Instagram has now reached over 1 billion users across the world, and for that reason alone it has become an essential marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. In this blog, I’m going to explain how business owners can build a huge Instagram following and take advantage of this rapidly growing social media network.
If you are a B2C business then you need to be on Instagram, it’s that simple.
It might shock you to hear that 86% of businesses in the US are on Instagram, followed by 81% accounts from the UK and 75% from German-based stores.
If your business is looking to not just survive, but thrive into 2024 then you need to learn about Instagram marketing.
Does the growth of users on Instagram mean that you will never get heard? No, it’s all about quality content now that Instagram has changed their algorithm: Users see posts that they are interested in, it’s not just a chronological news feed.
Don’t worry, I’m going to explain exactly how the Instagram algorithm works in this blog…
Around 3 years ago, businesses could spam users with 20 posts a day and still be sure that people would see them, that’s no longer the case.
Have you ever thought that Instagram doesn’t suit your business or industry?
Well, you might be surprised to hear that 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business or company profile.
Whether you are B2B or B2C, I promise you that your business can benefit from Instagram.
B2C has obvious benefits, consumers are making purchases on Instagram every single day.
B2B is more about relationship building, Instagram is a place for you to story tell and show behind the scenes of your business. Even in B2B environments, you are still fundamentally just dealing with people.
I know that Instagram can be overwhelming, and that’s why I’ve put together this complete guide on how to build a huge Instagram following that is loyal to your brand.
This is going to help you increase your online presence and get more eyeballs on your business.
Ready? Let’s get started.
Research a Marketing Strategy and Build Your Instagram Following
Without a strategy, it’s easy to feel completely clueless as to what you should be posting every day, so before you start let’s create a simple but effective strategy.
You first need to know what kind of content is proving most effective in your industry, and that’s where a few tools come in very handy…
SEMrush and SimilarWeb.
These are digital marketing intelligence tools that allow you to analyse the website traffic of leading players in your industry.
If you find a competitor with over 5,000 visits a month coming from Instagram, then you can be sure that they have got an effective Instagram marketing strategy in place.Build out a spreadsheet with the 10 leading competitors in your industry listed, record their website traffic, Instagram traffic, and link to their Instagram profiles as you will see below.
It’s a good idea to list what type of content they are sharing and how frequently they are posting as well.
This spreadsheet will form the basis of your Instagram marketing approach, you can refer back to this when you are lacking inspiration.
Remember, this document should only be used as a guide, don’t copy what your competitors are doing because that’s a sure fire way to never grow an Instagram following.
You will need some creative genius as well.Implementing Your Instagram Marketing Strategy
In order to implement an effective Instagram marketing strategy, you need to understand how Instagram works.
Obviously…
When you publish an update, there is a sophisticated algorithm that goes to work before anyone will actually see your posts.
How does it work I hear you ask?
As with every algorithm introduced by the big social media networks, there is always an element of secrecy to prevent users attempting to ‘hack’ their way to millions of followers.
But here’s what we know…
There are 3 main elements that affect how many users will view your posts:
Interest: Instagram uses data surrounding previous behaviour to determine a users level of interest in your posts.
Recency: There is still an element of chronology, newer posts are favoured over month old ones.
Relationship: Users are more likely to see a post in their feed that is from a person or company that they have regular interaction with.This algorithm was introduced because the older chronological algorithm became overwhelmed (much like what happened on Facebook).
Users were missing 70% of all posts and 50% of their friends’ posts, simply because there was too much saturation of content on the platform.
If you want to grow an Instagram following then average posts simply aren’t good enough, the reality is that you need to be sharing high quality to even stand a chance.
Don’t forget you also need to interact regularly with your audience, and regularly means at least 5 – 10 times per day.
A piece of cake, right?
There’s no beating around the bush here. These changes are benefitting the social networks because when organic reach is more difficult there is a rise in advertising and promotion of posts.
Yes, that’s right – Facebook and Instagram want to make money…Use Extremely Relevant Hashtags
Instagram is hashtag central, the feature is more important here than anywhere else.
The simple fact is that more hashtags equate to more likes on your Instagram photos.
You can include up to 30 hashtags in your updates, so guess what? Include 30 hashtags in your updates.
This is going to massively upgrade your discoverability.
But how do you know which hashtags are popular?
Again, this really always boils down to research. Refer back to your spreadsheet and make another column titled ‘Hashtags’.
Record all of the hashtags that the leading competitors in your industry are using.
Webstagram is a great tool for finding popular hashtags in your niche.
Hashtags are going to increase your posts organic reach, but only use ones that are relevant because otherwise they will be ineffective (refer back to the algorithm).
Less popular hashtags are useful as well if you want to appear at the top of search rankings in Instagram.
This is a bit like SEO for example, hashtags such as #Beauty are hugely popular, but if you use #SustainableBeautyProducts then you can rank higher.
Use a variety of popular and less popular hashtags in your posts to maximise your discoverability.
Use Geo-Tagging for Local Reach
Geo-tagging is another great feature that will improve the discoverability of your brand on Instagram.When users search for a specific location that you have geo-tagged in your updates, they will discover your brand.
This is great if part of the story behind your brand is based on a location.
If you are not a solely online business and you actually have physical shop or store, then geo-tagging is an absolute must – you can tag popular local destinations around you so that visitors will come across your business as well.
Make Your Customers Do The Work With User Generated Content
Creating stunning visual content that will capture your audiences attention is not easy for the business owner with no experience in graphic design.
Even if you have the experience you almost certainly don’t have enough time
So make your customers do the work…
Encourage and incentivise your audience to post pictures using or promoting your product, and then simply re-post it to your audience, simple.
You can incentivise these people by running competitions or offering discounts, it’s not hard to find something that works – people love free or discounted stuff!
You could even get in touch with photographers and ask them to take professional pictures of your product in exchange for promotion of their work on your Instagram page.
User generated content is going to enable you to grow your Instagram following without devoting countless hours to content creation.
What Makes a Great Instagram Competition?
There are lots of types of competitions that you can run on Instagram, some of these include: Comment, like, or share to win, hashtag and post to win, or provide your email to win.
There is no right or wrong option, so I recommend that you try them all because competitions are a great way to build an engaged and loyal audience.
And (if you refer back to the Instagram algorithm section) an engaged audience means increased organic reach of your posts.
Adidas Neo ran a competition that generated 71,000 mentions of their hashtag #MyNeoShoot and gained 41,000 new followers.
Users were encouraged to use the hashtag in exchange for a chance to win a professional photo shoot – a small price to pay for 41,000 followers!
Create another column in your spreadsheet for Instagram competitions, and record any examples that you find from the leading competitors in your industry – this will be sure to give you some great ideas.
But if this sounds like too much work then don’t worry, because you can use Iconosquare to find examples of competitions using hashtags.
Once you’ve brainstormed a great idea for an Instagram contest, it’s time to promote it…
Send out frequent posts on all your social media pages encouraging users to take part in your competition.
If you still have a small Instagram following then you are going to need to make use of the Facebook Business Manager to create an Instagram promotion.
To run Instagram ads most effectively, do it through the Facebook Business Manager.
Setup the Facebook Business Manager then connect Instagram to your Facebook business page, this is very simple and Instagram has loads of instructions on how to do this.
From there, you’re going to want to click ‘Create Campaign’ and then choose ‘Boost Your posts’ from the list of objectives…
Choose the audience that you want to target, try to narrow down your audience to between 100,000 and 500,000 people for best results.
Next up, you’re going to need to upload some content for your ad, which you can choose to run on Instagram alone or on Facebook as well.
If you don’t have any fancy graphic design skills then simply upload a picture of your product.
You’re also going to need to include some copy in your ad, this is simply the text that will appear below the image. Try to be as concise as possible, but make it exciting!
Finally, choose a call to action from the list and then once you’re happy with the preview on the right, click ‘place order’.
Your promotion will be running on Instagram within 24 hours (it usually only takes 30 minutes).
Analyse Growth With Instagram Insights
If you haven’t already, go into settings within the Instagram app and select ‘Switch to business profile’. This will enable Instagram insights.
There are a few other features that you will need to setup once you switch to an Instagram business profile, so follow these simple instructions if you have any trouble.
Here are some key metrics to keep an eye on:
Interactions: The number of actions taken on your account.
Profile Visits: The number of users that have visited your profile.
Discovery: The number of accounts that your posts reached.
Top Locations: Where your posts are having the greatest impact.
Age Range: What age group you are reaching most frequently.
Followers: Find out what days and hours you are getting the most new followers.
You need to understand the difference between reach and impressions:
Reach is the total number of individual people that have viewed your posts.
Impressions are the total number of views.
For example, if one person viewed your post 7 times, that would would 7 impressions, but the reach is 1.
Once you run your first paid Instagram promotion you will be able to see the difference between organic and paid results in Instagram Insights as well.
Conclusion
Instagram is a rapidly growing social media network that is essential for B2C brands, and it has serious relationship building benefits for B2B brands as well.
This blog could have gone on and on but I will leave it here for now, let me know if there is anything I missed or if you have any questions about how to grow an Instagram following that is loyal to your brand.
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