Almost everyone knows that Instagram is a marketing and brand-building powerhouse. This is a platform that has over 400 million active users daily, and so of course,  this results in increased brand awareness, relationship building, social proof, leads, and sales.

However, the driving force to this almost instant success in the social media marketing world is the work done on your part: creating engaging content. Increasing the number of followers you have is the most important element to your growth. Here are 3 of the best tips on how you can grow your Instagram following and so super charge your social media marketing.

Instagram strategies

Strategic Hashtags

Adding the right hashtags can entice your audience to take front row seats when it comes to viewing your profile. It also means your posts will show up on their searches and, from then on, connecting with your audience will be inevitable.

You can also use location-based hashtags to connect to local audiences, while niche-interest hashtags like #soloarpowerwednesdays will put you in front of your specific audience niches. So remember that with strategic hashtags you’re actually creating a scenario where your content is likely to appear as a top post in the targeted hashtag categories.

Give A Little

It’s been said that giving a little goes a long way. Giving gifts is actually one of the most popular ways of getting attention. It’s the unwritten rule of engagement.  So if you’re looking for attention, host giveaways the news of your free goodies will spread like wildfire and you’ll be inundated with followers.

Stalk Event Hashtags

The main objective of this practice is to find hashtags for events and venues where YOUR target audience is likely to be. To do this, you’ll need to find the event hashtags that are related to your industry, business, or niche. These events could vary from:

• Conferences and shows, to
• Performances or even hobby-related hashtags.

This is where your target audience is likely to be creating content. For example, if you’re in the car industry, you might want to consider hashtags for local or popular car shows.

Go through and stalk that event hashtag. Do your part and like as many posts as possible that appear on that hashtag because this means you’ll regularly feature in the audience’s notifications. The key here is that they are all highly targeted followers. Whatever you do, don’t harass them into following you or getting their attention. Be the nice guy, and just do something as nice as liking their posts, and in return, they’ll be more likely to follow you. Remember that the goal is to increase visibility and to gain followers for your posts to rank highly.

Remember the 80/20 Rule

With all social media activity, you need to follow the 80/20 Rule. In other words, 80% of your interaction needs to be about commenting on other people’s posts (constructively!) and sharing their information that you feel will be relevant to readers. The remaining 20% of the time you can share posts which are purely dedicated to your brand. If you stick to this formula, you’ll be well on your way to getting more followers as people will see that you’re publishing content that’s relevant to them.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about social media marketing and how you can leverage this to benefit your business, then the Digital School of Marketing’s Social Media Marketing Course is the qualification for you to do! On it, you’ll learn about the various social media platforms and how they are each geared to be used on a business level. For more information about this course, follow this link.