Wondering how to get more Instagram followers for your small business?
As the 7th most visited website worldwide, with over 2.9 billion monthly users, Instagram is one of the most valuable tools any small business owner can access in today’s marketing landscape. It’s also a platform which can be notoriously difficult to master – particularly for beginners.
While Instagram offers endless opportunities for reaching and converting customers, it’s also already packed full of other brands trying to capture attention from the same consumers as you.
In this competitive landscape, learning how to draw more attention to your profile can be crucial to your long-term success. Fortunately, there are some tried-and-tested methods you can use to generate lucrative followers fast.
1. Use An Organic Instagram Growth Service
First, it’s important to note there are various types of Instagram growth services on the market today, and only some can promise you true organic followers for Instagram. An organic growth service is a company which helps to accelerate your follower count on social media platforms, and improve your chances of long-term success.
Unlike old-fashioned growth services, organic solutions focus on using natural, safe methods to attract people to your Instagram account, and encourage them to follow you. You don’t just buy fake and spammy accounts to bulk up your numbers, you work with a company to target companies with the kind of followers you want to attract.
Once you’ve shared those targets with your growth service provider, they’ll go and interact with followers on your behalf, liking their posts and drawing attention to your company. When you like someone else’s content on Instagram, you improve the chances of them wanting to click on your company name and find out more about your profile.
If you’re already sharing high-quality and engaging content, the people who connected with will likely want to follow your account.
The best thing about this service is how targeted it is. For instance, if your small business is a local coffee shop, you can target other coffee shops in the area, and use location targeting to target people living or working in the region where you sell your drinks. The result is better ROI and more opportunities to grow with customers who have a genuine interest in you – and ultimately, this will improve your social media marketing efforts.
2. Run Ads On Instagram
While organic content can do a lot for your Instagram strategy, it helps to have a little boost from time to time. Paid ads on Instagram are specially designed to drive more attention to your content, and capture the interest of the people most likely to follow your brand.
Lately, Instagram has been building on its already impressive marketing options, providing companies with more new and improved ways to advertise services and products. Currently, you’ll have a wide variety of ways to display your ads on Instagram, including through user feeds, Stories, the “Explore” page, and more. Ads look similar to normal posts, which means they blend in well with your Instagram fan’s experience, without being too overwhelming.
The exact kind of ad you use will depend on a number of factors, including what you’re trying to promote. For instance, a video ad can be a great way to introduce your company and capture attention from new customers, while carousel ads can show off your latest products.
The best thing about Instagram ads is their robust targeting capabilities. Instagram uses the Facebook advertising system, which has the most powerful targeting abilities of any social media channel. You can specify the target location of your audience, their demographics, their interests, and more.
For instance, a Real Estate business could actively target people who have expressed an interest in looking for houses online, or people who have recently sold their house in a specific area.
3. Have A Good Hashtag Strategy & Use Geo-Tagging
Hashtags are one of the most important tools you can leverage on any social media channel today, but they’re particularly important on Instagram.
Hashtags help to organize content and ensure followers can find the posts they like on Instagram. Without them, your posts will be much harder to track down.
A good hashtag strategy should include a combination of different styles of tags. For instance, some of the different hashtags you could use include:
· Trending tags: #SmallBusiness #GiveBack or #LocalBusiness. These more popular hashtags can help you to rank among other top posts in the same category of Instagram content as you.
· Niche tags: #SaaS, #GlutenFreeBakery or #BagelStore. These are hashtags related specifically to the kind of small business you’re running.
· Branded tags: #MickeysBakery #SarahsMuffins #CoffeeToGo. These are hashtags you create using your brand name, for people to use when mentioning you, or sharing user-generated content associated with your company.
If you want to learn how to get more Instagram followers fast, you’ll need to keep track of which Instagram hashtags your competitors and customers are using, and which tags help you to gain the most engagement on your posts. Don’t forget to use geo-tagging to specify the location of your business too. A geo-tag helps to identify where your company is, so you can reach local customers.
4. Post Good Content & Have A Cohesive Theme
Great content is probably the most important thing you can have on Instagram. Without it, you’ll struggle to capture any new followers, and you won’t be able to keep your existing fans happy. Just like you need great content to keep people coming back to your website, you’ll also need a wide selection of high quality content types to keep customers happy on Instagram.
Start by choosing your theme. A consistent theme helps your customers to immediately recognize your content whenever and wherever they see it. For instance, all of your posts might contain your brand colors, or certain kinds of fonts. Next, to improve your chances of connecting with your audience, follow these content creation tips:
· Create different kinds of content: There are a lot of different kinds of content you can share on Instagram, including videos, stories, and even text-based posts. Reels are one of the most exciting content types today, capturing around 200 million viewers daily.
· Edit your content: Use tools like Canva’s video editor, VSCO, and Photoshop to make your content look as professional as possible. A little editing can help to separate you from the other companies in your industry, and earn your customer’s trust. Just make sure your photos and videos still look authentic and natural when you’re done editing.
· Get to know your audience: One of the best ways to boost your chances of success on Instagram is to learn as much as you can about your audience. Find out what kind of content they’re most interested in, and what kind of other companies they follow online.
Remember, use your Instagram analytics to track engagement for each type of post you share, then update your content strategy based on what you learn.
5. Run A Giveaway With Another Business
When you’re a brand-new company trying to capture attention for your business, it can be difficult to get ahead of the competition. Sometimes, you need the credibility and impact of another business to help demonstrate your trustworthiness to your brands.
Working with other businesses in your industry (though not direct competitors) lets your customers know you’re a reputable and established brand. Just look at what happened with Lego and Levis. One of the best ways to get your followers excited immediately, is with a competition or giveaway.
Competitions generate immediate attention for your company and increase the chances of your customers sharing the content you produce with other people in their community.
The best way to make the most of this strategy is to run competitions which ask your customers to @mention a friend in your post, so they can draw more attention back to your brand. You can also ask customers to share user-generated content, like pictures of them using your products with a branded hashtag, to generate more awareness.
You may even be able to re-share user-generated content in the future to enhance your content schedule, and give your brand more social proof.
6. Cross-Promote On Other Platforms
When learning how to get more Instagram followers is great, it’s worth taking advantage of the audiences you already have on other platforms, and in various digital environments. Cross-promotion is a great way to expand your reach to your target audience, and improve your brand reputation.
The good news is Instagram makes it much easier to cross-promote than you might think. Because the channel is owned by Facebook, you can automatically choose to share content on both Instagram and Facebook at the same time when you’re publishing online.
You can also ad your Instagram posts to various other platforms online. For instance, you can create a feed on your website where people can see your latest posts, and posts shared by people using your branded hashtag. You might even add some of your latest Instagram posts to your email signature, so people can immediately click to your profile whenever they get a message from you.
Don’t be afraid to connect multiple different marketing strategies online to enhance the power of each individual platform.
Get The Most Out Of Instagram
Learning how to get more Instagram followers can seem like a challenging endeavor, particularly when you’re just getting started. However, with the tips above, you’ll have everything you need to start capturing the attention of truly valuable followers.
Remember, keep an eye on your Instagram Insights, and build what you learn from each campaign into your strategy as you go.
