How Successful Instagrammers Grow Their Following
The best Instagram brands are often able to attract followers by the thousands. If you are wondering how they do it, we compiled some of the strategies they use to grow their audience.
Setting up Instagram the right way
While personal accounts are good starting points, many successful Instagrammers eventually switch to business profiles. This is because business profiles offer several key advantages like:
- Access to Instagram Insights: Insights is the platform’s native analytics tool. This gives you plenty of information about post-performance and follower engagement.
- Links in Instagram Stories: Adding links to your Stories makes them more effective in driving audience traffic to your other content or external website.
- “Contact me” buttons: A business profile lets you add a custom contact button on your profile page. The button can either be for an email or phone.
- Visible industry: When you connect your Instagram page to your Facebook page, your industry name will be shown on the former. This will make you more identifiable.
These benefits all contribute to making an effective business profile that will help increase your following on the platform.
Understanding the Instagram algorithm
While Instagram is very secretive about its ranking algorithm, successful Instagrammers put in a lot of effort studying the platform to understand how it works. They continuously do experiments to determine what factors are at play in determining post rankings. Different analytics tools help them sort the test results.
Brands also actively monitor Instagram for algorithm changes. Some of these changes are announced by the site itself, while others are done in the background. In both cases, brands use analytic tools to track real-time data and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Creating unique and engaging content
Well-established Instagrammers routinely experiment with their content to come up with new ways to engage their followers. One unique approach is to produce Instagram videos that don’t rely much on sound. Such types of video are useful as Instagram’s autoplay feature turns the sound off during a video’s first few seconds. This then requires a different approach to catch the viewer’s attention.
Another style that’s being explored by Instagrammers is by creating “satisfying content.” These are photos or videos that evoke a sense of fulfillment in viewers, such as this one:
Image: @theslim3ry satisfying content. Screenshot was taken on August 7, 2019
This kind of content can be just about anything that people will find pleasing to watch, which makes them perfect as potential viral content.
Whatever unique content style you explore, don’t forget to write a winning caption. Use the caption to add more value to your visual content. Popular Instagram storytellers like Humans of New York are well-known for this, making their posts engaging to read.
Image: @humansofny winning caption. Screenshot was taken on August 7, 2019
Creating a more engrossing audience experience
To encourage your audience to follow your Instagram page, you need to create a more engaging experience for them. Make it a habit to reply to comments and engage followers in conversations. You can also tag individual users on your posts to catch their attention.
Encouraging user-generated content is another great way to get followers more immersed. You can incorporate such content in contests to make it fun, like this one.
Image: @padreazul.tequila instagram contest. Screenshot was taken on August 7, 2019
Posting randomly-submitted content regularly also helps to encourage your followers to visit your page.
These strategies are definitely effective in getting the attention of would-be followers on Instagram, and there are still more you can try out. Visit the most successful pages, and see how you can use their techniques to boost your own presence on the platform.
Date: August 6, 2019 / Categories: Follower Tactics, / Author: Disturbinsilence
