In this episode of Actionable Marketing In Minutes we talk about: 3 Ways To Gain More Instagram Followers.

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Problem:

Are you using Instagram to promote your business or blog? Instagram marketing can give you effective results rather quickly because it is the fastest growing social network, with high engagement rate as compared to other networks.

Despite posting your best content, has your follower count slowed down? Remember that building an Instagram audience of potential customers to promote and sell your services is more important than building a list of random people. In this podcast we tell you about 3 easy hacks to jump-start your Instagram strategy and create a community of loyal and engaged followers.

Solution:

1. Get Visibility For Your Instagram Account

Be strategic and make it easier for potential new followers to discover your Instagram account. Here’s how-

· Cross-promote your Instagram account to your existing followers on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or any other social network.

· Profusely link to your Instagram account on your website, as your email signature, and also in newsletters you send out. This way more people will be aware of your brand online and they can easily find you on Instagram.

· Follow other people on Instagram and like their photos and videos to interact with the larger community and be seen

· Embed your Instagram photos in your blog posts.

· Identify and collaborate with online influencers and brand ambassadors, who naturally compliment your brand, to reach a much larger selection of your ideal target audience and gain you some new followers.

2. Leverage The Right Hashtags

Hashtags make a post discoverable by anyone searching for that hashtag. It helps organize and categorize photos and video content to optimize content discovery.

· Use relevant hashtags in your captions to help your posts appear to people who are searching for photos related to your industry or product.

· Find out which hashtags your target audience use most actively, and then search for posts around that hashtag. Like and comment on posts.

· Search for hashtags that have an active and involved community behind them, and then engage with like-minded people to raise awareness about your brand. A good example of this is #morningslikethese or #fromwhereistand.

· Create your own branded hashtag to get new potential followers on board, aggregate user-generated content and create a strong sense of community.

· Get in on the social media buzz with trending hashtags especially during holidays (#christmas) and other newsworthy moments (#MillionMarch) and post relevant content.

· Find and use a mix of topically relevant hashtags along with more popular hashtags related to your product, service, or industry to get in front of the right people.

3. Use Instagram Stories To Be Recommended

Instagram Stories are a fun way of creating engaging, super-targeted content to foster meaningful connections with your audience. Instagram Stories are shared with followers at the top of the regular feed and are deleted automatically after 24 hours. The Vogue U.K. account doubled its following to 2 million last year, thanks to how it has used the Instagram Stories feature.

Stories are ephemeral so do try and post one story per day but also save it to repost it again as a regular image photo to your profile grid..

The better your stories are and the more they appeal to your specific audience, the greater your chances for Instagram to add your account to the other trending stories at the top of the explore tab. Having one of your stories featured on the “Explore” page can get you a ton of likes, comments and new followers who choose to see more of your content!

Benefits:

These suggestions just scratch the surface of strategies necessary to build a strong Instagram presence, grow your follower count and maximize your Instagram likes. Nonetheless they are a helpful start for anyone hoping to get loyal Instagram followers. But do remember that it’s not just a numbers game, so the best strategy is to be authentic and social.

We hope you’ve found this information helpful. Please connect with us on Twitter @DirectiveGroup or on LinkedIn. Let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear about next. And if you like our podcasts please share with your networks using hashtag #actionablemarketing.

Join us for an upcoming episode where we discuss “Why the Need for Market Segmentation?”