Instagram is here to stay!
After working with Instagram for the past five years and soon gaining access to their advertising program, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
In this post, you’ll get five specific tips to help you gain your first 1,000 followers.
1. Share the right content with your audience
Make sure you’re sharing the right content on Instagram. You can’t post links like on Twitter or Facebook, so you’ll need to get creative in how you engage your audience. Photos and videos are the way forward on Instagram—especially if you keep the content broad enough.
Examples:
- Selling food? Focus on the taste and visuals
- Selling clothes? Fashion photos or videos, not just product shots
- Selling alcohol? Showcase celebrities or cocktails made with your products
- Selling hair products? Highlight hairstyles, tips and tricks
Good ideas for sharing on Instagram:
- Product releases before launch
- Highlight fans doing something special
- Showcase employees to add personality
- Highlight other businesses that sell your products (B2B) as proof of sales
As with all social media, consistency is key. You need to stay focused and keep your profile updated regularly. It’s easy to get frustrated when results don’t come right away. Let’s face it—you won’t gain 500,000 followers in 10 minutes.
Make sure to optimize and connect all your social media channels so they support each other. By linking Instagram with Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, you can cover more ground at once. Alternatively, you can use Bufferapp for other platforms outside Instagram.
Remember that what you post across different platforms needs to be optimized to work on each one. Otherwise, users won’t be satisfied.
For example, many users on Instagram are not on Facebook—and vice versa. So someone with only a Facebook profile may not want to sign up for a giveaway that’s only available on Instagram.
2. Collaborate with other users
Whether you’re a large or small brand, it always makes sense to collaborate with others to strengthen your own brand.
- Share each other’s content and tag the brand
- Highlight celebrities using your products—people love that
- Feature bloggers to grab their attention
- Showcase your product alongside other well-known brands
Example:
Nialaya (jewelry) does an amazing job on Instagram, often combining their jewelry with other high-end brands like Rolex. This automatically positions their brand in the same league. Of course, the quality has to match, but sometimes small branding hacks like these go a long way.
3. Use the right hashtags
You’ve probably seen people using way too many random hashtags. Honestly, I don’t recommend doing that. Be specific and detailed. You should only hashtag things that relate directly to what you sell.
The more precise you are, the better you’ll reach your target audience. Unfortunately, many people think it’s all about having the most followers. That’s far from the truth. It’s about having ambassadors.
To find the right hashtags, look at what your competitors are doing across social media and see if you can identify tags that fit your brand.
Try to maintain consistency across your posts—including your hashtags. A good idea is to use your company’s own hashtag. That way, your audience knows where to find more of your content.
4. Appreciate your audience
Your audience is everything—and by audience, I mean your true ambassadors. Make sure to keep them engaged and give them reasons to stay connected to your Instagram presence.
- Send individual discount codes via direct message
- Showcase user-submitted photos to show appreciation
- Keep it personal—don’t get too commercial, this isn’t a product catalog
- Run photo contests (be creative and use hashtags)
Tip: If you have the time, like the photos people post with your products. This may become unmanageable later, but in the beginning, it’s a great way to show appreciation and encourage people—and others—to keep sharing images of your brand.
5. Track everything you do
One of the best parts of operating online is that you can track everything. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know when you’re doing something right—or wrong.
There are many tools to help you analyze your Instagram data. But the most important thing is to personally observe what works. It’s not always about having the fanciest tool. Often, it’s about being alert and having a feel for what performs best and at what time of day.
I often use Cyfe to analyze data. It’s essentially a way to simplify data tracking. You can decide what data to display on your dashboard and from which platform.
For example, you can build a social board that displays all your social media data, including Instagram. It also creates easy KPIs that you—and your team—can work from.
Bonus tip: Should you buy fake Instagram followers?
There are tons of services where you can buy fake Instagram followers.
A quick Google search or browse through Fiverr reveals thousands of options.
My advice: Don’t do it.
The problem with fake followers is that they don’t engage with your content. That results in fewer “points” in Instagram’s algorithm. Instagram tracks what percentage of your followers engage with your photos and videos.
If you have 20,000 fans but only 20 likes per post, Instagram’s algorithm will quickly figure out you don’t have real followers. That hurts your visibility.
It’s better to have fewer followers who actually care about what you’re doing than to have millions who don’t know you or aren’t even real people.
Conclusion
Instagram is a fantastic branding tool—it’s not as precise as Facebook, and you can’t use links in the same way. But you can use Instagram to stay top of mind with your audience, and you can break into new markets through contests and co-branding.
Be sure to follow some of the biggest brands and observe what they do—you’ll likely get a lot of good ideas. Keep yourself updated on Instagram’s new ad platform.
I’ve had a chance to peek inside, and it’s soon going to be rolled out to all businesses. It will be very interesting to see if Instagram can keep its users happy despite the introduction of advertising.
Summary
- Stay motivated—be consistent
- Collaborate with others in your industry
- Use the right hashtags—don’t overdo it
- Appreciate your audience—give something back
- Test and optimize everything—constantly
- Don’t buy fake followers
What are your experiences with Instagram and marketing?
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