Here are five steps to increase your followers on Instagram

One of the most common questions we get from brands is how to grow their follower base, followed by: ‘Can we buy some followers?’ It’s never a good idea to buy fake followers and while it can be time consuming to organically grow a brand’s follower base, there are some tips and tricks that can speed along the process. For many brands, social media is equivalent to their ‘shop window’ where customers can peek inside and get a glimpse into all that the brand has to offer, so having a strong base of ‘real’ followers is critical to the long-term success of any brand. Instagram in particular, is a social media platform that ranks supreme when it comes to its potential as a marketing tool, especially amongst B2C brands, and here are five easy ways to get started on expanding your loyal customer base on the social media platform.

The right hashtags can be your secret weapon
Creating engaging content and posting regularly is important, but a critical element is using the right hashtags so that people (non-followers) searching for specific terms can be directed to your photos. As with all social media platforms, there are certain hashtags that get preference over others. In case of Instagram, if you use the topmost popular hashtags, the chances of getting discovered by new users is much higher. Hashtags should never be seen as an afterthought, but are an integral part of the content creation and captioning process. Sometimes, the most trending hashtags may not apply to your brand and that’s why it’s important to do some research and find the most relevant and popular hashtags in your category. A trick here is to keep an eye on the hashtags that your competitors are using and ensure that you incorporate them as well.

Find your perfect timing
As with everything in life, timing is key, and this applies across the board for any and all social media platforms. The timing of your post can contribute to its success or failure and there are various third- party tools, as well as the analytics function within Instagram itself, which will give you a detailed analysis of the best days of the week and times to post. Depending on the time zone that your followers are from and their personal preferences for being online, it’s important to post when your audience is the most engaged.

Highjack your competition
Why reinvent the wheel, when you don’t have to? One of the easiest ways to get more followers is to engage with the audience of your competitors. People who follow your competition are already aware of the product or service category that you operate in and have demonstrated an interest. They are a logical target audience to seek and engage with, in attempts to grow your own following. An easy way to get started is by initiating first contact. Start actively interacting with your competitors’ audiences by following them, liking their photos, commenting or simply dropping an emoji. This will ensure that you are noticed by them and chances are, they will follow you back, or at the very least, be curious and check out your account.

Everyone loves a freebie
Giveaways and competitions are a great way to get people to engage with your content. They encourage people to actively tag others and entice them to follow your Instagram account, in the hopes of winning a freebie. One of the most popular tactics on Instagram is through the tried and tested ‘giveaway’ campaign that asks audiences to tag a friend and follow your account. Moreover, the more traction and comments your giveaway post gets, the higher your engagement will be, leading it to be favoured by Instagram’s algorithm as well. This combined with all the people that have been tagged by existing followings, and comments by their friends, creates great visibility for the brand and eyeballs from people who could be potential followers.

The power of user generated content (UGC)
Accounts that are successful on Instagram are the ones that are authentic in their value proposition and what they stand for – and nothing is more authentic than sharing what your real customers, clients and followers have to say. The essence of promoting UGC is to allow authentic insight into what it’s like to use your product or service and show the diversity of people who are fans of the brand. Reposting your followers’ content, where you are tagged is not only a very cost effective strategy for content creation, but it also makes followers feel special and recognised by the brand. It strengthens the relationship with existing customers and encourages them to become unofficial advocates for the brand, who are more inclined to post about the brand and encourage engagement from their followers.

Zaib Shadani is the founder and managing director of PR and video production agency Shadani Consulting

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