Growing your Instagram following needs work, a lot of work. It can be a painful and tiring task to build a following if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead of shooting in the dark, learning about ways to make a plan of growth could help reduce the effort needed by a significant margin. Here are some awesome ways you can grow your Instagram following.

 

Optimize your page

Just like you can optimize your website for Google search engine, you can optimize your Instagram page by using the right keywords and hashtags in the content that accompanies the image or the video.

Based on your content, you need to research to find what keywords and hashtags are associated with it and what are actually trending. For example, if you’re setting up a food blog on Instagram and want to share recipes of the best Italian dishes, find keywords that would get the algorithm to notice you. The hashtag does not have to have millions of subscriptions. You must focus on relevancy in terms of target audience and the type of content you post.

The next step is creating a bio. Your Instagram bio should be catchy enough for people and nicely optimized for the Instagram algorithm to find you amongst a thousand other accounts in the same niche.

Another way you can optimize your page is by creating your own niche. While this takes time to grow, a niche provides you the ability to create a solid base amongst other saturated markets.

Finding a niche will require you to experiment with your content and truly explore your interests and skills. This will get you relevant leads and will also ensure a good conversion rate and will also help in diverting a good amount of traffic to your website. As we all know, SEO and social media are strongly interlinked and the best marketers use this relation to their advantage.

 

Use a social media calendar

A lot of people make mistakes with this step and in spite of having a great bio, their page fails to grow. Why? It’s because they leave content creation till the very last minute and post irregularly. This is where a social media calendar can help avoid the mistake thousands of other growing content creators make.

Being consistent with your content should always be a priority. You may end up winning the algorithm game, but it’s people who watch your content. And people like consistency and timely uploads. While doing research for your content and target population, also find the time that gets you the best reach. You can do this by following peak app usage times which you’ll find through online sources.

Social media calendars help you plan your content in advance. You can create your content beforehand, do your research for the keywords and hashtags to use in the post, and save it for the day of upload. This way, you never have to worry about a day when you’re not in the mood to create because you already have content ready to upload.

 

Make use of the different formats available

Instead of sticking to the old photo and video uploads, here’s a list of formats you can use instead:

  • Instagram Reels
    Reels came out sometime last year as a competitor to TikTok. Instagram users could now focus on creating small bite-sized video content directly on Instagram instead of having to use another platform for it.
  • Instagram Stories
    This format has long been in use, but not all content creators use it efficiently. Instead of flooding your content page with a ton of normal daily content, you could share those in your stories instead. Interact with your audience and make them feel more connected to you and your lifestyle.
  • IGTV
    This is one of the best formats for those who continue to shift their attention between YouTube and Instagram. If you’re making videos that are 10 minutes long, you can simply use IGTV and avoid a platform shifting hassle for both you and your audience.
  • Highlights
    Story highlights are a way for you to hold some of the disappearing content that would be useful for you and your audience. Not only does it work well at keeping your existing audience connected, it even works as a way for new users to get to know you and your content very quickly.

 

Find a unique approach to content creation

There’s so much content online that it’s impossible for users to view everything. If your content is similar to a hundred others, you’ll be lost in the crowd. But if you create content with a unique approach, you’ll hold a spotlight of your own. What this approach would be depends on you and your creativity.

You could take the example of Mimy blog. It uses catchy snippets on social media created out of its blogs that cater to the 21st-century audience. People who have a short attention span and a greater connection to memes will be able to maintain focus on the blog without getting bored.

There are several ways to get inspired to find your own unique approach. One way to do this is by exploring other content creators and how they use the different formats to create content that has its own unique touch. Or could you search online and find greater inspiration from other platform’s content creators.

 

Collaborate with similar content creators

Use the main purpose of social media to your advantage – making connections. Connect with creators who produce content similar to yours or have a similar audience. Instead of targeting random influencers, targeting similar content creators increases your chances of attracting only those who would be interested in becoming your followers.

Taking the Italian recipe food page as an example again, find other content creators that produce content that is in some manner related to Italian cuisine. This content creator could be anyone from a food blogger who tries out different Italian restaurants in their neighborhood or a chef in an Italian restaurant. If they have a good following and a similar audience, consider collaborating with them.

If you have the financial resources to invest in advertising, you could ask influencers to market your posts on their stories. This way, you increase your reach by taking help from bigger content creators on Instagram. You could even create a hashtag that you and other collaborators could collectively use to increase your reach. This hashtag could be used by the followers to include their own content in a list every time someone uses the hashtag. These campaigns can be a great way for creators to connect with their users.

 

Conclusion

Growing an Instagram is certainly not a trivial task. It requires time and dedication to build a page that stands out and attracts an audience that stays. It requires consistency and understanding of the algorithm. In your pursuit to build a strong following, remember to find creative ways that make each content piece exclusively yours.

 

 

 

 

Charlie Svensson is a top-rated freelance academic writer. He is a highly-skilled writer and has attended several professional writing workshops, making him very sharp in what he does. Some of his favorite topics are college life, education, social media, marketing, motivation and self-growth. He adapts to new writing skills very easily and this keeps him getting a new audience.