Growing up on Instagram, that's what we all want, right? Managing a large Instagram account has many advantages for your business. Instagram still has many active users. This makes it relatively easy to increase your brand awareness and increase engagement with your brand. In addition, having a large Instagram account also has SEO benefits!
Instagram can be beneficial to your business in many more ways, creating an account is therefore a nobrainer. Once you've done this, you'll then wonder how to grow your account. Because those few friends who follow you now don't put a so much on the dike either. To ensure that this process runs as smoothly as possible, it is essential to develop a strategy and experiment with what works for you.
If you don't have an Instagram account yet check out our Instagram Starter Guide here we explain how to set up an account for your business and give some beginner tips. In our Plus guide we give even more tips, so read them!
To get you started with your strategy, you can use the following tips. These tips will help you to quickly experience strong growth.
Go for quantity
This may sound crazy, but to grow quickly you will have to ensure that you gain momentum and then take advantage of it. To get this done, it's important to get as many followers as possible. Of course, your followers are meant to be genuinely interested. If this is the case, it will also make it easier to maintain your growth. And that's what we want, isn't it?
But how do you get as many followers as possible?
There are several ways to do this. For starters, you can look for influencers in your industry. For example, you can do this by entering a relevant hashtag with lots of posts. If you look at these, you will see that the top posts are at the top. By viewing these posts, you can easily find popular users. You can then view and follow the followers of these users! It's as simple as that, if you do this, you'll see that many of these users will follow you, too.
Like and comment on relevant content!
This way you can get followers without following yourself. Make sure you liked multiple photos or comments so you will notice faster and be followed earlier.
Post messages every day at the ideal times
If you post daily, you'll be able to keep your followers more easily and you'll be more likely to attract new followers. The best times to post are between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. or after eleventh. At these times, the least is posted, so your messages are less likely to be drowned out.
Use relevant hashtags
Users find content using hastags, so use them! Posts with hashtags are more likely to be liked and you'll be followed sooner. Just don't use too many hashtags, this looks rather spammery, 5 to 10 hashtags is a nice guideline.
These strategies can be used to gain a lot of followers in the beginning, but eventually this growth will have to continue by itself.
Use a specific lifestyle to guide your content
As far as your content is concerned, you will also have to maintain a strategy. This is especially important if you want to sustain your growth in the long term. If you don't have a strategy for your content, people will end up not interested and your growth will cease. So make sure you have a sustainable strategy.
You can do this by telling a story around your content. Use a specific lifestyle as a guide. This has many advantages, in this way you can appeal to a larger audience without having a tangible product. It's also easier to distinguish yourself from other accounts, because you're telling a special story, plus you're building directly to your brand's image and making it harder for competitors to copy.
For example, if your target group consists mainly of entrepreneurs, you can tell a story about success and hard work. This will have many common ground with their personal lives, which will make you more interested in your story.
Research your target audience
Don't you know what story you want to tell? Think carefully about who your target audience is and what they are. For example, ask yourself the following things:
Where is my target group working?
What age is my target audience?
How do they dress?
Where are they going out to dinner?
What kind of nightlife do they have?
What do they dream of?
What do they love?
What don't they love?
If you have this sharply, it will also be easier to come up with content that fits in with this.
If you know how your target audience works, you can then come up with your story. To tell an ambitious and inspiring story, you can ask yourself the following things about your target audience: Who were they? Who are they? And who do they want to be?
You are doing a great job if you can make sure that you can profile your business or product as a solution or tool to obtain a certain lifestyle.
What you still have to do now is consistently publish posts around your story. You can then use your followers' input to evaluate this story.
Collaborate with micro-influencers
Influencers are the boss on Instagram, we all know that. That's why it's not crazy to work with them. Although large influencers are often very expensive and difficult to approach, this is not true for small influencers. Working with small influencers has much more advantages, because they are more credible and have a more specific target group. Often you don't even have to pay them, but a barter deal is enough for a collaboration.
The target groups of small influencers are more specific, but above all much more involved. This will provide more comments and likes to your content and that's ultimately what you want. These influencers have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.
For example, if you're a restaurant owner, you can easily find micro-influencers by taking a look among your own followers. I'm sure there's someone in there with about a thousand followers.
Focus on making your brand known
So don't focus too much on the products you sell. This seems rather sales-like and works against it. People are more likely to unfollow you as a result. As your brand gets stronger, you can compete more easily, you'll be more credible and more often mentioned on the Internet. Your products will then be purchased by themselves.
Create a hashtag for your brand
If you do this, you can reach more people and people will remember you more easily. The hashtag will be a gathering place for all content about your brand. So also content created by others. For example, to ensure that your hashtag is used more often, you can award a prize to followers who create the best content with your hashtag.
Instagram campaigns
Of course, it is also possible to use sponsored post for Instagram. The advertising on Instagram works via Facebook. Want to know how to set up a good Instagram campaign? Please contact us for the possibilities.
Get SEO benefits by setting up your Instagram profile
Managing a popular Instagram account has several advantages for your search engine rankings. You just have to make sure Google can crawl your profile properly. This can be done by adding a location to your posts when you can. You will also need to have a complete profile ,i.e. fill everything in! Use keywords you want to be found in your content and profile. Encourage sharing of your content on different platforms!
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