With about 500 million active users, Instagram is considered businesses brand building and marketing powerhouse not only because of its ability to engage users more with IG images compared to their Facebook counterparts.
If you are looking to increase your brand awareness, build a relationship with your target audience, establish social proof, and get more leads and sales, then you should invest more time in developing your Instagram presence.
However, the difficulty lies in getting your content in front of your audience’s feeds and growing your business following. If you are struggling to achieve both, we have put together 10 surefire ways to help you get more Instagram followers.
1. Be strategic in picking your hashtags
Instagram hashtags are searchable topics that are clickable and picking the right one. When searching for a certain topic, users usually follow hashtags and if you are using the perfect hashtags, you are sure that your posts land right in front of your target audience’s personal feed.
For post you make, you can add up to 30 hashtags and the best way to ensure you are picking the right ones is to use a combination of hashtags with different purposes. Using location-based hashtags will help you get in front of a local audience, opting to use niche hashtags will get you in front of a more specific audience.
2. Ask users to tag you in their content
Content generated by users are very powerful. Users are more likely to be compelled to trust content that was created by somebody that they know compared to seeing promotions created by a brand. When your clients share their experience with your studio, they expose to their followers how awesome your services are. So, encourage your clients to share their experience and make sure you remind them to tag you in these posts and use your branded hashtags.
3. Boost Instagram posts to leverage your social proof
Aside from running your campaigns through Facebook Ads, you can now boost your posts in Instagram. By using your organic posts, your can easily place your content in front of your target audience and increase brand awareness.
Use this social proof to highlight your studio’s point of difference and promote posts with high engagement to targeted audiences. The “high love” count will get your audience to stop and look.
4. Make sure to include social follow buttons
Adding your social follow buttons everywhere is ‘social media 101’ and is still surprisingly effective. Many of your members may not be following you yet in Instagram, so make sure to get them on board by adding your social follow buttons in your website, and even in the bottom of your regular email newsletters to prospects and clients.
5. Run your own Instagram contests
Instagram contests are very popular because they work. Here are some ideas for Instagram contests:
- Users sharing their own pictures or videos following a particular procedure you provided
- Users voting on the best user generated content
- Users creating their own captions for a photo you uploaded
When hosting these contests, make sure that you require contestants to follow your profile first to be eligible to join. Contests can be very basic such as giving out a few free caps or towels to select WINNERS who entered by liking the studio page. Remember that contests generate a lot of hype around your brand, you can promote it in other platforms and use relevant hashtags.
6. Create tag-a-friend posts
These types of posts are awesome because they not only engage your audience, but it also prompts them to comment and tag a friend that they think will be interested in the service you featured. You can make this into a contest but it will also work without offering any incentive.
A whopping 92% of consumers trust brands that are recommended by their peers, so promoting such posts will be very beneficial in increasing your brand awareness.
7. Share your Insta Nametag
The Insta Nametag is a feature which is very similar to using a QR code. Scanning a nametag will trigger a prompt asking you if you would like to follow someone’s insta account without having to search for it. What you can do is post an image of your nametag on Facebook and drive them to follow you in Instagram. You can also use this in your studio signages so that you can easily convert studio visitors to followers.
