A Guide To Building A Successful Instagram Page
With over a billion users, Instagram offers a lot of opportunities to gain a large audience, but attracting followers on the platform can sometimes be a challenge. Here is a short guide to help you build your Instagram page and fanbase faster.
Creating your Instagram strategy
When jumping into Instagram, you should have a clear strategy for using the platform. Some of the important elements to consider here are:
- Your goals: Define what you want to gain from Instagram, be it to increase brand awareness, generate traffic, or other things. Then tie it into your overall marketing goal.
- Your target audience: Study your target audience to understand their presence on Instagram and how they use the platform.
- Your message: Being clear in the message you want to convey with your Instagram content will help the audience relate to it and engage with you.
- Your brand aesthetic: Remember that Instagram is a visual medium, so you need to create a consistent look for your page that viewers will immediately recognize.
Lay down these elements on paper to help you understand the flow of your strategy and how it should be implemented.
Building your content library
A good understanding of your Instagram audience will help you better determine what kind of content they would find engaging. Study what they post on their accounts to know their interests. You can also check out the content they repost and the accounts they follow. This will be your guide when coming up with content aimed towards them.
Good captions also play an important role in making your Instagram content more engaging. Here are a few useful tips when writing your captions:
- Put important words on top: Place the most important post details at the start of the caption to make them more accessible.
- Ask a question: This is a great way to get your audience commenting and engaging in conversations with you.
- Use emojis: Adding emojis is a simple but effective way to grab the attention of readers, and also adds a touch of lightheartedness in your posts.
- Explore different caption lengths: Writing a long-form caption lets you provide more details about your images, while doing short captions is great if the visuals are already compelling on their own.
Mix different caption styles in your posts to create a more varied reading experience for your followers. National Geographic’s Instagram page is a good example of how to combine engaging images and different caption styles into a compelling post.
Making your Instagram page more discoverable
Posting on a consistent schedule helps establish your presence on the platform and attract a steady stream of visitors. To determine the best time to post, go back to your audience profile and study their online reading habits.
Note that while there is a general “best time,” some of your audience might have different reading times. Use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to plan and schedule your posts to cover these different groups of audiences.
Using hashtags right
Hashtags are essential tools for getting your Instagram content found by people. Look for the ones that your audience actually uses and add these to your posts, but don’t overdo it as too many hashtags will distract them and lessen their interest. Use a tool like Hashtagify to find connected hashtags.
Another way to use hashtags is by creating your own. Come up with a unique hashtag that represents your Instagram page’s theme. Take 65-year-old fashion model Lyn Slater for instance; she has her #AgeIsNotAVariable tag that fits well with her desired message on the platform.
Popularize the tag with your audience by incorporating it in places like your Instagram bio or Stories content. You should also make it visible in your content outside of Instagram to increase recognizability.
Encouraging audience engagement
There are many tactics you can use to get people to engage with your posts and page. Some common ones are:
- Running contests: When planning your Instagram contest or promotion, choose the contest type and price that best fits your audience’s tastes to boost participation.
- Tagging relevant users: When these users see themselves tagged in your post, they become more interested in engaging, bringing in their own followers.
- Engaging Instagram communities: There are many communities within Instagram that center around specific niches like yours. Reach out to them, and show them content that matches their interest to encourage them to visit your account.
Explore these and other tactics to determine which ones would best suit your account and audience, and optimize them further for better results.
This short guide touches on just a small portion of the process of establishing your Instagram presence. As you go on creating your posts and engaging audiences, you will learn more useful strategies. Be ready to try them to grow your page at a faster rate.
Date: May 27, 2019 / Categories: Guide, / Author: Rich Drees
