Oftentimes, your Instagram page is your customers first impression of your company; therefore, it is important your profile showcases your brand identity and culture.
Growing your Instagram page requires time and dedication. Expanding your reach and creating an engaged community on Instagram does not just happen overnight. There are certain practices that you should incorporate into your marketing strategy to see real progress.
To help you learn how you can start improving your Instagram strategy, we have created a list with some of the most effective ways to grow your page:
Create a Content Schedule
One of the most effective ways to grow your Instagram page and attract new followers is to have a consistent posting schedule. Your business page should publish stories, reels and feed posts only a few days a week to avoid the Instagram algorithm thinking your account is spam. A survey conducted by HubSpot of over 500+ global B2B and B2C Instagram marketers revealed that 45% of marketers post to their feed multiple times per week and 43% post 4-9 stories at once, multiple times a week. Ultimately, each brand’s posting schedule is unique to its audiences interests and behaviors. Therefore, it is recommended you try out various posting schedules until you find what works best for you.
Identify Hashtags for Your Niche
Incorporating hashtags into your captions on Instagram can help you discover new customers. The HubSpot 2022 Instagram Report revealed that 19% of Instagram impressions come from hashtags and 82% of marketers utilize them in their Instagram strategy. Additionally, an effective strategy that worked for marketers was using a combination of general hashtags and niche hashtags. The report also revealed that a majority of marketers use 4-9 hashtags in their captions. Discovering which hashtags produce the best results for your account can take time and a lot of experimenting. If you do not see a significant amount of impressions brought in from your hashtags in the beginning – don’t give up! Once you find out what works for your account, hashtags can be a great strategy to help reach new audiences.
Work With Influencers
Partnering with influencers can be a great way to reach new customer segments and increase brand awareness and consumer trust. You can work with influencers by sponsoring their posts or having them tag your page in their caption. What works especially well is when the posts your being tagged in is User Generated Content (UGC), Hootsuite revealed that “nearly 80% of people say that UGC impacts their decision to purchase”. Therefore, when you sponsor an influencer’s post, you should try to ensure their image or video is creative and authentic.
Engage With Your Audience
If you want your audience to engage with you, then you have to engage with them! A great start to boosting your engagement rates is interacting with your followers and the accounts that you follow. To do this, you can actively like others content, share content you are tagged in, comment on followers posts and reply to comments on your posts! Another great way to encourage your followers to interact with your account is creating polls and asking questions on your stories. This is an excellent creative and fun way to learn more about what your followers want and are interested in, and get them more engaged in your account.