Instagram is the hottest social media right now. Everyone is trying to win more followers on a war to influence others and gain new clients or fans.
Instagrammers spend hours on putting together the perfect picture, but more important than the content is to drive traffic to it. Of course, if it is hideous, no one will follow, but they don’t need to be perfect to succeed.
Here are some tricks to increase your followers. Now, no magic tricks, you will need to put at least 1 hour every day to see results but it can be done.
1. Engage
If you want followers you need to follow as well. And not just that, you need to engage in comments. Follow people and follow hashtags that are related with the things you talk about. But be aware. Instagram has limits as to how many people you can start following every day. I always recommend to go about 50 every day.
Part of engaging is also liking and commenting. Make sure you spend 30-45 minutes every day just on commenting and liking what other people post and not just the people you follow.
2. Respond
The more activity on your post, the more likely it is to appear on your followers feed and searches. When people comment on your post or tag you on theirs, like and respond to as many as you can. Your followers will be more faithful, and your views will increase.
3. Giveaways
There are many ways to create a giveaway. You can do a giveaway on your own but most people won’t see it unless advertise it. It’s a bit harder to get but you can also create one through a collaboration with a brand and have them post as well. What many are finding most successful now is uniting forces with a group of other instagrammers who have a higher follow and creating a joint giveaway with juicy gifts. On this last option, to qualify, they will need to follow all of you.
4. Follow loops
Most follow loops work through a hashtag. A group of people create an image with a hashtag and you have to follow and leave a comment. In return, those same people will follow you.
5. Support groups
These support groups tend to force people to follow everyone on the list on a follow for follow strategy. There are also those who don’t force you to follow but rather work as a chat group where you can share your posts and get the groups likes and comments. Usually in this last case, before posting, you have to like or comment the last 5 posts or the last 24 hours of posts on the group. They do help with engagement but they are very hard to keep up with. The toughest part here is that you need to get invited to one.
6. Hashtags
They are key to bringing traffic. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags in one post but you have to be careful to not abuse this strategy. Also, there are words on a black list that if you tend to put as hashtags on your posts, they are said to get you shadow banned, not allowing your posts to appear as much on search results.
Another important factor is the hashtags used. People want to make their own hashtags but those don’t really drive traffic. In my opinion, the best option is a mix of general very high volume hashtags related to what you post about such as #motherhood or #fashionista and some more specific to that post and the audience you want to reach such as #NYmoms or #collegefashionistas
7. Tagging
Tag the brands, people and locations appearing in your posts. This will increase the chances to have your posts reposted by them, getting a collaboration opportunity and appearing on searches as your post will be on their profiles under tagged images.
8. Location
People search also by location to see what is going on in their neighborhood, the food others posted on a restaurant… Make sure you add location. If you don’t want to put your home, just add the city or different parts of town. It will help bring traffic from non-followers.