If orange is the new black than Instagram is the new age Flickr. With a whopping 1 billion-plus followers, Instagram is the real deal to get some great visibility for your business platform. In this article, we will share 11 tips and tricks to optimize your Instagram profile or blog to reach its full potential. These tips will help you to increase your Instagram followers organically.
HOW TO GAIN MORE INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS ORGANICALLY AND GAIN MORE USERS TO YOUR BLOG/PROFILE?
Instagram revolutionized personal photography aided with the revolution in mobile phones. It made photography accessible to everyone. Initially, Instagram was a quite organic platform. If you posted good photos/content you were rewarded with substantial likes and followers. But after Instagram was acquired by facebook things changed. Facebook has considerably reduced Instagram’s organic reach in favor of and to push their paid marketing platform.
So now chances are even if you post good content/photos you might not reach organically more people as it used to be. It became very important for you to make sure that your photos on Instagram page/blog reach wider audiences. We will discuss several important to-do’s and checklist for you that you should follow to optimize your Instagram profile/blog to its maximum potential.
Our suggestions will ensure that your Instagram follower counts increase steadily and your content is optimized for maximum outreach without even spending a single penny on Instagram/facebook sponsored posts.
Please keep in mind the first and foremost basic criteria: You need to have great content. These tips cannot help you unless and until you have great content. Here are our suggestions keeping in mind that you have some really interesting content :
1.SELECT A PARTICULAR NICHE FOR YOUR INSTAGRAM BLOG/ PROFILE:
This is more important than you think. It is fine if you occasionally post something different. People tend to follow people based on their interest. It is important to stick to a niche so as people can correlate with you. When people will open your timeline they will get to know what your work is about and whether or not they want to follow you or not.
For example, I follow this page which regularly shares street photographs from various photographers:
View this post on Instagram
Then there is this page which regularly shares photographs about the daily life of Mumbai city, I love this page:
View this post on Instagram
If you visit these pages you will know that they share a theme – one page is about street photography and another is about the Mumbai city. Also, there are many other examples like humans of NewYork who shares stories of the people of NewYork:
2. STAND OUT BY SELECTING A UNIQUE INSTAGRAM USERNAME:
Select a name which is catchy, easy to remember, and unique from other user names. It helps you to build your identity. For example one of my friend who is a photographer has named his business “Jestaplo” This name surely stands out from the crowd. Also, you can see the work of this popular Instagram blogger from India. See how creative is their username.
Here are some Instagram pages with unique usernames:
Username: @jestaplo
View this post on Instagram
Here is another one :
Username: @haram_khor_
View this post on Instagram
3. CONTENT IS KING: PEOPLE CONNECT WITH STORIES
With the advent of Web2.0, there has been a huge search of the content worldwide. millions of Instagram post are going live as you are reading this post. Are you getting hold of what I am trying to say? With this much of content whatever we post will be less than a drop in the ocean. But people connect with stories they can relate to. If you have a good story to share then people will check your post. They will post a comment and perhaps even share your image with their friends and family.
Instagram blogs which have focussed on stories and content have received huge success:
View this post on Instagram
4. UTILIZE THE POWER OF INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS
Above I was talking about the internet is an ocean of content and it becomes really difficult to stand out. You can utilize the power of hashtags to get your unique content found and shared with others. There are thousands of hashtag on Instagram. Once you post your image you can add related hashtags with your image. In fact, many of the influencer pages share user photos on their profile which are tagged using their hashtags. This is one way you can get a lot of recognition. It is in this way I made my way to 1000 Instagram followers. Many of my images were reshared by big pages with huge followers as I have tagged my images with their hashtags. They liked my photos and shared them. One of my video which was shared crossed 90k views within a span of two days as it was shared by a very popular page with huge followers. Whereas that same video on my timeline has only 1000+ views.
Here is the video:
View this post on Instagram
5. USE INSTAGRAM STORIES
In the last few years after Facebook acquired Instagram a lot of changes were made in the Instagram algorithm which was particularly not friendly to users. Facebook made these changes to reduce organic visibility the user gets so as to push Insta’s sponsored/paid reach. However, you can bypass this algorithm with Instagram stories. Instagram stories have more organic reach than the Instagram post(sad but true). You can use Instagram stories to get the user to your Instagram profile/page. Make sure to post engaging stories. Instagram regularly updates stories with new features like polling, voting, and various other new filters.
6.COLLABORATE WITH OTHER INSTAGRAM INFLUENCERS
This is one of the most powerful things by which you can collaterally reach more users apart from users you already have. It is a win-win thing for both the collaborators as both of their work is introduced to new users. Since the time Instagram exist influencers have been collaborating with other influencers to create highly engaging content.
7. TAG YOUR LOCATION IN INSTAGRAM POST AND STORIES
When you tag your location in your photos and stories it becomes available to all the people who are looking out for content originating from that place.
8. ENGAGE WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS AND OTHER USERS
Most popular Instagram users engage in a lot of conversations with their users. It conveys to your followers that you care about them. It helps you build up a good rapport with your fans/followers. At the end of the day, it has been observed that bloggers who interact more with their followers thrive more.
9. POST REGULARLY
Posting regularly is very important. If you do not post regularly on Instagram chances are very slim for your blog to become popular on Instagram unless or until you are either Kim Kardashian or Barack Obama – these people can get away even by posting irregularly, not you!
10. POST AROUND SAME TIME, CONSISTENTLY
Studies show that if you consistently post around the same time it increases your chances to interact regularly with your followers. For example, I use Instagram mostly in the evening time and I do expect a new post from some of the people I follow around that time.
11. TAKE IT EASY!
Some times even after putting a lot of effort you do not get the result you desire. it’s ok. Good things take time. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t let it upset your mood. Nevertheless, keep updating your Instagram page/blog regularly. With time it will start showing up the result. And who knows that something better is waiting for you.
Which tip do you think is more important? Did you benefit by using any of the tips? Do let us know in the comments.
