Instagram is one of the best places for brands to be in for building social media presence, driving website traffic, boosting conversion, and building an engaged target audience. If your investment in Instagram marketing has not delivered the results you were looking for, you may need to take a relook at your strategies for acquiring real followers from your target audience. As every marketer knows the opportunities for engaging with them and creating unique experiences for them increases significantly when you have a large number of followers. At the end of the day, all the effort you put into your Instagram marketing achieves nothing if you don’t have an engaged audience because these are the followers that make purchases and act as brand advocates. Some effective yet simple ways of increasing your Instagram followers:
Optimize Your Instagram Account
An optimized Instagram account can be a compelling magnet for gaining followers. The first step in optimizing it is to get your Instagram bio right. Since it acts to introduce your account to users, you should ensure that you include your company logo to build brand identity and link the bio to your website to drive traffic. While you can always link your Instagram bio to the home page of your website, it is invariably better to link to special landing pages that you can create that will achieve the maximum conversions of your marketing campaign. Ideally, you should keep the account name simple and something that your target audience relates you with, for example, a shortened version of your company or brand name can serve as an effective account name.
Maintain Consistency of Posting
When you want to attract the maximum number of followers to your Instagram account, you should have a content posting schedule that is consistent. By posting at random times, your posts are likely not to be noticed and it can be very easy for your target audience to forget you. The trick is to keep your followers engaged. Not only do you need to post content that they find relevant, useful, and entertaining but also you need to publish your posts at regular predetermined intervals. According to Searchenginejournal.com, depending on your industry, the frequency of posting can range from a few times a week to several times in a day, however, you need to avoid the impression that you are trying to spam your followers. Research can help you to establish the times and the days of the week when your target audience is most active so you can build a posting calendar accordingly to give your posts the best chance of getting noticed, liked, commented on, and shared. You can use a content scheduling tool to ensure that you publish the posts automatically at the ideal times without having to manually do it. Scheduling your posts also allows your marketing team to know in advance what will happen on Instagram so that they are better prepared to deal with user feedback.
Avoid Buying Fake Instagram Followers
Many businesses are tempted to buy fake followers to build the number of followers so that their target audience will be impressed with the brand’s popularity. However, you should carefully consider the consequences of buying fake followers even though they are available for a pittance because, at the end of the day, you can be sure that any action that has the intent of deception cannot pay off fruitfully. Even though you can show off a large number of followers, it will be evident to all that they do not like, comment, or share your posts and are dead accounts that do not contribute to the buzz of the brand. If you must, then spend your money engaging reputed digital marketing agencies like blastup.com to buy real Instagram followers that will interact with your brand and boost its credibility. Fake followers do not purchase anything and contribute to your ROI. Building up a follower base that comprises your target audience will result in your engagement rising.
Encourage Followers to Share Your Content
The volume of traffic to your website generated by your Instagram posts not only depends on the quality of your content, the value proposition but also on the number of followers you have. The larger the number of people following your Instagram account, the more the traffic likely to be generated to your website and conversions, thereafter. There is no doubt that to gain followers, you need to be in their face not only on your own Instagram account but also on the accounts of others. You can do this by contributing user-generated content to the accounts of others so that your posts can benefit from wider exposure. You can also encourage sharing of your content not only by posting value-added information but also by conducting contests and competitions with attractive prizes tied to the number of shares that a follower does. In addition to creating more opportunities for users to notice your brand, these posts act as valuable social proof that your fans are sufficiently invested in your brand to feel confident about recommending it to others.
If you want to do it on a large scale, you can try to identify influencers in your sector who can endorse your product. Depending on their stature, you will be able to engage their services by giving them product samples or paying cash payments. The more established influencers have top-dollar rates running into hundreds of thousands of dollars per post. The secret to effective influencer campaigning on Instagram is to be restrained in your approach and allow the influencer to recommend your brand naturally and not appear overly promotional. Finding the right fit with your brand is crucial as followers will find it easier to believe the influencer.
Conclusion
Even the best of brands does not acquire large follower bases overnight. It takes time and a fair amount of effort to ensure that your posts appeal to the target audience, add value to them, and keep them smiling. When your audience is truly engaged well, it is more likely that they will become your followers and recommend others to do so.
Author’s Bio
Walter Moore is a notable management consultant and digital marketing expert at https://blastup.com/. He is an experienced digital marketer who has helped e-commerce businesses in all niches gain with his effective marketing strategies and guidance.