Social media has become the lifeline for many people’s small businesses and Instagram is no exception. Gaining followers can mean more traffic to online or brick and mortar stores and building a more engaged audience.
One of the biggest issues happening on social media is that bots sometimes slip into your follower count. To grow your real-life audience, you can tighten up your strategies and continue to engage your consumers and customers in an online environment. Growing your organic audience, rather than paying for followers and likes, can take some serious effort but in the end, it’s worth it!
Your Instagram followers won’t mean anything if you don’t have real-life audience members advocating for your business with their friends and family! Although you can buy Instagram followers from trusted vendors like Buzzoid, we’re going to discuss the free, organic methods to get more followers on Instagram.
So let’s dig in and engage some organic audience members to build up your Instagram profile!
Top 10 ways to increase your Instagram followers
Everyone who wants to gain followers and likes on social media claims to have the best method for doing so. But there are a few tried and true ways that may not be glamorous but are effective, to build your audience up organically. Here are a few to help you out!
#1-Optimize your Instagram account
The top of your Instagram account with information about who you are and what your business does is the first thing people see when they come into your online “business”. Just as you’d have your brick and mortar storefront optimized, clean, and ready to receive customers, you want your Instagram account to be the same.
Make sure your bio, image captions, username, and profile picture all point your audience to who you are as a company. If they show up to your page and are left guessing if this is you, you’ll lose potential followers fast. You’ll also want to make sure your account is linked to your business site so traffic won’t just hover on social media but will make its way to your website.
To create an experience that is reflective of the ever-changing content featured on your social media account, many social media professionals recommend linking specific pages to your site that relate to your recent content! This brings people to different parts of your site and keeps them engaged with your media posts as well.
Keep your username as search-friendly as possible and as close to your business name as you can so it’s easy for your customers to find. You’ll want to make sure that your Instagram handle is the same or very similar to your others to make it easy to draw recurring followers to your account.
#2-Keep your content calendar consistent
Perhaps it seems exciting and spontaneous to make social media posts random but for your followers, it’s hard to get involved. For recurring audience members, it’s hard to stay on board and if your content is old news from three weeks ago, new followers will have a hard time seeing a reason to follow in the first place.
Stick to a regular posting schedule to avoid issues! Post a few times each day but don’t go overboard as it can feel like a bot is spamming your home feed. But once a day often isn’t enough to drive your account to the top of someone’s home feed so take the time to post a couple of times each day.
A scheduled posting routine will help you develop a consistent experience for your followers and allows them to rely on you each day.
#3-Schedule posts in advance
Like most business owners, you probably don’t have time to spend crafting the exact right message and posting it online throughout the day. To help narrow up the time you need to create and post on Instagram, you can create your daily posts and schedule them to push out at the most profitable times of the day.
When you schedule and build outposts beforehand, you have a chance to proofread and optimize them to reach the most audience members each day. You can also have them available to be tweaked or double-checked by the rest of your team!
Scheduling your posts gives you the freedom to go about your day while also delivering content consistently to your followers. There are several social media scheduling tools that you can use to help you create and disseminate your posts every day.
#4-Partner with brand advocates
The basic rule of social media is to post and be present. This means you’ll want to be engaged with your followers and be as responsive as you possibly can be throughout the day. The bigger your audience, the more followers will be engaged with your content.
As your follower count grows, you’ll have the opportunity to sponsor user-generated content and hold Instagram contests to engage followers. When you share or offer a contest, you’re proving to your followers that you’re as invested in them as they are in you and often create content with you as the center.
Keep in contact with large Instagram accounts in your industry and sphere of influence. If you engage with the large accounts, they often give shout-outs or tags to those accounts which lends you credibility with their much bigger audiences. Always be sure you’re providing something of value rather than just a publicity stunt to your collaborators. Instagram followers can sniff out a stunt or scam with great accuracy!
#5-Avoid fake followers
There is a huge difference between fake followers and organic audience members when it comes to social media accounts. It can seem like a quick fix for you to buy Instagram followers but in the end, it can often backfire.
Fake Instagram followers tend to deceive your new followers. Like we’ve said before, Instagram audiences can sniff out a fake account with amazing tenacity. Stumbling on an inactive account with posts from months ago that somehow has thousands of followers is a huge red flag. Without even meaning to, you’ll lower the credibility of your account and create an issue that becomes difficult to solve.
As crazy as it seems, fake Instagram followers typically don’t buy things from your site. Organic audience members are looking at your products and company and have real money in their pockets. Building your organic followers brings more potential money to your business.
Real audience members love to be engaged with your brand’s social media! Fake followers don’t comment or if they do, they’re often flagged as bots and deleted off Instagram leaving your page desolate. Organic followers love having a responsive business talk back as they’re working through issues or enjoying your products! Be responsive and encourage engagement with your posts as much as possible.
#6-Show off your Instagram everywhere
No social media is isolated. When you’re talking through with people in person about how they can contact you, be sure to list your Instagram account. If you’re doing a Facebook Live event, link people back to Instagram so they know where to find regular amounts of content.
The key is making sure your account and profile are as visible as you can physically make them. Add social media buttons to your website so your account is just one simple click away. Be sure to continue creating unique content that people want to see rather than just begging for follows and likes.
Instagram continues to be a visual, ever-expanding medium so there’s no end to the creative possibilities you can develop! Be creative, be responsive, and let people know you care about them as more than just follows or likes! If you have the budget, it might be worth buying Instagram likes from Buzzoid to help boost your chances of your photos hitting the Explore feed.
#7-Give the people what they want!
Your content should always be relevant to your brand but it should also be reflective of what your followers want. Some pictures and captions will grab more likes and attention than others so it’s important to test your posts against new trends.
Take the time to go through an analytics tool. This will help you decide which posts to create and which ones to leave in the past. You’ll also want to keep a close eye on what others in your niche are doing and posting. Trends come and go but keeping up with what’s happening in your sector can give you new creative ideas to boost your content to more followers.
Listen to what your followers are saying as they respond, or don’t respond, to your posts! If you have hugely responsive audiences you can sometimes put out a simple poll in your story or timeline that asks what they’d like to see more of. This can also drive your brand and what you sell as they’ll give their opinion on options in your online or brick and mortar stores!
#8-Start the conversation
Instagram has been and always will be a visual-leaning medium. Pictures and videos catch people’s attention more rapidly and more arrestingly than just plain text posts.
Take the time to craft your pictures and your captions so that they give plenty of information and engagement without being overwhelming. Instagram and social media sites have become contact points for companies and brands. Their pictures and posts often start conversations with customers and potential customers in a non-threatening environment.
As a way to keep the conversation going, don’t leave your customers hanging on social media. They want to hear prompt, helpful responses and will become loyal audience members to brands they find responsive and responsible. All of these questions, comments, and responses can come in the form of comments on your post or direct messages but be sure to keep the conversation going as long as needed to engage your audience!
#9-Utilize hashtags
Within the realm of social media, the hashtag has become a great way to search and sift through all of the posts, stories, and comments to find what you want to see. Hashtags label each post so that they can be gathered together and showcased under that heading.
It may seem like the best solution is to grab a hashtag that would be simple and popular but hashtags that are too popular can cause your posts to get lost in the flurry of the tag itself. When selecting a hashtag you’ll want to make sure you pick one that translates well to your post as well as reaches your selective audience. Tagging your post with “#horselife” when your page is all about cleaning supplies probably won’t gain you any new target audience members!
Take time to study which hashtags are being used and how they perform on Instagram as a whole. Targeting your hashtags to your specific brand is a great way to draw audiences in and point them toward your products.
#10-Make your followers happy
You might have a serious brand or company but taking the time to make your followers smile or laugh is a great step toward gaining new followers.
Selling yourself and your company on Instagram can feel like you need to be closing sales all the time. On social media posts like Instagram, you have the time to settle in and have fun with your audience rather than just selling, selling, selling.
All of the fun, antics, and good times that can be had on social media without just selling your audience a product, are times spent building relationships with your target audience. Some ways you can interact and have fun is to post polls for fun questions, share inspirational quotes or images, or post memes intended to make others laugh.
Instagram is meant to be social and as you build your content, interact with your audience, and direct people to your site you’ll find a rhythm that works for you to engage your followers with positive content. Keeping your page free from trolls and negative Nancy’s can be tough but is a good way to create a positive environment around your page as a whole.
Takeaway
Building your audience and follower count on Instagram can be a challenge. But by taking the time to schedule your posts regularly, be interactive with your followers, and continue the conversation patiently and informatively, you’ll build up your audience in no time.
Instagram is a tool to be used just like any other online platform. It can be used to answer real questions your audience may have about the products they received. It can draw audience members into your website with ease. Or it can work as a way to push your content toward the top of the hashtag filter so all of your posts will be more closely associated with your niche.
Your followers will tune in to see more from you the more regularly you post and the more engaged you remain. Happy posting!
You can also find out the Best Site to Buy Instagram Followers.
