6 Things Startup Businesses Can Do To Increase Their Instagram Audience

More than likely you hear the hype regarding Instagram and might even have an account for your business. If your account is doing well, you are making frequent posts, but you may have a difficult time finding your audience. Much like any new account on a social media platform, it takes time to grow your audience.

The following information includes tips to help you grow your Instagram audience quicker:

Promote Your Business Account.

How will anyone follow you if they do not know you exist? You should use various means of actively promoting your Instagram account.

• Inform you current customers that you have an Instagram account.
• Post a link to your Instagram profile on other social media platforms.
• Add your Instagram link as part of your email signature.
• Add your Instagram information on business cards, flyers, and other promotions.
• Include your Instagram account info in e-newsletters.

Use Your Account For Exclusive Content.

When you are growing your followers, providing exclusive content is important. If you already have an audience on other social media platforms, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook, your audience may wonder why they should follow you on another platform. You will need to give them a reason to hop on the Instagram train!

You should use Instagram as a way to share product or event photos, so your Instagram followers have exclusive content. You can turn this into a tease by sharing a single photo on your other social media platforms and giving your followers a link to your Instagram account to view the rest. This will encourage your audience to go over to Instagram to see what they are missing. Make sure your Twitter and Facebook accounts do not automatically share every post from Instagram.

You can also use Instagram as way of sharing exclusive promotions or discounts. Once your audience is aware that you offer special promotions, your number of followers on Instagram will increase.

Utilize The Hashtag Feature.

Your best friend on Instagram is the hashtag. You can improve your reach for each post by integrating relevant hashtags. For the best results, use between three and seven hashtags for each post. The hashtags you use should be relevant to your industry, niche, and/or content.

When you are trying to determine which hashtags are the most popular, use Google or other search engines to search for the most popular hashtags on Instagram. There may be slight variations, but for the most part, they are quite consistent.  As a word of caution, do not use a hashtag simply because it is popular. For example, if you are creating a post about a new piece of jewelry in your store, do not use the hashtags #justinbeiber or #sunset just because they are trending. Find relevant hashtags. Examples for jewelry could be #fashion or #bling. Both tags are trending and relevant.

Be Active On Instagram.

Another easy way to grow your Instagram account is to connect with other people, whether it means being engaged with other accounts or your audience. When you are active on other profiles, this means you comment on and like their posts. As far as your audience is concerned, you should respond to any questions or comments. This also helps increase dialogue on your account.

Look around on Instagram to find other businesses within your niche or industry and become a follower of theirs. Once they recognize your profile and see how engaged you are with their brand, they will often return the favor by commenting and liking your content. Here are some more tips.

When you receive comments on your Instagram posts, include the @mention so you can tag them in your response, and they will be notified of what you wrote. Thank your audience for their input and answer questions. Even simply asking people how they are doing is all part of your engagement. As the conversations continue, more and more people will want to be engaged with your account.

Looking successful also helps and will encourage others to view your site. The more followers, friends and views you have the better. There are numerous ways to get more Instagram views, increase Instagram likes on your posts, or gain followers, and these can help you encourage people to view your account and also work the algorithm favourably.

Follow More Accounts.

Unless you are a major business, no one is going to want to follow your account if you only follow a few people. Since you need to increase your activity on Instagram, start following more people to show that your account is highly active. Although there is no rule on the right number of people to follow based on the number of followers you have, just follow as many people as you can.

If you want ideas for new people to follow, look to your followers for inspiration. Try following people or businesses they frequently follow. When you are on your Instagram notifications page, switch to the “following” tab. This will give you information on the pages your followers are engaged with. In many cases, you and your followers will have commonalities in interests and you will like some of the people and posts they like. If you click on the posts you are interested in, you can go to their profile. Look through the posts and find anyone that seems interesting to you. Fortunately, Instagram is a reciprocal platform. Typically, anyone you are engaged with will eventually engage with you. Only choose people you are genuinely interested in, because it is rude and bad etiquette to follow people purely to gain their attention.

Post Often.

Perhaps your worst enemy on social media is a neglected or abandoned account. Instagram is the same. Ideally, you should post daily or more often, but a few times each week is better than nothing. The more frequently you post, you can generate posts that are relevant to a variety of hashtags. This translates into increased engagement with other people on Instagram and can help your audience grow faster. So, start posting!

You may notice that none of these tips has included buying followers. That is a huge no-no! Buying followers on Instagram or any other platform will not help your business. When you purchase followers you are essentially purchasing fake or hacked accounts that will not help your following grow and can possibly even hurt you (not to mention losing your money). Here is a piece on the best times to post on Instagram.

No matter what social media site you want to grow, if you want to increase your followers, you will have to put in the work. It is always better for the longevity of your business to create a positive community around your brand and genuine followers. The more you connect with your current followers; your audience will naturally grow with time.