Instagram continues to be one of the more popular — and profitable — social media channels for brands looking to market their product or service. While every brand is after explosive social media growth, very few are able to achieve the type of growth and results that leads to massive revenue and profits. You cannot expect to just blindly post content without a plan or strategy and see the sales roll in — it just doesn’t work that way.
Do you want to increase your following on Instagram, allowing you to have a larger audience to market your product or service to?
Here are six keys that contribute to successful Instagram growth hacking — work these into your Instagram marketing strategy for the best results.
1. Determine the best posting times for your specific audience.
Statistically, there are peak times when more Instagram users are online than others. Posting during these times leads to better engagement, since more people will immediately see your post. Savvy people recognize these engagement prime times by testing relentlessly, helping their posts hit the mark every time.
Begin experimenting with different posting times until you start to see a pattern emerge, identifying your content prime times. Ideally, you will want to optimize this, giving yourself a clear picture of what content styles work at what times of the day.
2. Stick to one consistent brand message.
You need to know what type of content your audience wants to see, and which ones will attract the best engagement. This is no different from knowing what kind of Facebook ads or email marketing your audience will respond well to. Unless you truly know your audience, you will never find success in any aspect of your business, Instagram and social media marketing included.
Once a successful content strategy is developed, however, many people try to expand and publish general content, thinking it will attract more eyes. You need to resist these temptations, as it will typically lead to pushing away your current audience. As a result, you will lose followers and not gain any new ones.
3. Quality engagement needs to be your main focus and goal.
With the launch of Instagram’s new algorithm, it has become crucial for accounts to focus on their engagement. Under the new algorithm, content with poor engagement is shown less frequently. If your content is not engaging, it is not doing its job and you need to change something.
The biggest obstacle is developing a content style that builds engagement. Your creative team needs to come up with content that is so unique and high quality that people will want to engage with it over other posts. Post content that people want to engage with, rather than what you think they want to engage with.
4. Consistency is key.
At the end of the day, Instagram growth requires content to be posted on a regular schedule and at optimal times for engagement. Establish a strict content calendar and be extremely committed to regularly posting. If you are sporadic, you are going to lose your audience quickly. The more content you publish, the more data and information you can collect and analyze to determine what works and what does not.
A lot of brands will post once every few days, and that just isn’t enough. You have to be extremely active and consistent if you want to stand out. The competition on Instagram is at an all-time high, and there is no sign of it slowing down. If you aren’t consistent with your posting, don’t expect much growth.
5. Always be on the lookout for feedback.
As you start testing content ideas, listen to your audience and pay attention to the comments on each post. When someone takes the time to comment or send you a message, they are telling you they enjoy what you are posting, so continue that theme and style.
Making personal touches, especially in the beginning, can help you gain solid growth traction. Taking time to like and reply to comments shows people that their engagement matters to you. Now, next time you post content, they are more likely to engage with your account again. Take the time to build a strong relationship with your followers because their engagement will cause more people to be exposed to it, and this can lead to a snowball effect in terms of growth.
6. Create content with your followers needs and wants in mind.
Selling out is one of the biggest mistakes people and brands make on Instagram. Users have all the negotiating power when it comes to unfollowing, so as a content creator or brand, you need to take what your followers want into consideration.
Just like an influencer, brands should never post content that their audience might not like. Doing so will push away followers and waste all the time and money it took to attract them in the first place.
Image: PEXELS
