29 Mar 33 Fundamental Tips for Instagram Growth
33 Fundamental Tips for Instagram Growth
Despite the growth of the social network, many still do not know how to work with it.
What to post, design the page, communicate with the audience, engage them and sell them products/services.
I have collected for you more than 30 working life hacks for Instagram growth in 2021 and beyond.
Below, I will sort out all the nuances and share my professional experience. Enjoy reading!
1 – Profile aesthetics
When a follower opens your Instagram profile, you only have three seconds to get their attention.
The first impression is crucial, so you need to make your account presentable.
2 – Real photos
It is better to give preference to a natural style and real photos.
Actual photos are essential, as stock photos on Instagram don’t work at all.
Therefore, it is necessary to allocate the budget and time to create unique images for your products/services.
3 – Photo editing
As I noted earlier, real-life shots and everything natural is now in the trend.
However, for real Instagram growth, shots still require editing.
At least minimal: colour correction, brightness, and contrast.
Even mobile apps can handle this.
The top ones are below:
• Enlight
• Font Candy
• Snapseed
• Facetune
• Lightroom
• TouchRetouch
4 – Bio
When potential clients go to your profile, it should be clear what the company does, so here are some life hacks on how to create a bio:
- Avatar – a brand logo or an emotional person if I promote a personal account.
- Nickname — 1-2 words, simple and memorable, without numbers.
- The profile header should be structured and contain the project’s USP (a unique selling proposition). Try to make the phrases in the description short — a maximum of 4 words.
- Also, make sure to add an active link to the site or messenger.
5 – Highlights
The “Guide” highlight quickly guides subscribers in the content categories and helps them choose the most interesting ones.
You should post your reviews, contact details, products, and videos in the highlights.
In general, the insights’ structure depends on the topic of your project.
Highlights should be designed in the same style as the profile itself.
6 – Multi-link
In a multi-link, you will place links to all your social networks, website, and messengers at once.
This way, subscribers will find their way to the website faster, and it will be easier for them to buy.
Popular multi-link services:
• mssg.me
•taplink.
•meconnect
•linktr.ee
7 – Content
It is vital to post the best shots for Instagram growth — exciting, helpful, and relevant content to make users subscribe to you and become your customers.
A content plan is a date-structured list of topics for future publications.
You can create it in any convenient format. For example, in Excel or Google tables.
Creating a CP will help you balance the types of content.
Here it is essential not only to come up with specific topics for posts but also to break all the content into three groups: engaging, warming up, and selling (I will talk about this later).
It would help if you also had to reflect the CP’s critical activities in the CP: planned events, contests, promotions, discounts.
They must be given a particular emphasis on the posts.
Now let’s move on to the three main content tasks: engagement, warming-up, and sales. Let’s start with the first one.
8 – Engagement
Comments and likes tell the social network that your content is of good quality, and then Instagram shows you to more users.
Therefore, it is crucial to involve the audience to interact.
Users in social networks like to have fun and participate in games.
Therefore, you should include interactive activities in the content plan.
These activities include anagrams, fill words, puzzles, riddles, math and logic puzzles, mindfulness tests, quizzes,” True or false “, and many more.
9 – Surveys and tests
Another obvious way to engage is to use surveys and tests.
To find topics interesting for your subscribers, use the latest news from your niche, see what your competitors are posting, study the latest trends in your field, or ask users what they care about the most and invite them to discuss it.
As for the tests, you can conduct quizzes, find out subscribers’ opinion, and evaluate how familiar they are with your brand and products/services.
10 – Contests
Everyone loves gifts, so contests with a prize are a sure way to increase subscribers’ activity.
For example, you can give away products from your product assortment or the top sales of marketplaces.
Regarding the terms of the contests, the most optimal option is:
* like, subscribe, and the third condition – tagging friends or reposting a post in Stories.
With this format, you can attract a new audience’s attention and increase their engagement in the future by publishing relevant content.
If you need to randomly determine the winners among those who have fulfilled the conditions, you can use these services: getcombot and lizaonair.
Work with these services should be recorded on video so that there are no questions about the results.
For this purpose, the bandicam and OBS Studio programs are suitable.
Your task is to capture the screen and record the video.
Later, you can crop it using Movavi, the video service, or the Inshot smartphone app.
11 – Cats and humour
Silly, but it still works for quick Instagram growth.
People like to laugh heartily and be amused by the fluffy ones, so it’s a sin not to take advantage of this.
According to statistics, these posts collect a lot of likes and comments — use this to increase your profile engagement.
12 – Warming up
Now let’s move on to warming up the audience.
It increases the trust and loyalty to the project, which subsequently affects sales.
An excellent example of warming up is a post that talks about the benefits of a product.
13 – Reviews
Feedback is proof of your awesomeness.
Video feedback works better than photos and texts, which is logical — people like real people, not static pictures.
In general, it is recommended to use all options — not everyone wants to make video reviews.
14 – Processes and production
Make sure to show interesting internal processes and production:
- The work of employees
- The creation of products
- The provision of services
- The preparation of goods for delivery
The internal kitchen is always attractive to the audience.
15 – Team
Introduce the audience to the project team: employees and management.
This will help reduce the distance between the company and your audience and significantly increase their trust.
16 – Useful materials
To declare your expertise, be sure to publish thematic educational materials.
Share life hacks, tips, insights, personal experiences, checklists, and collections with your audience.
17 – Sales
Now let’s move on to the critical section of the content strategy for business-sales.
Here’s what you need to know.
18 – Promotions and discounts
The surest way to generate Instagram growth, interest in products and services is to launch a promotion.
After all, everyone likes to save money.
Therefore, please your audience with discounts that can be timed to any event, such as the holiday season.
Do not forget that you need to warm up the audience first before the promotion, reminding them of favourable conditions and the limited number of products.
19 – Top products for…
Top products are linked to holidays, events in the world, premieres of films, games, or TV series.
I also select certain professions for men, women, and children of different ages.
20 – A review of the goods
You should regularly talk about one product from the assortment, creating a full review.
At the end of the post, the call to action should encourage the subscriber to click on the link and buy products.
Use the techniques and recommendations above to grow your account and increase your company’s sales.
21 – Stories
Stories, when used correctly, is a powerful tool for profit. They drastically help to attract the attention of users.
It would help if you created a different strategy to get results from stories.
It should describe how you will engage and warm up the audience, sell them products/services, and structure the topics and formats of future stories.
It is essential to be prepared because you need to publish Stories every day — from 2 to 10 pieces.
22 – Engage
Use all the engagement techniques: surveys, stickers, tests, quizzes.
When creating interactives – the sky is the limit in terms of Instagram growth this year.
23 – Go live
Live broadcasts are another way to engage subscribers and increase their loyalty.
During the lives, answer questions, tell the audience about the launch of a new product, show the backstage.
And don’t forget to announce the date and time in advance to get more views.
24 – Promotion
It is not enough to properly create a profile and publish excellent content.
Promotion is equally essential.
Below I will tell you about the options for promoting your account that will help you grow.
Go to your business profile so that you can run your ads.
On business.facebook.com, you can create a business account, select an audience and, after studying the advertising rules, launch a paid promotion.
Find medium-sized hashtags (from 10 thousand to 2 million messages) on your topic and use them.
Do not take too popular tags like #good, #love — they are mostly useless.
First, they are used too often. Secondly, they are often not directly related to your audience.
You also need one or more unique brand tags. With their help, subscribers will find you searching, remember you, and possibly use you in their posts.
For local businesses, hashtags linked to geolocation are helpful.
This way, subscribers will find you faster by the address or accidentally become interested in the product after seeing the geotag.
26 – Comment on
Creative and thoughtful comments in popular profiles attract the audience’s attention and may be interested in going to your profile.
Please note that it is useless to write monosyllabic comments in the “cool” and “great” spirit. The comment should be compelling.
27 – Comment on geo
Another way to boost Instagram growth is to write comments in profiles that are geographically close to you.
For example, if you have a flower shop, use hashtags to find nearby companies’ profiles and comment on their posts.
This will increase brand awareness, help you connect with potential buyers, and establish communication with another project.
28 – Local brands
If you sell products at a specific offline point, arrange with nearby stores to advertise your product.
Invite companies to share your product in their profiles in return for a discount or reward.
This will help increase awareness and attract additional traffic.
29 – Bloggers and opinion leaders
Offer the blogger your product as a gift in exchange for a review/advertising post in his profile or pay for advertising in cash.
Do not forget to select bloggers according to the specifics of your niche — your audience should overlap.
30 – Mutual PR
The method is similar to the Giveaway mechanics, but since this is not a raffle and I am not talking about prizes, I have brought this method to a separate point.
Find similar accounts and invite them to advertise your page, and in return, promote them in your profile.
Another option is to ask subscribers to write a post with your hashtag in their profile in return for a prize or a discount.
31 – Cross-promo
Share your Instagram content and grow your audience on different platforms (Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and so on).
Then invite users to subscribe to your Instagram profile.
32 – Geotagging
Geotags help you share your content with people who are close to you.
The mechanics are relevant if you are promoting a local business and will help to increase brand awareness.
You can also set a geotag to a photo or video in Stories.
33 – Interesting personalities
Go to the “Discover people” section and view the profiles recommended to you.
Perhaps you have a common interest and should subscribe to these accounts, while they will subscribe to you in return.
Author Bio: Donald Mena is a social media marketing manager who specialises in Instagram growth and Facebook. He is also an experienced content writer, a contributor to WritingAPaper, where you can get dissertation help from qualified writers.