How to grow your following on Instagram

 

For now, Instagram remains the heart of the social media landscape for marketers. Marketers are looking at how to increase engagement and engagement on Instagram despite some setbacks.

And it's not hard to see why, as 13% of the global population is on Instagram, and 80% of those follow brands.

According to Forrester, engagement, which is measured by likes, shares, and comments from followers, flies off the graph relative to other social media platforms.

Instagram boasts an engagement rate of 4.21% which is ten times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter.

But apart from these impressive numbers, challenges appear that indicate the difficulty of marketing on Instagram today due to low participation rates and competition from new competitors, for example, TikTok.

Another study from Viral Nation shows new challenges in social media, including a decline in interaction, but Instagram remains the highest in achieving interaction between them.

How to increase engagement on Instagram, Instagram, social media

In light of these numbers and the situation with Instagram, marketers are looking for ways to increase engagement and engagement on Instagram despite some setbacks.

In a previous article, we explained some errors in the failure of the Instagram post, and today we explain some things in a more extensive way.

That is why I have collected some tips and tactics for you to ensure that paid and organic marketing campaigns continue to reach the marketing goals that you want to achieve, and to ensure interaction on Instagram accounts now and in the future.

How to increase engagement on Instagram:

1) Continuous Posting:

Brands must be active in order to attract followers and drive engagement, but how?

According to studies, the appropriate posting rate is between 1-2 posts per day. This way you keep your account as up-to-date as possible, and you have more chances to attract eyes and visitors to your content.

Knowing the best times to post on Instagram is also crucial when dealing with the timeline of Instagram algorithms.

The recommended participation times can vary depending on the nature of the content that you publish and the time zone in which you are located, as well as according to the recommendations of the digital marketing expert that you deal with and the recommendations suggested by him to attract the greatest attention at the best times.

All this contradiction and difference in choosing the right time can lead to real confusion for content planners, but this first and foremost depends on experimenting at different times and different days and choosing the best results after analyzing and considering them.

Let me tell you that the fashionNova brand, which is a global company selling fashion on the Internet, publishes an average of 30 posts per day.. at a rate of one post every 30 minutes!!

This may sound like a lot of exaggeration, but it doesn't for fashionNova's followers, who number 18.7 million as of this writing.

Despite this large number of followers, the engagement rate is only around 0.07%… Yes, don't be surprised 🙂 .

On the other hand, let's take a look at the National Geographic account, which publishes an average of 5-6 publications on a daily basis, and the number of followers of the account until this moment is 142 million followers.

But here the rate of participation and interaction is about 0.25%, which is something special... Have you noticed the difference?

You can know the times your audience interacts with your publications through the audience from the Instagram application options, and know the different times and focus on them.

How to increase engagement on instagram Continuous posting National Geographic

How to increase engagement on Instagram, Instagram, social media

2) Telling stories:

Instagram is full of messages from brands that forget the primary purpose of the platform, which is visual inspiration.

You must captivate the audience through images, videos and texts, not just giving them advice.

To increase engagement rates on Instagram, tell short stories. People today crave connection, and storytelling is a way to create that experience.

When people feel an emotional connection to your content, they are more likely to share it with their friends and on their social media accounts.

To achieve more interaction in the stories, put a simple and clear explanation with the stories with appropriate emojis, as it enables brands to appear more humane and build deeper relationships with the target audience.

3) Building a strong brand:

Clarity, creativity, and consistency are the property of companies aiming to build brand awareness on Instagram. A haphazard and unplanned approach never works.

Try to focus on key areas such as presenting your profile in an eye-catching way, creating a certain style and style for your photos so that they appear attractive, and using appropriate hashtags.

You should also not forget to interact regularly with followers to build engagement and loyalty.

With simple steps, following a well-targeted path, and following Instagram branding best practices, you can present a positive and cohesive brand to your target audience.

Clarity, creativity, and consistency are the property of companies aiming to build brand awareness on Instagram. A haphazard and unplanned approach never works. Share it on Twitter

4) Obtaining a stable visual identity:

The Instagram platform is famous for being a platform that relies on images in its publications, so it is considered a platform that rewards visual content in terms of clarity and accuracy.

Today, users are attracted to Attractive and attention-grabbing visual objects that give a feeling of comfort towards the content provided to interact with.

The use of photo filters and options to reduce lighting or increase the brightness of images are additional options that Instagram algorithms prefer and emphasize the necessity of using them to obtain more interaction and participation.

According to a report by WebDam Social Media, 60% of the best performing brands on Instagram are those that have a consistent look and feel every time they post.

The look of your profile and posts should match your brand identity and appeal to the audience you're trying to attract.

5) Choose the right hashtag:

Choosing the best hashtag for the Instagram post means the difference between the post appearing at the top of the posts within this hashtag or drowning without a trace if an appropriate or unpopular hashtag is not added.

Don't target hashtags that are too general or unrelated to the content you're posting. Instead, use a mix of trending and niche hashtags to find the best hashtags to connect with your target audience.

The number of hashtags you put in your post is also crucial. Although Instagram allows you to have up to 30 hashtags, this does not mean that you should use 30 hashtags in each post that you publish, as this will lead to lack of clear and specific targeting and lack of professionalism in your post.

This is why you find that 91% of brands use between 7-10 hashtags or less to get more engagement.

Did you know that using a single hashtag can increase engagement on your post by up to 12.6%?

To determine the appropriate hashtags for your brand, watch the hashtags used by competitors and influencers in the same sector in which you publish, do not try to copy them, this will not benefit the brand and the service you provide with anything,

Try some of the hashtags closest and most appropriate to you and see the volume of participation and interaction within it until you reach the hashtags you want.

Remember that the Instagram algorithm penalizes unwanted behavior, so change the number and name of the hashtags you use in your posts.. Don't try to put the same hashtags in all of your posts.

6) Create a brand hashtag:

Hashtags for your brand or the products you offer are often a key part of a successful Instagram marketing strategy.

The best starting point here is the brand hashtag. It should be short that expresses the brand name in some way, and try to be simple so that it is not forgotten and easy to remember at any time and occasion.

The importance of using your own brand hashtags is to make the content you provide more discoverable and present in one hashtag and place, and this in turn will help increase the number of visits to the profile, and create a stronger community around the brand. It will also make it easier to organize your content, making it easier to find, track, and share.

Place your hashtag on your social media profile, so that it is visible to anyone who views your profile.

Don't tell me do I have to have only one hashtag??

Certainly not, you can have more than one hashtag, and you can create a hashtag for a specific campaign that you want to launch on social media platforms or specific offers, but try not to distract your focus with a lot of hashtags, two or three have a good number of followers better than 100 hashtags without interaction.

7) Focus on User Generated Content:

User-generated content and followers on Instagram or other social media is the golden cup that marketers need to focus on and pay attention to.

It is a golden opportunity to gain followers and to engage them more deeply with the brand while reducing marketing costs, and more importantly than marketing costs is when your followers share the brand and write distinctive content about the brand and the services provided and the most important features they got, this will be a different view For the rest of the visitors who see the brand for the first time.

When visitors see testimonials from users like them, they have more confidence to try the brand and go on this adventure.

For example here, what Starbucks does every Christmas and asks consumers to send creative photos of their Starbucks red cups for the occasion to share on their page.

How to increase engagement on Instagram, Instagram, social media

8) Discover the video settings on Instagram:

A special saying that I loved to share with you: “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video is worth 1.8 million.”

Lovers of novels and writings may not like this statistic or this saying, which I do not know if it is true or just joking, but we all know today absolutely that there is no challenge to the effectiveness and popularity of video content on the Internet.

Within the 60 seconds provided by Instagram, you can provide good and distinctive video content using the video features and settings in the application.

And do not forget the IGTV platform provided by the Instagram application itself, although there are many doubts and opinions that say that the platform is as close as it is to dead or in hibernation, but it is too early to judge this matter, especially since Instagram tends to focus more on video It makes continuous improvements to the platform.

And the IGTV platform, it is a platform from Instagram that is directed to video content longer than 60 seconds. The advantage is that you can share the video as a post on Instagram, which means that you can direct your followers on your IGTV channel.

And because the thing is mentioned, more than 72% of brands do not have any planning

Or an intention to create content on IGTV.

9) Use Augmented Reality filters:

Last year, Instagram made it possible to create augmented reality filters of the year using Spark AR Studio.

Since the launch of Spark AR, some filters have had over a billion views.

But what is meant by augmented reality or Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality or Augmented Reality is the projection of virtual objects and information into the user's real environment in order to increase assistance and provide more information, and this is in contrast to Virtual Reality, which is intended to project real objects into a virtual environment.

These filters are very popular among young and middle age groups, but there is an increase in the use of augmented reality filters more, and many brands today choose to produce their own products based on this technology.

For example: NARS Cosmetics, which has produced a range of filters that allow users to directly try on lipstick shades.

How to increase engagement on Instagram using augmented reality filters

How to increase engagement on Instagram, Instagram, social media

10) Take advantage of video ads on Instagram:

75% of Instagrammers say they take actions such as visiting the site, searching, or telling and sharing with friends after being affected by a post.

Therefore, mastering the methods and subtleties of the advertising system in social media platforms is today a necessity and a powerful tool in how to target and gain many followers or customers.

Although image ads are still a strong component of the advertising ecosystem, video formats are an invaluable tool for targeting the audience you want to reach. See Tip #8 when we talked about the importance of video and the options available on the Instagram platform.

11) Give GIFs a chance:

All research and studies on the Internet today about video shows that more people watch the video until the end of the first 15 seconds or less, and this means the importance of using animated images, how to create them, converting content to animated images, and the importance of that in marketing.

Animated images are more attractive and interactive than still images, and are more cost- and time-effective than producing video clips.

It can also be said that it was the gifs that gave the inspiration for the idea of the Boomerang filter for Instagram.

What is the Boomerang filter on Instagram?

The Boomerang filter is an Instagram-like animated photo filter that records a series of shots before merging them and then looping them back and forth.

With more than a billion animated gifs on the internet today, using gifs in branding content seems like a good opportunity that won't cost you much, but might even give you great results.

12) Use Instagram to increase website visits:

With this interaction and the large spread of Instagram, the audience interacted with brands with distinctive content. You can convert this interaction and direct it to increase visits to the website or online store.

Increase your followers' passion for visiting your website by offering special offers to Instagram followers or giving them some discounts or prizes if they interact with the content or share a specific product.

You may not be able to put a direct conversion link in Instagram stories until you reach 10,000 followers, but remember that all forms of ads on Instagram support placing a direct link to the online store or website.

13) Use SEO on Instagram:

It may not seem at first glance that search engine optimization (SEO) and Instagram are friends, but it is necessary to improve search engines and take some basic steps that benefit you in search engines in general, especially as this field is getting more competitive every day and in an eye-catching way.

Two of the most important things that you should pay attention to here in Instagram SEO are the account name in general and the username.

The username, what we mean by it, is the name that comes after the @ sign. Try to be easy, short, and as expressive as possible about the brand and the services provided.

As for the account name, it is the name that appears below the profile picture of the account, which must also reflect the services provided.

Do not forget that Google confirms on every occasion that social media is not part of Google's algorithms and is not considered one of its ranking indicators, but there may be a correlation to some extent with the percentage of interaction such as likes, shares, comments, etc.

14) Using influencer marketing:

Influencer marketing on Instagram is becoming increasingly popular these days, allowing brand owners to partner with influencers and deliver brand messages to a wider audience by advertising products on their accounts.

Since influencers are seen as “independent,” matching your brand with their authoritative voice can add more confidence to you.

However, the task of selecting the right influencers can be difficult, marketers may fall into the magic of working with a celebrity and forget the primary task of engaging with the influencer and the primary goal of the campaign.

Therefore, it is necessary for marketers to choose the right influencer, and to plan a short trial period to see how receptive the influencer’s brand followers are.

15) Host contests on Instagram:

Contests are a powerful interaction tool on Instagram, with an interaction rate of 3.5 times in terms of likes, and 64 times in terms of comments compared to regular posts and posts.

Despite the power of this interaction, it is largely ignored by brands, with only about 2% of accounts hosting contests.

This means that there is a huge and relatively untapped resource that marketers can take advantage of.

The popular type of competition on Instagram is to have something as a gift or to give something, such as to present a specific product or service that you promote within your account.

Users enter the competition by fulfilling certain conditions, such as following the account, liking several posts, or even sharing a certain number of friends and inviting them to like the account.

Try to be interactive with new members and win their trust and confidence, as they are a new window for you, and they may turn into customers with great loyalty to the brand.

16) Convert Instagram followers to email lists:

Email remains the de facto channel for building deep customer relationships. This is why brands are looking to convert Instagram followers into email subscribers.

17) Instagram stories:

Instagram Stories has become the most popular feature on the platform with 500 million users every day. Even today, the conversation is that stories have become the main feature of Instagram.

It probably won't be surprising when you know that a third of the most viewed stories on Instagram actually come from brands.

Stories enable you to post a mix of photos and images in a single post that disappears after 24 hours.

Using stories can make your brand feel more authentic and accessible, and create a sense of urgency that keeps users coming back to engage with the brand.

Remember that 60% of Instagram stories are watched with audio on, so don't forget to invest in a good audio experience for your audience.

18) Use emojis:

92% of internet users use emojis.

When used correctly, emoji can help inject personality and playfulness into a brand, and help build a more empathetic connection with an audience.

In fact, people today are so used to using emojis in their daily messages that they see messages without them as cold and without any feelings even.

19) Promote an Instagram account on social media:

Spread your Instagram account as much as possible. Promote an ad on your Facebook page and place a clickable link to your Instagram account.

You can also take advantage of the sharing and auto-posting tools that all social media applications have become available to share the post with each other.

20) Track and learn from your best performing Instagram content:

Track and analyze different posts and stories on Instagram, see the different statistics of the audience in terms of interaction and participation with the best posts and times.

The content that performed the best, try to review it and repeat it in a more useful and attractive way. Use this information and data to enhance your marketing strategy on Instagram.

Let me give you a piece of advice at the conclusion of this article:

The article may be a bit long and there may be some things to learn, but know that your Instagram journey will never end.

Although this may seem daunting and stressful, your Instagram profile is like the work of an organization that is constantly growing and developing by establishing different relationships and connections with customers and followers.

By following some of these tips, you will have taken the right and essential step for you on the path to promoting your brand on Instagram and various social media.