How to grow your following organically - The Instagram Edit.

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and is becoming increasingly popular amongst brands as a platform to engage with their customers. So, when you start your account, naturally you want to gain followers and then continue to grow your audience so that your content reaches as many people as possible. I recently posted on my Instagram page that lots of followers doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get more sales, but it is still important to increase your following for many reasons. In this blog post, I outline a number of ways that you can grow your following on Instagram without spending any money!

Hashtags

The famous hashtag! Hashtags are a fantastic way to grow your audience as your content will be reaching people that don’t already follow you but are instead following the hashtags that you are using. It is particularly important that you do your research on what hashtags to use on your post. Think about what your company does, what your brand stands for and who you are trying to reach with your content and use hashtags that reflect that. Also, ensure the hashtags you are using are the ones that are most commonly used. To find this out, simply open Instagram, tap the magnifying glass (the discover page) and start typing in the search bar at the top and tap “tags” underneath. You’ll then see under each hashtag how many posts each of them has.

Collaboration

Collaborating with other brands on Instagram is a great way for you to grow your audience, but it will also help them to grow theirs too. When you’re researching who to collaborate with make sure that their company values are the same as yours to ensure consistency and that your customers won’t be confused. Once you’ve chosen who to collaborate with, why don’t you suggest a joint giveaway? To enter the giveaway, you could ask your followers to like each other’s company pages and then share the giveaway to their own pages. This way you’re each gaining new followers and if they have to share the giveaway to their pages, their followers will then see it too and hopefully enter themselves.

Tagging Other Brands

This works particularly well amongst small businesses looking to grow their audiences. One idea that I have implemented for one of my clients is Friday Favourites. Every other Friday, I share and tag five accounts on my clients Instagram page. These accounts are also small businesses and share the same values as my client, so this ensures that the message that we are putting out remains consistent. The main piece of content is shared on Instagram Stories, with an accompanying Instagram post to let followers know to check out Instagram Stories. This isn’t a guaranteed method, but the majority of the time the brands that have been tagged will then share the original story to their stories meaning their followers will then see your content and your brand. If they like what they see, then they’ll give you a follow. Equally, they too might return the favour some day and tag you in their content.

Sharing Tagged Content

Leading on from the above point, when your brand is tagged in someone else’s content make sure you share this and give their content a like and a comment. This way those people that react and engage with the original post, they will see your brand name and may visit your profile and follow you. If someone tags your company in their story, you’ll receive a notification, so you can directly add this to your story too. Instagram is a community, so it’s important that you engage with other brands and your customers if you’ve been tagged to ensure you maintain strong relationships.

I hope this blog post has been useful and has given you some ideas on ways to grow your Instagram following organically. If you would like any additional advice, please get in contact. I would love to help you grow your audience! Please send me a message via the contact form on my website or you can send an email to tawellsmarketing@gmail.com.