Instagram is a powerful content marketing and audience-building machine. It has built brands and established many successful influencers, allowing people to become self-made social stars.
Celebrities, entrepreneurs, models, and other professionals make a living on Instagram thanks to its sponsored posts. The platform also has the second biggest engagement rate of social networks at 0.70%, according to Social Insider. This lags well behind TikTok’s whopping 2.65% by followers and 4.07% by views, but it’s well ahead of Facebook’s 0.15%.
Plus Instagram is no longer just about images. The short-form video has exploded in popularity on the platform and can perform well when done properly. In fact, 87% of marketers claim they are happy with the ROI obtained from video marketing according to Wyzowl.
If you’re looking to promote yourself or your brand on Instagram and achieve a large and loyal following, check out these 8 useful and effective tips.
1. Choose an Appealing Look
When it comes to having your brand on Instagram, the aesthetic is crucial. It’s a picture and video-sharing website, so image is everything.
First, you need to adopt a general brand aesthetic on your account and stick to it. If you’re running a fashion brand, you want clean and sleek imagery. If you’re trying to promote a lifestyle brand, you should use brighter, eye-catching and action-led photos like yoga and athleisure brand Lululemon.
If you’re following someone on Instagram, you’re doing so because they have appealing photography and interesting images or videos. Upload your best visuals to your public profile and make people take notice as soon as they surf your page.
Top tip: Make sure the look you choose is directly and authentically tied to your brand. Avoid changing up your filters too often so you can establish a consistent style and theme which people recognize.
2. Find Your Niche
To effectively boost your following, you need to understand your audience and create content that engages them. Take some time to research and analyze who your followers are and how you want them to interact with your social media and brand.
It’s good to be multi-faceted, but if let’s say you have a travel blog, you should tailor your content to entice fellow travellers (like National Geographic’s feed in the screenshot below).
If your focus is on fitness, then you’ll be looking for exercise and sports enthusiasts with your fitness videos and diet tips.
People will unfollow you if they see content that doesn’t relate to them or don’t see consistency in your focus. Keep these things in mind before you start uploading content.
Top tip: Keep your professional page professional, and leave your personal or random photos for your private, non-business account.
3. Use Engaging Captions
Looking at pictures without knowing what you’re looking at can be frustrating when surfing Instagram, especially when you see something interesting and want to know more. So why would you leave your followers in the dark?
Keep your followers engaged with witty, sharp captions that explain what they’re seeing.
Captions are a great way to show your brand’s personality because people like to feel connected to those they follow. Just think about Nike’s famous tagline ‘Just do it‘ as a short and sharp way to say a lot in a few words.
People like simple, short and intriguing bits of text to read on social, and captions should embody that spirit.
Here’s a good example of an informative post from the Digital Marketing Institute’s Instagram account to promote a webinar.
4. Be Smart With Your Hashtags
As AI in social media becomes more sophisticated, it’s easier for platform algorithms to serve content that people trust and want. This means that the influence of hashtags has waned on social media.
At the end of 2024, Instagram announced in a post that it was removing the option to follow hashtags from the app. Any topics that people already follow will no longer display posts and Reels in the main feed.
Despite this, you should know how to use hashtags effectively on social media, and it’s worth keeping them on your radar for Instagram. Keep an eye on trending hashtags to see if you can leverage them in your content and be selective about the ones you use if you do use them.
You can also still search for hashtags so users may still use them to find content and could discover a brand that way.
“Potentially you can get discovered through hashtags. I don’t think hashtags are dead. I think they should be used, but they should be specific to your content and should be what your potential viewer would search for,” said Krusinskaite.
5. Post at the Right Time
The best way to attract followers on Instagram is by posting at optimal times when you get more impressions and interactions. Though Instagram uses an algorithmic timeline, optimal posting times are still relevant.
You can check Instagram insights to know when the majority of your followers are online by clicking on the profile tab and then the bar chart icon. If you know your followers are online more in the morning, post something to brighten their day. If they’re scrolling at night, save your content for after-work hours.
You should also space outposts as much as you can. Posting multiple things at the same time won’t get you more attention, and you don’t want to inundate people.
If you have multiple photos to share, combine them in one post with the slideshow feature. If you’re eager to post and you use an Android phone, you can save posts that are ready to publish via drafts within Instagram.
Find out more about posting on Instagram by watching Alison Battisby’s explainer video.
6. Be Interactive
Followers will want to visit your profile more if they know you are interested in talking to them in the comments, through direct messages, or in a live stream.
Reply to the comments you get on your posts, and tag people and places in your posts, as long as those tags are relevant to the picture or video that you’re posting.
You should also interact with some of your followers who share similar content by commenting on their posts, as that could spark a conversation and an exchange of ideas.
Here’s a great giveaway example from lifestyle and community brand Girls Night in Club to engage its followers.
7. Use Instagram Stories
Another way to be interactive is by using Instagram Stories. You can post videos and photos, share your feed posts and Reels and share other people’s. Users can also comment on Stories just like posts in your feed.
It’s spontaneous, unpolished content that lets people know what you are promoting and the personality behind it. You can also post links to your website, which looks less clunky on a Story than it does in an individual post or your bio.
“A great AI tool to use is ManyChat for Stories as it’s effective in getting sign-ups and lead generation downloads. You can also use ‘story mention reply trigger’ which automatically initiates a conversation when someone mentions your account in their story,” said Nicola Gwillym, Social Media Executive at DMI.
Here’s a great IG Stories example from Oatly promoting its new small carton of oat creamer with a difference.
The best way to use Stories is by going live. Instagram Live permits followers to comment and join the conversation in real-time.
Don’t use your Live sessions to just sell your services or whatever you’re promoting. Make it fun and something that people will want to watch from start to finish, for the 24 hours that the video is available.
People can send in their questions for you, so it’s a great way to introduce a product or conduct an interview. There are also options where someone will send a request to be in your live video, creating a split-screen live conversation.
Top tip: Use reveal stickers that blur out your Instagram story content until viewers interact with it by tapping or prompting them to send a direct message.
8. Look at Your Competition
Studying fellow Instagram users who specialize in things you concentrate on is a good strategy. Look at their engagement metrics, and see when they post, and what they post.
Examine the type of content they use to attract followers and generate the best interactions. It’s even helpful to see which posts fall flat when it comes to making an impression.
These insights will help you optimize your content to stay ahead of your closest rivals. Consider using a competitive analysis approach (with the help of AI tools) to dive into what your rivals are doing.
Using Instagram to Get Noticed – Final Thoughts
An evolving feature is Instagram’s broadcast channels which allow creators to share text, images, gifs, polls, and even voice notes with followers. These channels can also be a two-way exchange to enable more interactivity. Instagram reports that creators and their fans exchange over 1.5 billion messages on channels every month.
There are always new features coming online to help brands engage with and influence Instagram users, so it’s wise to keep an eye on any news from Meta.
Use Social Media to Attract, Engage & Influence
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