Surely you know that as a communication channel, Instagram is increasingly popular with individuals and companies who want to develop their brand image.
Instagram is particularly interesting for personifying a brand, recruiting collaborators, promoting products or its corporate culture, and attracting new customers. However, it can be difficult to gather a large number of followers on Instagram.
For most individuals and businesses, building a community of followers requires daily effort. This article lists tips for getting noticed on Instagram.
Fortunately, there are other easy-to-implement solutions to get the first thousand quality followers with your personal or business Instagram profile. The question is where to invest your time and energy.
How to get more followers on Instagram?
1 – Create and optimize your profile
First of all, you have to personalize your Instagram profile to catch the eye, introduce yourself to your potential followers and make them want to follow you.
So start by checking that your username is clearly identifiable and easy to find: use your company name, for example. If this name is not available, make it the first term of your username if possible to help users find you easily. For example, Fnac’s username on Instagram is @fnac_officiel .
Note : Be sure to include your full business name in the Name field in the Options section, under the gear icon on iOS or under the three dots on Android. This name will appear below your profile picture and username in search results.
Then check that your profile is public. To make your profile public, go to Instagram’s Options menu, and make sure the Private account option is disabled.
Choose a profile photo in line with your brand image on other social networks, for example, your logo.
In the Bio field, provide compelling, actionable and useful information about your brand. Your biography should allow users to know you, and convince them to follow you. For inspiration, here are some examples:
Finally, enable notifications to be notified when users share or comment on your photos. To enable notifications, go to Options, then Push notification settings. For each notification category, select Everyone.
2 – Choose a content creation manager
Just like your other social media accounts, your Instagram account should be managed by one person (possibly two). If possible, choose someone on your team who understands the spirit of the platform and is familiar with all of its features.
3 – Sharpen your shooting and photo editing skills
On Instagram, the quality of the posts is absolutely essential. On Twitter, a bad Tweet is quickly forgotten. However, posting an unsightly photo on Instagram is out of the question.
These applications allow all kinds of modifications: sharpen certain elements, lighten certain tones to brighten up your photo, etc.
With your profile created and optimized, the content manager appointed, and your shooting and photo editing skills refreshed, it’s time to start publishing.
While it’s best to have one or at most two people managing your account, those people can’t be everywhere at once to find all the content worth posting, so invite your colleagues to take and to send you photos of their meetings, meals or any other activity of their daily professional life.
Even though photos and videos are the essence of Instagram, be sure not to neglect captions. Quality captions personify your brand, attract followers and entice them to share your content, helping to expand your brand awareness.
Let’s take a look at hashtags for a moment: on Instagram, a hashtag helps connect the conversations of different users into a single feed. By using relevant hashtags, you can expand your audience beyond your followers and users who already know you.
Instagram is a community, so feel free to look for users who post interesting photos, follow their account and interact with their content. This is the most natural way to draw attention to your own account while finding your place in the community, and to glean inspiration.
Once you have established a good relationship with users who have a similar audience to yours, you can offer them to promote each other.
Another way to expand your reach while generating engagement is to announce a contest, asking people to follow your account, like your photo, or comment on it to enter.
Since its inception, Instagram has offered you the opportunity to post carefully highlighted photos to represent your brand. With the launch of Stories on Instagram, you can also spontaneously share exclusive images, which will remain online for 24 hours only.
Stories also allow users to share live videos, a trending content category on social media. What makes live videos on Instagram special? They disappear as soon as the user stops filming. This authentic experience allows brands to share unexpected and spontaneous moments, and to give a more human side to the very smooth atmosphere of the platform.
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