3 Tactics to Grow Your Instagram Following

Hannah LushinJanuary 05, 2021Tips

With so many social media platforms available, it can be overwhelming to come up with strategies that will increase your brand’s followers on each social network. To help you out, we’ll focus today on the second-largest social outlet that we’re all familiar with -- Instagram . With over 1 billion monthly users and 500 million daily Instagram stories, Instagram is a competitive place, and there are many creative ways to grow your account and boost your following.

While the user numbers mentioned above may seem intimidating, there’s a number of steps you can take that will lead to more sales for your business, increase traffic to your blogs and website, and even create a stronger sense of community for your brand. Read on for three effective tactics you can use to help grow your Instagram followers.

#1: Craft Authentic and Shareable Content

No matter which social media platform you’re on, one thing that’s always important when working to grow your audience is authenticity. Authentic content will help your brand stand out and stop the dreaded scroll.

One way your authentic content can shine? Creating content that others can share. When you’re scrolling through Instagram, you’re constantly viewing shared content that is shown either through IG Stories or newsfeeds. For your business, this content can be anything you want it to be: your personal business story, a topic that’s relatable to your potential audience, or even a struggle that’s relevant to your industry.

The key here is to be able to craft your content into something that helps your brand stick out from the competition. Remember: Instagram is a super competitive space, and users are constantly looking for a new handle (and new content) to engage with. When you go to the effort of creating meaningful content, your chances of engagement increase. An increase in engagement on your content kicks the Instagram algorithm into gear, which will help you gain even more traction -- and more followers!

#2: Utilize Industry-Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are available on the majority of social media platforms now. In general, they can be thought of as tools that narrow posts down to a specific topic that a user may be interested in. While we mentioned creating authentic, sharable content as a useful tactic, you can build upon the content you create by using hashtags as a part of your posting strategy.

Users on Instagram tend to follow specific hashtags that pertain to their specific interests. If you start using popular hashtags that are related to your industry, then your chances of new eyes on your content -- and, ideally, new followers -- are increased.

Say I’m interested in the tech gadget industry. The current top five tech and gadget-related hashtags are:

  1. #techie
  2. #latesttech
  3. #VR
  4. #mobile
  5. #innovation

Some hashtags may be too broad, and even too popular. While you could use a hashtag that’s trending and net some new engagements and likes, you could end up not gaining net followers -- meaning you might gain followers who quickly unfollow you later on. This is where you as the brand creator need to dive deeper into search engines and create a list of additional key hashtags that will better correspond with your brand.

#3 Start Using Your Bio Link

Is the link in your bio section a “set it and forget it” field for your brand? Did you even know you can add a link to your Instagram bio? Two of the most common Insta bio mistakes we see are neglecting to use the link in bio feature at all, or adding one general link and never (or rarely) updating it.

One of the nuances of Instagram is that the majority of posts cannot include a link out to a webpage, unless it’s a shoppable post. Within an IG Story , only accounts with 10k+ followers have the option to add a “swipe up” link (where users can swipe up on the story to visit your website). In other words, within Instagram, you have virtually no way to get a potential follower to click through to your website aside from the link in bio feature.

Your bio URL is one of the most important parts of your IG handle. Changing it up on a daily or weekly basis can help drive traffic to the specific landing pages you want to link out to. With a consistent mix of messaging and linking out to the corresponding content, you will end up increasing your follower count consistently over time.

But while Instagram limits you to a single bio link, there are a ton of third-party tools out there that allow you to link to multiple pages of content. Some of the tools we love are:

  1. Linktree
  2. Linkin.bio by Later
  3. Shorby
  4. Lnk.Bio

Each one of these tools functions slightly differently from the other. While this does give you a variety of different ways to optimize your bio link section, it certainly is up to you to decide which one works best for your needs.

While these are just three tactics you can use to increase your Instagram following, many other tactics exist as well. What have you done that has resulted in Instagram success? Let us know which strategies have worked best!

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