Information in this blog post was obtained from Social Media Examiner, HubSpot, and Sprout Social.
Instagram is a very popular free social media platform in the world, every user could share photos or videos with their followers or a selected group of friends, and you could also follow some celebrities, do live-streaming, make your own stories, reels, or private message. According to the latest statistics in from Sprout Social, Instagram currently boasts 2 billion monthly active users. This makes it the fourth most used social media platform. And if you make use of the latest Instagram trends you have the potential to exponentially grow your reach.
As a college student, Instagram is widely used on campus. Every college student has their own Instagram account, and they use it to share their life frequently, a lot of school offices run their Instagram account as well to better connect with students. Have you ever thought about a life without Instagram? As an International student, I could not access Instagram before I came to the USA, so I was a totally new user at first. Before learning how to use these social media platforms, I always got confused about it, and I so missed a lot of school activities and engagement with new friends. Therefore, for students, creating and using your Instagram account can help you better interact with the school and make friends. For businesses, having an official Instagram account can strengthen the connection with potential consumers and create more sales Forehead.
Why Do You Use Instagram?
According to the Sprout Social Index, Instagram is among the “big three” social media platforms. With 49% of consumers and 59% of marketers planning to use it in the next 12 months. We could see it's no secret that business opportunities are continuing to grow on Instagram. Approximately 90% of Instagram's 1 billion active monthly users follow a business account on the platform, and there are more than 200 million business accounts.
Why Do We Need to Gain Followers on Instagram?
Having more followers on Instagram is helpful for both businesses and individuals. For every business that opens its business account on Instagram aims to keep in touch with its potential or existing customers to improve sales of products or services, gaining more followers is beneficial for the business, and gaining more customer loyalty. For individuals who like to share their life on Instagram, having more followers means gaining more attention online, and if they have a big amount of followers, they could consider becoming an influencer, and then cooperate with some businesses to start their own businesses as well. Therefore, having more followers on Instagram is definitely a good thing for users.
Should You Buy Instagram Followers?
In short, no. Under no circumstances should you buy Instagram followers. That means you should avoid using apps that let you purchase a certain number of followers for a set price. You shouldn't pay for a service (or a bot) that follows and unfollows accounts for you based on your target audience's demographics either.
Most importantly, buying followers goes against Instagram Community Guidelines. The platform's terms prohibit spam, including “artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares.” Instagram also cautions, “Don't offer money … in exchange for likes, followers, comments, or other engagement.”
It is very risky behavior if you buy fake followers on Instagram because Instagram determines that you've purchased followers, and your account could be disabled or deleted. You could also face other restrictions, all of which would waste your investment and compromise your ability to use Instagram as a marketing platform. Therefore, please remember, don’t buy followers on Instagram.
4 Tips to Get More Followers on Instagram
Tip 1: Optimize Your Instagram Profile for Instagram Search and Explore
Your potential customers may have various ways to find you on Instagram, but the easiest way is via search. Instagram search has improved dramatically over the past year or so and adding relevant keywords to your profile can help your account pop up in searches.
In more detail, try to add more relevant keywords to your Instagram bio, if you are running a Chinese restaurant, you could add a description like “Chinese food”, and also your brand name.
For example, the @testkitchen Instagram bio features keywords like “cooks” and “recipes,” as well as the brand's name, America's Test Kitchen.
Some potential customers may discover your account via explore page or the reel tab, but whatever the way it is, they won’t follow you before they visit your profile.
Tip 2: Write Engaging, Shareable Captions
On Instagram, photos and videos are the main part of a post, but the caption is also very important and indispensable. Captioning makes your content more accessible, not only that, but captions can also enhance the performance of picture or video content by improving the viewing experience, increasing engagement, and helping viewers to retain more information. In order to make your content post more shareable, thereby giving you more exposure.
Here are a few things from HubSpot that you might see in a winning Instagram caption:
Clever or witty comments
Some brands and influencers have used clever or witty captions, or even audience-appropriate jokes to further humanize themselves on Instagram. More specifically, keep consistent with your brand tone of voice, when developing a brand tone of voice, you should keep the platform and your audience in mind.
For example Netflix
Netflix must be one of the main success cases in the use of brand voice tone. The brand knows how to always stand up using smooth and fun communication.
The company places itself close to its audience, with a friendly and fun approach, wherever it is room for it. For this, it uses GIFs, memes, and images, always complementing that tone of voice.
Calls to action
Call to action is a very powerful way to drive engagement with your audience, it is a wise way to add a CTA to your text content, for instance, you might write “Share your story in the comments” or “Give a like if you find it’s funny”. Also, asking questions is a useful way to engage with your audience, you could get more comments when asking questions.
Relevant emojis
Emojis can show your content relevance, or your brand personality, and make your content more noticeable and interesting.
Hashtags
Hashtags are an indispensable element when you organize your content post, a hashtag ties conversations from different users who wouldn't already be connected into a single stream. If you use relevant hashtags, your posts will gain exposure to a wider audience and help you become discoverable to potential customers. When you search for some keywords of your topic, various hashtags will pop up, choose some of them which have high exposure and engagement. Meanwhile, try to limit the number of hashtags per caption to around three, and don’t use all similar hashtags, such as "like for like" hashtags, like #like4like, or #like4likes.
Tip 3: Focus on Publishing Instagram Reels and Video Content
As you plan your content mix, it's a good idea to prioritize videos over photos. In December 2021, Mosseri announced Instagram's shift toward Reels and short-form videos. Since then, the platform has given Reels prominent placements in the Suggested feed, the Explore page, and a dedicated tab in the main menu.
By creating Instagram reels, you can make your business easier to discover and improve the likelihood your content will appear in any of these placements. If you are running a restaurant, you could try to post some food-making videos, if you are running a makeup product, posting some makeup swatches or makeup videos is attractive. If you're new to short-form video, Meta Business Suite makes it a little easier to get started.
Open Business Suite and navigate to the Planner tab. Scroll through some of the holidays featured to the right of the calendar. Click the Template button under any holiday to get templates to help you plan all kinds of content, including reels.
Tip 4: Partner with Influencers to Reach More People
Influencers have a large impact on audiences, they can easily influence audience or followers’ purchase behaviors, especially the young generation, who like to follow the trend and support their influencers. For small or developing businesses, learning from influencers’ content, and building relationships with them can also help you find your audience.
Before you partner, try to create a connection with the influencer: follow them, like their posts, and respond to their stories and questions. This will make you more visible to the influencer and their followers—in other words, your target audience. After having a good start, you could also think about some gifting products or discount codes to your collaborative influencer.
When you partner with influencers or brands, you can tag each other's accounts in the content or caption. With Instagram’s collaboration tool, you can also feature both accounts as creators.
If an influencer account mentions you or features your products, you may gain a few followers. But you're more likely to gain followers quickly if there's something in it for them. Giveaways can be particularly effective for growing accounts, especially if you co-host them with brands that have similar target audiences.
For instance, the @drinkkoia Instagram post below highlights a co-branded giveaway featuring a chocolate-themed prize. The giveaway terms require users to follow all three accounts, which has the potential to boost each brand's following significantly.
Conclusion
Gaining more followers could drive more sales to your business, and there are various ways to grow your followers instead of buying fake followers. Using these useful tips could attract more audience and build your brand.
For more information about Instagram Stories, go read my colleague Menglin’s post about them here.
Resources
Forsey, C. (2022). How to Gain Your First (or Next) 1,000 Instagram Followers - 26 Tips. HubSpot. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/gain-instagram-followers
Keefe, C. (2021). How to Attract the Right Followers on Instagram. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-attract-the-right-followers-on-instagram/
Sonnenberg, A. (2022). Instagram Followers: How to Grow Your Audience in 2022. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-followers-how-to-grow-your-audience-in-2022/
Zote, J. (2023). Instagram statistics you need to know for 2023. Sprout Social. Retrieved from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/
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