In this day and age, it’s impossible for a business to be successful without being on social media, especially Instagram. There are currently over one billion Instagram users worldwide and that number is sure to go up. If you don’t already have an Instagram account for your business, that needs to change.
But it’s not enough just to have an account, you also need a great strategy that will help you gain followers. One option is to hire an agency that will help you get organic Instagram followers, and this will save you a lot of time and effort. Or you can learn these tips and become an Instagram expert yourself.
Automate as much as you can
Using third-party software to automate certain tasks and manage your Instagram account is sometimes seen as spammy, but it doesn’t have to be like that. If you use the right tools, automation will seem natural and provide you with a lot of benefits.
There are many actions you can automate on Instagram such as likes, comments, following and unfollowing people, scheduling and publishing, DMs, and more.
If you choose to automate, you’ll be able to:
- Save time. Automation is there to take care of most of the menial tasks which will leave you with more time to put your focus on what’s really important and come up with the perfect strategy.
- Gain followers quickly. When you automate certain tasks, you will have more interactions on the platform. This will give you more engagement and raise your follower count.
- Uncover audience insights. There are some automation tools that help you learn more about your followers and target audience by telling you which hashtags they use, suggesting the best accounts for you to follow, and so on.
As we already mentioned, if you don’t want your automation to look spammy or be banned by Instagram, you need to choose the right tools like, for example, an Instagram API. This APl keeps all of your channels in one view and makes customer service easier and simpler.
It comes with great features such as auto-replies, quick replies, and no-code chatbots that take care of the busy work and make you available to your followers 24/7.
Write the perfect bio
Most businesses put a lot of focus on the type of photos they post and the captions they write. Even though this is very important, it often causes businesses to forget to optimize one of the most important parts of their Instagram profile, which is their bio.
The bio on your profile tells the people who visit your page a lot about your business in a few words if you know how to do it right. You can place a CTA in the bio, talk about your promotion, work on brand awareness, and much more.
If you know how to write an impactful Instagram bio for your business, you’ll be able to showcase your brand’s personality, get users to take action, present your value proposition, and so on.
There are billions of posts on Instagram, and if you don’t want your content to be lost in a sea of other images and videos, you need to use hashtags. But you can’t just place random hashtags without thinking about what you’re posting and where because hashtags also need to have a strategy.
Consider the following:
- Use the right number of hashtags. If you don’t put enough hashtags, it’s almost like you didn’t put any at all. But if you put too many, it will be spammy and seem overbearing. The average post on Instagram contains 10.7 hashtags, so 10 is the ideal number.
- Keep things tidy. Hashtags can sometimes look messy and take the attention away from your post. If you want to keep everything tidy, put them at the very end of your post, or even better, just put them in the first comment on that post.
- Use branded hashtags. Brand recognition and awareness are very important for any business, and you can build them by using branded hashtags. But don’t be overbearing with them, think of 4-5 hashtags that describe your brand or products and use them in every post.
- Do research. It’s impossible to say which hashtags will have the most traction, but you should research your competitors that already have popular Instagram accounts. See what hashtags they’re using and think about how you can incorporate them to fit your business.
Write the perfect captions
The captions you write for every post need to have personality in them and encourage people to interact with the post. Of course, they need to be relevant to your business but also intrigue your followers and show off your creative side.
For instance, you can:
- Ask questions that require a response and encourage people to share your posts.
- Encourage users to have conversations with one another by publishing “tag-a-friend” posts.
- Tell people to go to your bio and the benefits they’ll see if they do so.
Final thoughts
Social media is taking over and the only thing businesses can do is embrace this new marketing opportunity. On Instagram, you can promote your business, communicate with your customers, build brand recognition, and much more. But only if you have a stellar Instagram strategy.