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This provides a high opportunity to build a loyal audience to consume your product, and with the right strategy, they can transform into your brand ambassadors and customers.
Why Instagram Matters for Your Business
Instagram has over 500 million daily users, each with a different or similar interest hence being one of the best social media platforms for business. This creates a large audience for you to showcase your product, find new customers, boost sales, and grow your following.Instagram provides insights about your brand niche that you can use to track your audience's engagement. This includes where your customers shop, what kind of content they watch, and lots more. This can help in creating a custom marketing strategy for your business and brand.
What Is the Instagram Algorithm?
The Instagram algorithm is a system that ranks content on Instagram. It helps Instagram distribute content to the right audience, including those who are looking for new brands.'The Instagram algorithm works by looking at information in your content, like reels, feed posts, and stories, and user information, like interests and behavior, and then serving personalized content to the right people.
How to Grow Your Instagram Following in 2023
It's very easy to build a loyal following on Instagram, but this doesn't happen over time. According to statistics, each Instagram business account grows by 1.25% in average followers per month.
Instagram for business
Some of the best ways to grow your Instagram following are through Instagram content like reels, called "shorts, cross-account promotion, and more to be discussed below. I hope you find this article helpful.
Read Also: How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Business
Use Hashtags Effectively
Hashtags are words put in or at the end of a post using a hash (#) as a prefix to every word on an Instagram post caption, and Instagram only allows limited number of ot more than 30 hashtags per post and 10 per story. It's recommended to use at least 3-5 precise, popular hashtags in a post.
The hashtags on your Instagram content must be relevant to your audience and brand, and it adds more value if you add them to your comments too. According to TheEnterpriseWorld.com, increasing the number of right hashtags in a post from one to thirty results in an 11% increase in the reach rate, from 24% to 35%.
Optimize Your Instagram Profile (Bio)
There are Instagram accounts you click on, read their profiles, and immediately click the follow button just because of the way they crafted their Instagram profile.This happens to anyone, and this implies that a compelling bio will help you connect with the right audience, hence building your brand.
It's recommended that you keep your Instagram bio short, include keywords, emojis, and hashtags that are relevant to your brand, and add story highlights, a bio link, and a call to action at the end.
All these will help your Instagram followers understand your personality as well as help the algorithm recommend your account to relevant audiences.
The picture below can be used as an example of a fully completed and optimized account.
Use Instagram Reels into Your Content Strategy
Instagram reels are short videos just like those of YouTube shorts and Tiktok shorts, and they are the fastest-growing content format on Instagram now.
Influencers and small- to mid-level businesses are making and uploading reels as a marketing strategy for entertaining videos on Instagram for existing clients or anyone on Instagram, which is helping them get the attention of Instagram followers who might be interested in your product but do not enjoy reading captions and hashtags.
According to statistics, Instagram users spend 20% of their time watching videos.
Cross-Promote Your Account on Other Social Media Channels
There are over 5 billion internet users worldwide, of whom 4.2 billion use social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others..webp)
This creates an opportunity for you to get more Instagram followers who might be interested in your brand but either don't use Instagram or haven't found your profiles but are interested in your niche.
By promoting your business account on other platforms, you can boost your brand's awareness on the internet.
Creating Eye-Catching Instagram posts
Creating a lot of new, eye-catching, and engaging posts on a consistent basis on your Instagram account will massively boost your number of followers. Your content caption keywords, emojis, links, and hashtags must be relevant to your niche.Focus on current events, and re-upload user-generated content (UGC). Many Instagram followers prefer watching behind the scenes to help them understand how the video was made, so downloading them is highly recommended.
In order to make eye-catching content, you must make sure you have natural lighting and use proper camera angles. If you post photos and videos, be consistent with the colors you use; this is part of branding.
Keep your content in the right aspect ratio, as this will avoid over compressing the content, preserve quality, and help you grow your Instagram following.
Collaborating with Influencers and Creators
Collaboration with other Instagram accounts with a larger number of followers than yours will help you grow your Instagram following rapidly. This is done by getting in touch with the account managers and scheduling a topic to involve them in, shooting a video, writing a post, or creating a carousel, then uploading it on their channels.
This increases your brand's authority and awareness, as you will get new followers from other Instagram accounts who might turn into potential customers.
Collaboration includes cross-posting photo posts, branded hashtags, website links and mentions in Instagram captions, blog posts, and email marketing in favor of either party's account. This is beneficial for both big and small institutional accounts.
Use Instagram analytics and metrics.
In the new era of digital business, data is very important in the marketing strategies on any social media platform. The good news is that Instagram provides data insights on both video content and other photo platforms.Instagram analytics can help you know your audience reach, track profile activity, determine audience demographics, determine the right time to post, know how users find your content, show you the top-performing hashtags, and lots more.
By understanding the analytics well, it will help your Instagram marketing, starting with video content to publish, how to place your Instagram ads to reach the target audience, relevant hashtags to use, keywords, and memes, which can help grow your Instagram followers quickly.
To access analytics, go to your profile, tap the Insights action button, and tap Insights. For a deeper examination, tap the metrics in the Overview section or a particular piece of shared content.
Run Facebook Ad Campaign for Your Instagram Account
The fastest way to grow your audience in a short time is by running ads about your brand on Facebook. Instagrm being owned by Meta Platforms, they combined their advertising management tool Ads Manager into one, which means that you can effectively create an ad and run it on both platforms easily.
Ran FB Ads
Facebook Ads Manager has provisions for you to select the right target audience for your Instagram page, and with less than $100, you can launch a campaign and grow your Instagram following in a short time. The good thing about running meta ads is that you will get real human impressions, not bots.
Conclusion
Instagram is a great way to grow your business online, but with a small number of followers, it can be difficult. This post has provided a different way to grow your Instagram following organically without using bots. The choice is up to you to choose which one you have not been doing well, starting with relevant hashtags, content best practices, algorithms, the use of meta ads, collaborating, and so much more. I hope this article will help you grow your following on Instagram and get new followers. Feel free to leave us a comment and share this article with your friends.