The growing power of social media has made everyone wonder about the strategy of growing on Instagram. The secret of doing so is through active Instagram followers. If your followers are not interested in what you say, it doesn’t make any sense to have them as your followers.
Anyone who has got money to spend can use paid online services to increase their followers. But these kinds of followers are usually not genuine so they do not contribute to bringing any participation for your Instagram profile.
The Instagram algorithm prioritizes posts in the user’s feed based on the accounts the user interacts with frequently. Therefore, before spending a lot of money promoting a product, you should take a step back and make sure you have a fan base that likes you and engages with your content.
In this article, we will provide an overview of Instagram growth hacks through which you will know how to increase your Instagram followers in the year 2021.
Also Read: 5 Best YouTube Marketing Ideas you shouldn’t skip
5 Instagram Growth Hacks to Engage Your Followers:
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Use Instagram Stories Actively
A study published by Instagram found that more than 500 million users view Instagram stories every day. This is half of the Instagram user base!
These 24-hour summaries can provide intimate behind-the-scenes information about your business through photos and videos.
Take advantage of the many tags provided by the story, which enable your followers to interact with you.
From conducting surveys, answering questions, requesting direct messages, emoji sliders and even quizzes, these are all fun and simple ways to promote interaction.
The Q&A session requires your best efforts, but it is an opportunity to communicate directly with customers and followers. Questions and answers may be related to your brand or can be any general question.
The key is to ask the questions that your followers want to answer and then take the time to answer through stories or share your answers via DM.
Quizzes are another interesting way to increase participation and can also be used for market research.
2. Start Using IGTV and Reels
After enabling the latest features, Instagram has started prioritizing video content on its platform.
Instagram launched Reels after the ban of the most popular app TikTok, allowing users to use the creative freedom and video format of 15 seconds. IGTV and streaming media usually push notifications on people’s phones and are very popular on discovery pages.
By creating an IGTV channel or turntable, you are more likely to be recommended on the Discover page, thereby attracting more potential Instagram followers.
IGTV videos can be up to an hour-long, instead of 15 seconds in the story or 1 minute in the feed. To “subscribe” to your channel, interested viewers must follow your account to receive notifications of upcoming content. This is a great way to increase the engagement of your users.
3. Don’t Forget to Use Hashtags
Instagram encourages the use of hashtags, which are very important for connecting followers with your brand’s main Instagram marketing strategy. But how do you get more followers?
First, use popular tags like #FollowFriday, #ThrowBackThursdays, etc. Then use them to establish a vital connection between the consumer and your brand. You can add up to 30 tags to a photo.
Instagram hashtags can attract a lot of attention, especially if you combine popular hashtags, which can make your posts very consistent.
People are always willing to click on these hashtags just to view the photos of the participants.
4. Find Targeted Followers and Engage
Smartphone users are already excited about visiting Instagram. However, the profile feature also allows you to establish contact with laptop and desktop users. So, add them to your follower group as well.
Let the audience understand the human nature of your brand, tell your story with images, and give it a personal impression.
If you are a retail business, you can definitely reward followers with promotions and discount codes. This is an effective way to enable more people to join you not only on Instagram but also on your brand, which will have a positive impact on sales. You can attract viewers by regularly posting information about shoes, clothing or products sold and providing promotional codes.
You will have very active followers because the likes and comments posted by customers can attract thousands of potential audiences. No matter what type of business, this strategy is effective.
Another way to attract followers on Instagram is to hold contests so that they can participate. Photo contests are easy to execute; just ask your followers to use specific hashtags when posting photos to pick winners.
You can also feature them on your website to make customers feel important. Customers can be the best brand ambassadors.
Share photos of customer experience and your followers will be happy to see you from a different perspective. When sharing these images, always keep in mind the potential value of the brand.
Keep in touch with your audience, in addition to increasing your visibility and reputation on social networks, you will get amazing results.
5. Do Cross-Promotion with Other Brands
If you want to see successful growth on your Instagram page, you must take every opportunity to promote your Instagram account. Follow popular tags in your niche. When you follow hashtags, posts tagged with them will start to appear in your feed as if you were following an account. The advantage of this is that you can easily scroll, like and comment on these posts.
Upload your Instagram video to YouTube, then link and promote your Instagram account. IGTV now supports landscape video as well, so you can grab content from your YouTube channel and upload it to IGTV easily.
Work with complementary brands, especially those that have the same business as you but are not direct competitors. You can do cross-promotions with them or collaborate in promoting each other’s products.
You need to get as many Instagram profiles as possible. Consider adding eye-catching icons to your website to get visitors to click through to your Instagram account.
Also Read: How a Digital Marketing Agency can help you to grow your business?
Final Words
Engagement is one of the key elements for successful social media marketing whether you are using it for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other platform. The more viewers your content attracts, the greater your influence will be on the platform.
Try to encapsulate as many engagement strategies as possible to increase engagement on Instagram. Reply to comments, such as other people’s comments on your content, comment on other people’s content, participate in DM (like and share other people’s content), use stories and stay active while streaming.
You can also hire a social media marketing agency for Instagram marketing services for better management of your account.
Once you start following these Instagram content items, you will begin to notice an increase in account coverage, likes and followers. But this will not happen soon. All you need to do is pay close attention to Instagram, insights and you will see the results.
