The 7 easy steps on how businesses can enhance discovery & nurture genuine followers on Instagram.
The world’s 2nd most downloaded application and the 4th most popular social media platform as of July 2021, with over 1.22 billion monthly users, Instagram is one of the most popular discovery platforms today. With over 130 million shoppers making purchases directly on Instagram, despite this feature being a recent addition to the Instagram offerings, this alone should be a reason why you need to build your followers on Instagram.
A brand that has been in the business of image social networks for over 12 years now, Instagram has helped many businesses in building a large and loyal customer base. Whether you are a brand that has been in operation for years, or an entrepreneur who is just stepping into the world of business, here are 7 easy steps on how you can build, nurture, and engage your followers on this popular visual social media platform.
1. Set Your Instagram Business Account
For you to build followers on your Instagram business account, you need to first set up an account on this platform. While creating your profile page, remember to create your bio link carefully, as Instagram only allows one clickable link on the social media platform. It is important to remember that with over 2/3 of business profile visits coming from non-followers, a strong bio and profile page will go a long way to persuade them to take the leap of faith and click on the next button.
Instagram is a great discovery platform, not just for the consumers to discover your brand, but also for you to gather information about your customers. Thus, while creating your profile, it helps to create a landing page with some special offers for visitors. This not only helps improve conversions, but it also helps in engaging with your visitors while simultaneously helping you gather information about them.
2. Have a Solid Instagram Content Strategy In Place
When it comes to measuring success on Instagram, simply having many followers will not suffice. Rather, increasing followers should also work in tandem with your overall business’ social media marketing objectives.
While posting on Instagram, telling a compelling story of the brand not only helps win loyal customers, but also attracts new ones. A good business marketing plan will always give direction to your posts and will help build consistency. Following a theme while posting on Instagram builds trust with the visitors and also showcases a consistent brand personality.
3. The Right Hashtags Can Win You New Followers
When it comes to searchability, most text on Instagram is not searchable. However, a great hack to reach a new audience to ultimately win followers for free is to use hashtags smartly and strategically. Using the right hashtags can help your target audience find you more easily, making your business more accessible.
Like most other social media platforms, Instagram users too have certain preferences when it comes to certain search words over others. Using the more popular keywords as hashtags with your posts can help you reach new users faster.
While hashtags can help with the discovery of your brands, in order to build authenticity and relevance, you need to be careful to use relevant hashtags rather than just focusing on popular hashtags. There are many free tools available online that can help identify relevant hashtags that you can use with your posts.
4. A Compelling Caption Helps With Discovery Too
Posting an image or a video on Instagram can fetch you visitors and more views, however, adding a compelling caption with them, goes a long way in getting you to achieve the engagement you desire. Some of the best practices while writing and posting a caption include:
- Try and limit the caption to 125 characters, as that is the maximum number of characters that get displayed in one go. If the caption is going to be longer, use the most important words in the first 125 characters to encourage the users to read more.
- Experiment with what works for you. While Instagram only showcases the first 125 characters of the caption, it allows captions of up to 2200 characters. Experiment with the length of the caption and see what works best with your audience. Data shows that while short captions can be efficient, long captions help with engagement. Try using emojis, as emojis are effective in attracting eyeballs on social media.
- By asking relevant questions in your captions, you can increase the engagement with your audience as the chances of them leaving a comment increases. Increased comments mean increased engagement, which will lead to increased visibility.
5. Promoting Your Instagram Account On Other Networks Makes Discovery Easy
The easiest way to improve the discovery of your Instagram business account is to showcase the same on the social media platform where you have already built your followers. Provide them with an exclusive promo code or an event invite, and see the chances of customer click-through increase manyfold.
A proven strategy to attract a visitor’s attention is to highlight some of your best Instagram posts on other social media platforms. Before cross-promoting your Instagram business page on other social media platforms, please make sure that you have at least 12-15 posts on your Instagram page to ensure that there is something for the visitors who land on your Instagram account.
PS: Paid marketing can also be used to boost your posts on other social media platforms to maximise visits to your postings.
6. Increase Discovery With Content That Can Be Re-Shared
A great social media content strategy can be to use your audience as your mouthpiece by posting content that they would love to re-share in their networks. One of the most popular contents that people love posting within their network is great infographics.
While creating your content for Instagram, spend time and energy in creating something that your visitors would love to re-share to their story as well. With each re-share of your main feed post as a story, you increase your reach further.
While stories disappear from the Instagram page in 24 hours, it helps to remember that they sit right on top of the user’s Instagram feed. Plus, stories also help you experiment with different postings, as you can post with the knowledge that the post will disappear in 24 hours.
7. Getting Featured Helps With Discovery Too
While most feature accounts compile and re-share content from other users, they are a great medium to attract visitors, as some of these accounts have a very large follower base. The easiest way to get noticed by such accounts is to not only be consistent with good quality content, but also to either tag them in your posts or simply by using relevant hashtags in your posts.
No matter what niche you cater to or what business you are into, you can always find a feature account that caters to the audience looking for just that niche. A little research with the right hashtags can also help with the discovery of some awesome feature accounts, too.
In Conclusion
When it comes to staying relevant in today’s competitive landscape, creating your presence on all the social media platforms, including Instagram, is perhaps as important as creating a digital website. You can now also build and efficiently grow your digital business, along with the advantage of the best-in-class marketing suite, by simply building your digital store on DotPe. With over 70 lac customers already trusting the one-stop solution of DotPe, you too can now get everything your business needs at just a click of a button now. Visit DotPe now to know more.
