they use for new content and updates, and how they attract new followers.
Decide Your Brand or Business Aesthetic
You need to consider the visual appeal or aesthetic of your business or brand when you develop your online presence on social media and create an Instagram account. Think about some of the top brands in the world — like Apple, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. What comes to mind? It’s likely the logo or color schemes most associated with these brands. Therefore, consider the importance of visual presentation, color scheme, and your brand’s overall aesthetic when trying to grow a successful account on Instagram.
Pick the Best Suited Voice for Your Business or Brand
Picking the right voice for your business or brand can be the thing that makes your online presence and Instagram account. You need to figure out your brand’s voice while building it up to make it easier to target and appeal to your target audience.
Think carefully about the audience you are targeting with your account and content. Who will be interested in your information, products, content, services, and anything else? Think about the location, gender, and age of those individuals.
Are you likely to put off people if you use too much corporate voice, or will a casual voice turn away the people looking for a professional business they can trust?
These questions are not always easy to answer, but by asking them and finding the answers, you can figure out the best voice for your business. An excellent place to look for inspiration is similar brands to your own in the same industry or brands that you are inspired by and want to emulate. Think about the voice they use.
Work With Brand Sponsors, Partners, and Advocates
If you want to expand your reach with Instagram, one effective way to do it is by reaching out to brand partners, sponsors, and advocates to see if they are willing to work with you. When you establish and work on partnerships and find opportunities for guest posting, this is a great way to use Instagram.
Put Your Instagram Link Everywhere
To spread the word and increase your brand viability and reach, link your Instagram account everywhere. Share it on bios, personal accounts, emails, and other social media accounts, along with your official blog and website.
Cross-Connect Your Instagram Account with Other Social Media Accounts
Another effective way to draw attention to your Instagram account is connecting it with your other social media platform accounts. Whatever you have, whether it’s Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, or TikTok, connect them to your Instagram. As well as catching your target audience in all the places they are likely to be and bringing them to your Insta account, it will also help Google and other search engine crawlers rank your pages better.
Content Is Crucial
You may have heard the phrase “content is king.” This is as true for social media accounts as with your website and blog. Regularly update and add new content to your Instagram account if you want your followers to keep reading, liking, sharing, and interacting with your posts in other ways. Visitors to your Instagram page should feel they have been given informative, fresh, and valuable content.
If you want them to keep coming back, what kind of content should you be making? Take some time to research what the trending and popular accounts are doing in your niche and look at the popular topics in your market or niche too. You can also use many keyword research tools to figure out the phrases and keywords your target market uses most to improve the content to drive them to your accounts and site.
Look at the hashtags trending on Instagram to ensure your updates and posts are correctly tagged to reach the maximum number of people.
Interact With Your Instagram Follower
It is only worth working so hard to get so many active followers if you try to interact and communicate with them. This is one of the best ways to have success on social media. How can you do this? If one of your followers likes or even comments on your post or update, you should either like their comment in return or consider replying and directly engaging with them publicly. When your followers and potential followers notice that your account is active and you communicate with your followers, they are more likely to follow you.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Your Followers Questions
Part of engaging with your audience further involves asking them questions. If there is something you want to learn about your target audience, post a question and wait for them to respond. This is an effective way to get real-time, genuine feedback. Ask the people who visit your page regularly and engage with it, why they do it, or why they like your products or services. You may hear something you don’t like, but take it on board, as feedback directly from your audience is worth listening to.
Listen to Feedback and Act on It
When you get feedback from your followers, you should listen carefully, even if it’s negative. When you ask for feedback, actively listen to it and then do something in response. This can increase your follower’s loyalty towards your brand and business.
Don’t Stay Still – Constantly Change as You Grow
In line with the above, as you expand, evolve, and change based on your success or failure and the feedback you receive, you are more likely to have success than if you stay still and refuse to change. Modern consumers and clients like companies and brands that practice flexibility and adaptability.
Share Posts Across All Your Social Media Accounts
One effective way to increase your reach is by cross-posting on the various social media platforms you have accounts on. Amazingly, you can double, triple, and quadruple the view count, reads, and likes for posts by remembering to take the time to share your Insta posts on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., and vice versa.
If you have limited time or need more patience or motivation to manually cross-post, a wide variety of management tools and suites like Hootsuite can do it.
This can help you to keep a strong, active social media presence on Instagram without cutting too much time into other important things you need to do for your business or non-work life.
As you can see, there is more to making it on Instagram than simply opening an account and posting a few times a week. Whether you are new to Instagram, or your business/brand has been on the platform for some time, if you are struggling to gain more followers, you should follow the tips and suggestions noted above. Yet, even if you only implement one or two of them, you will probably see a marked difference in your follower count.
Crucially, though, you need to be careful to balance things. Your followers will not appreciate being bombarded with messages and updates 10 times daily, especially if they are trivial.
