So, you are looking to build your brand’s following, but don’t know how? Here are a few easy steps and ideas to get started!
- Provide Value
- First and foremost is to make sure you are providing value to the audience you’d like to attract. Put yourself in the shoes of potential customers and ask yourself what you would like to see from a brand. While you may have other goals for being on Instagram, it is crucial to make sure you are consistently providing value and giving people a reason to follow you.
- Share high quality content
- In order to stand out, it is essential that you provide your audience with engaging, high quality content. Not only will it help attract a larger audience, it will also help establish you as a professional brand that people take seriously.
- In many cases this means hiring on a professional photographer or working with content creators on a regular basis. If you don’t have the budget, look for alternatives such as getting a company camera and giving employees an opportunity to try their hand at creating content.
- If you don’t put in the effort to present your posts attractively, they will not receive any engagement and quickly be lost. Millions of photos are posted on Instagram every day; make sure your content stands out!
- Be consistent in style, theme, and post frequency
- Consistency is key. If you look at every successful Instagram account, you’ll notice one thing they all have in common – they have a theme (image type, editing style, etc.). Early on it’s important to pick a content theme that works well with your brand and stick to it. Users should be able to identify what they can expect from your page within the first few seconds of seeing it. They want to know that they can count on you to provide them with ______ content, and in turn will be more likely follow you.
- Engage
- It’s called Social Media for a reason after all! One of the most powerful aspects of Instagram, and all Social Media, is that it allows brands to engage directly with consumers on a much more personal level than ever before. There are conversations happening all over Instagram – through various hashtags, locations, pages, competitors, etc. – and its important to find which are relevant to your brand and engage in them. For example, if your brand sells camera bags you should look at following photography related hashtags, photographers, and bloggers to engage with. Forming genuine, quality relationships with potential customers is one of the best things you can do to help your company stand out from competitors. Instagram also makes it easy to find your competitors’ fans, and form direct relationships with them.
- Engaging can be as easy as making sure to reply to comments on your posts, interacting with accounts that already follow you, or finding new accounts that may find interest in your brand. No matter how you engage, just remember to be genuine!
- Hashtags and Geotags
- Hashtags and geotags are two great (and very easy) ways to increase your reach and boost discovery. While geotags are pretty self explanatory (simply tag the location in relevant feed and story posts to help connect with your local community), hashtags can get a little more complicated. The key here is finding the right hashtags. It is important to do research to find a group of hashtags that best relate to your brand or product. Using “popular” generic hashtags may temporarily increase reach, but will result in an audience that doesn’t relate to your brand and therefore won’t engage with it. Remember, it is much more valuable to build a smaller, highly engaged audience than a larger audience that doesn’t engage with your content.
- Work with the right influencers
- Influencers are real people with a loyal following. Working with them gives you instant access to their audience to help build your brand’s authority in the industry. It is a great way to expose your brand to their audience in a genuine way that will result in authentic follower growth. More information on this topic can be found in our article titled “Best Practices for Working with Instagram Influencers”.
