Initially built as a ‘fun’ and ‘creative’ app for kids, Instagram has quickly outgrown its original purpose and has developed into a serious digital marketing platform, used by businesses and influencers alike.
It’s become a popular tool for content marketing, networking and audience building, which is what has made it one of the most popular social networking sites in the world with over 200 million active monthly users. Compared to Facebook, Instagram is four times as likely to allow brands to gain engagement – that’s how effective it is.
The problem for many users is that they don’t know how to get real targeted Instagram followers, which is why we’ve created this handy guide to the best ways that you can increase your following size.
Create and promote a dedicated hashtag
Do you have a dedicated hashtag that you use when sharing every single image? No, then you need to get one. Have you noticed how all the big brands have dedicated hashtags? This is because they can be a highly effective method of engagement, which is why you need to create one and start promoting it accross your social media channels.
Get active with hashtag use
Hashtags are all well and good but if you don’t know how to use them effectively, then you are simply wasting your time. If you want your hashtags to work for you – get creative. Be fun, interesting or even outrageous but never be boring.
Keep an eye out for trending topics
Each morning check your search bar for trending topics and hashtags so that you can get involved in these things. You will find that conversations that are trending on Twitter always get you a large amount of engagement if you choose to get involved in them. From trending news topics to celebrating awareness days, from charity awareness days to silly ones, like National Sandwich Day, for instance, it’s worthwhile getting involved in as many of these as you can.
Get your captions right
Write descriptive and interesting captions for your images. Make your images tell a story. Find your own unique voice. Be interesting. Be unique. Create quirky and fun captions that catch the eye of people scrolling by.
Interact with others
Ensure that when you are using Instagram, that you are not only posting content but that you are also engaging with other users, particularly influencers. By making friends on Instagram, you will increase the number of likes and views your posts get, which is a great way to boost engagement and build your following.
Utilise the ‘Places’ tab to see what’s happening locally
It’s all well and good staying on top of national news but what about local news? If you want to build a relevant following, it’s important to get involved in things that are going on in the local community, which is where the ‘Places’ tab can come in seriously handy.
These are just a few simple ways that you can increase your Instagram followers, there are plenty of other steps that you can also take advantage of, such as buying followers. However, as a rule of thumb organic followers tend to be more effective in the long-term (not to mention buying large amount of followers can lead to your account being closed), which is why these methods tend to work the best.
