Use these Instagram Tips to Build Brand Awareness and Grow Followers Organically
By: Monika Lukačević
Tags: Brand Awareness Strategy, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Content Creation, Instagram Marketing

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Finding ways on how to grow Instagram followers organically might seem too complicated for most people who have never done this.

From advertising to offering expert advice and building relationships with your followers, Instagram can be used for so much more than just photo sharing. These Instagram business ideas will boost your brand visibility, grow your customer base, and increase your ROI. Instead of just focusing on the visuals we’re going to dig deeper into Instagram features and show you many ways to see Instagram beyond its photo-sharing capabilities.

Instagram’s audience numbers have increased rapidly over the past 5 years, bringing current audience estimates to a shocking 1 billion monthly active users.

However, you can’t do much on Instagram without a specific number of people that follow you and engage in your content. You can run ads constantly, which will drive some traffic to your website, but it won’t connect you with your potential customers.

It’s not easy getting followers, and that’s why many try to buy them. But once you learn how to grow Instagram followers organically, you will find out the difference between a paid follower and a real one.

Building an Instagram Profile for Your Small Business

First of all, you need to set goals.

You may have a business plan for your business, but you also have to have a plan for your marketing tactics. And you should have a social media strategy along with attainable goals for your Instagram profile (as well as any other social media platforms of course). Your goals are something you need to define before you get started. An example of questions you need to ask yourself is what are your follower goals for the month, think long term as well, what are your yearly goals and what is your target engagement?

As you can see from this study done on user engagement with brands in 2015, Instagram wins over any other platform out there when it comes to getting to know your audience. You are much more likely to drive conversions on Instagram vs. other social media.

Next, username and bio.

You need to choose an appropriate username that is simple, easy to search for and easy to read. If your username spells something else, you can capitalize the first letter of each word, use punctuation or pick something else that will make it easier to understand. If your desired username isn’t available, try mixing up the words or using punctuation to separate them. It’s important to be consistent, which means if your Instagram name doesn’t match your business name, you should consider changing it. Your Instagram username should also match your username on other social media platforms to keep your brand easily recognizable across multiple channels.

While creating a bio, you will need to include a short description of your business, location, website, and any other information you feel is important for your followers. You have only 150 characters to get your point across, which some can find daring.

After completing your profile, you need to start creating content and promoting it well.

Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash

Growing Your Following Organically

If you have a small business, you probably understand how important it is to have a large following on your social media platforms.

What is the difference between organic follower growth and paid follower growth? Organic follower growth is when you post content that attracts followers over time, while paid follower growth happens when you buy followers, which is never actually suggested. Instead of doing that mistake, you need to implement these strategies in terms of your organic follower growth. Here’s a list of a few advice that will definitely help you:

Post consistently (at least once a day), try videos, live videos, and stories, share user-generated content, engage with your fans and respond to their comments, host contests, and giveaways, cross-post (post on all your social media platforms), etc.

Content Creation, Posting and Engagement

To succeed while using Instagram for business, you will need to post quality content that is relevant. It helps if you have someone on your team with photography skills or a creative eye for detail. These shouldn’t be just images of your products, but also images that help share the story of your products and highlight the lifestyle that your products promote.

First of all, you need to post at the right times, which means posting when most of your followers are active. Getting your content seen by as many people as possible should be your top goal when you’re doing Instagram marketing. Not only because you want exposure, but also because you want more shares and engagement that lead to more followers.

When you post something, use Hashtags!

Using relevant and popular hashtags on your posts is a great way to expand your daily reach on the platform. You shouldn’t only include hashtags that relate to the image you post. You should also include one or two branded hashtags. Custom tags can be based on your business name, a current marketing campaign, or the action you want your audience to take. It’s important when brainstorming your tags to make them always relevant. For example, if you are a diner posting on Instagram, you would want to use local food hashtags. If your post is about salads, then hashtagging the word ‘salad’ is not going to be helpful and your post will get lost in the 10,000,000+ posts. But if you use a custom hashtag, for example, if you are based in Zagreb, Croatia, the hashtag could be #healthyfoodzagreb or #cesarsaladzg.

Always show people where you’re located.

One of the Instagram business ideas is to help people out and show them where you’re located. If your business is difficult to find or maybe it is hidden by other surroundings, use Instagram to show people what to look for when finding your location, where to park or to give them your exact address (share location). You could also post a photo of your front door which is very helpful so that people can easily know that they are in the right place.

Make your customers answer questions.

This can increase engagement and brand awareness. Take some time to show off your brand’s personality and what’s important to you. The best feature to ask questions is, of course, an Instagram Story feature with “Yes or No” type of questions, but you can also post a story in which people can ask you questions! Both are equally effective. Also, asking questions in the post’s descriptions is also an effective way to engage your followers.

And lastly, make your posts shoppable.

If you are an e-commerce business, you should definitely use this feature as your advantage. One of Instagram’s newest features is Shoppable Posts. This feature has made it so much easier for a consumer to purchase your products just by tapping on your post and seeing a tag that they can click on and it will take them exactly at that product’s page on your website. This will eliminate the extra step your customer has to take to go and find a specific product on your site for purchase, which can potentially decrease the possibility of their action turning into a conversion.

Photo from Retail Dive

Organic and Paid Content Promotion

You should have your social media icons displayed on your website so that they are easily accessible. Display your social icons on the top and bottom of every page so they can’t be missed.

Cross promoting is one of the easiest ways to gain followers. For example, if you have more followers on Facebook than you do on Instagram, encouraging your Facebook fans to follow you can result in follower growth.

Create an email marketing strategy and send out an email all about social media with content that tells them that they will get a special discount if they follow you on social media, and then encourage them to post something about them using your product afterward.

Lastly, promote your new products!

Put money behind your posts and you will see a drastic change in engagement and views with boosting a single post for as little as $5 over the course of 1 to 3 days. Strong photos and well-written caption make a great and impactful Instagram post that is sure to intrigue your potential followers.