How To Grow Your Instagram In 2021
In a world where there are around or over 3 billion active social media users, individuals and businesses use social media now more than ever. Instagram is by far one of the biggest social media platforms, this article is here to help you navigate through the ever changing world of Instagram.
The data shows on average, Instagram users spend an hour and a half per day on the platform. Around 500 million users use Instagram Stories every day, with more than 100 million photos, and videos shared on any given day. What does that mean for your band or your business?! You need to be on Instagram!! Instagram is the number one social media platform, in my opinion. With that being said, gone are the years of fast-growing Instagram accounts. With some of the changes to the Instagram algorithm and the share number of users, it is harder to grow now than it was seven years ago. However, if you are persistent, you can still grow your brand and develop your brand or business’s influence to become successful.
Bios Matter
The bio is the first interaction many will have with your brand, make it stand out! Give profile visitors an idea of who you are and what you do before they scroll down your profile. No one cares about what year you graduated high school or if you’re in a relationship or not. Remember, this is your business or brand account, not a Tinder profile. Be very clear and concise about what exactly your business does. “Pro tip”, go to a large account in your niche and copy exactly the way their bio is set up.
Socialize
Instagram is a social platform, so be social! Communicate with people who share common interests. Start liking a shit ton of pictures that are related to your profile topic, but keep in mind there are like, comments, and following limits, or your account will get action blocked, which could hurt your growth. Leave relevant comments under other posts, let the owner of the page know that you see them, and are digging what they are doing. Share your opinion on the topic. The profile owner or their followers are likely to see you have similar interests and will go to your account and follow you.
Quality NOT Quantity
At one time, I ran a service that developed Instagram pages. We would get clients who had over 300 posts but zero engagement. The old adage once was to post on Instagram three times per day, or at minimum once a day; however, this may not work best for you depending on the type of company or brand you run. Brand awareness is never a bad thing, but depending on the quality of your content, your current or potential followers might see very frequent posts as spammy and will start to unfollow you. If you don’t have a way to take quality photos every day, then post less frequently. I currently post one photo per week, at the most two, on Mondays and Fridays. It’s always better to post a few quality pictures a week than a lot of low-quality content.
Schedule Your Posts
Our primary focus when discussing how to grow your Instagram is to increase your followers. The easiest way to grow your Instagram followers is to post high-quality content. But just posting isn’t enough; you need to scale your processes. Look into Instagram scheduling tools. These tools allow you to schedule your posts in advance and put the frequency at which you post almost on auto-pilot. If you don’t want to spend the money on a scheduling tool, then set a reminder on your phone that alerts you when to post. View your engagement data and figure out when your followers are the most active on your post and post around that time. This will be some trial and error at first. Try posting for a week straight. Post first time in the morning, try noon, maybe 4 pm, post at 8 pm, and then midnight. Whichever time your audience is the most active on your post, then start posting at that time.
Own Your Hashtag
This allows you to build your community and involve people following you to share their photos with you in said community. Here we’re not talking about niche-centered hashtags but more so your name or the brand’s name. Build the right hashtag around that name and help expose not only your images, video, or Instagram story but allow your audience to engage with you. For example, let’s say my brand’s name “I Love New York” I’m a t-shirt company that makes the classic I heart NYC shirts. Well, if I’m smart, I would use #ILOVENYCSHIRTS as my hashtag and tell all my followers to tag all their photos using my hashtag whenever they post pictures of New York City. I would then give them a shoutout on my page. I would also tag them in my story. When people offer a friendly gesture, it’s common to want to return the favor. So I expect they will post and tag you in their story saying “Thank you for showing my page love” or something along those lines. What will happen next 10% of their followers are likely to visit your page. If you have engaging content, they will follow. They will follow if they always wanted to visit New York, but it’s still on the bucket list. If they visited New York over the summer and never got around to posting their photos, they are likly to use YOUR hashtag when they post. Over time more and more people will repeat that process, and your page will grow. Your followers will feel appreciated that your repost their images.
Use Stories
When I started on Instagram, there was no such thing as stories, but stories are here to stay. There are millions of stories posted daily. Make sure yours are one of them. The best thing here is that all stories are highlighted at the top of the Instagram feed without any prepayments or post boosting, meaning if you’re posting quality images and your post are frequently coming across the explore page, more people will have an opportunity to engage with your content. We’ve all seen a dope ass post and then noticed that the profile had stories and clinked through those stories to see what they had going on. Make sure your stories are engaging and set the video of your personality or set the tone for what new users could expect to see on your profile. You should create Instagram Reels, live video, and IGTV videos as part of your Instagram marketing strategy. Despite the fact that stories last only for 24 hours, their impact is way longer, especially with the most popular stories, which you can pin in highlights of your profile and let visitors of your page play them again and again.
Though it was easier to grow on Instagram in the early days, that shouldn’t discourage you from starting now. Instagram is the place to be, and if you want to succeed in either your product or service, people need to know who you are on Instagram. Stay away from buying followers and shoutouts. Those are both money pits. If you have 100k Bought followers with only 15 likes, that comes across as scammy. You’re better than that. Build your account the right way, and it will make you a better person for it. Think about your profile’s layout and overall look, make sure you post regularly, and keep up to date with current trends. Make sure people can find you. Work with larger influencers and don’t forget to use shoutouts, promos, and giveaways, offer your followers cool prizes for sharing your profile with others. If you follow these suggestions, you should be just fine.
