If you’re a permanent Instagram resident who spends your days outlining Insta-strategies, researching hashtags, and making content plans, time flies quickly. New features debut almost every month and discerning trends is challenging.In the last year, my Instagram followers went from a thousand to almost 40K. Am I happy? Yes, I am because I can show my photography work to more people. It’s also an injection of self-confidence in what I love to do, which is taking photos around the world.Does it mean that you need a high number of followers on Instagram, not really? You may have Instagram because you want to share the photos with your friends and that’s it, or your family or a group of people.My niece told me once that I was an important person because I have many followers, she was just pulling my leg obviously. She asked me if they were all real followers. I could only reply saying that I really hope so otherwise, I am showing my work to myself basically, not really productive I must say.I would like to share with you some of the effective ways of growing the Instagram following based on my past year experience,
1. Use a Branded Hashtag
Host an Instagram Stories giveaway and get your followers to use the hashtag in their own Stories to enter.
While entering for them is a win, having them share your contest and branded hashtag with their audience is a win for you.
2. Get Creative With Sharable Content
Think outside the box and create something that you know your followers will want to screenshot and share in their Stories. It can be inspirational quotes, funny sayings, or even screensaver backgrounds for their smartphone.
3. Use smart hashtags on the Instagram photo
The hashtags are the easiest way to spread your message around. There is no magic formula here. The most important thing is to use the hashtag that does match with the photo content, in a smart way though.
This is where I forged this new type:
– Smart hashtags
– What does it mean?
When I post a photo I use around 10-15 hashtags. Two or three of them are smart hashtags. These are hashtag related to a business or association that may be interested to report my work.
I do travel photography and my smart hashtags are usually the tourism boards. They have already a great follow up and people interested in my subject, traveling. They also continuously look around and they are happy to repost your work if they like it. That’s their best way to show how beautiful is the area.
Does it work?
It works great. As an example, I had few reposts from the Amazing Thailand Tourism board that generated lots of interest and followers.
Believe it or not, it does not matter in what industry you are, there are always smart hashtags to use. If you are into cats, for example, you could use smart hashtags created by cat food producers. They usually have a great follow up built through advertisement and they always look for content around to re-post.
It also helps to create a connection that may go behind Instagram.
Other smart hashtags can be related to big websites, magazines or newspapers that run a re-post program.
4. Follow, Like and Comment
‘Follow, Like and Comment’ approach is another easy way to increase your number of followers. Following a person, liking at least three of their photos and leaving a comment will encourage them to click on your profile and, hopefully, follow you back. It’s also worth finding out who your competitors are and using the above approach to attract some of their followers. Interacting with fans of similar accounts and top influencers is a good place to start when trying to attract new followers.
5. Tagging
Tagging different accounts will also help your posts be seen by more people. However, Instagram does warn that your tags should be relevant and accurate, so tagging Kim Kardashian from an account dedicated to tea and biscuits probably won’t help you attract an engaged audience in the long run. Tagging your location will also increase the reach of your posts, with your photos appearing whenever someone searches a particular area.
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