Five things you should be doing on Instagram to grow your business
Times are a changin' (kind of) and Instagram continues to update their app to give you a PLETHORA of ways to talk to friends, strangers and your ideal client! Here is a short and sweet post (or reminders!) of 5 things you should be doing daily or weekly to keep that authentic following growing on Instagram.
1. Geolocate
Instagrams geolocation feature plays a big role into growing new followers and potential new clients to your business. Turning this feature “ON” will help alert users in your area and will allow you to connect with them. Aside from making sure that yours is “ON” you also need to analyze others geolocation. This will the chance for your business to not only look at the places where you are offering a service or selling a product but also the places where you aren’t.
Location of Instagram users: 28% of Instagram users live in urban areas. 26% of Instagram users live in suburban areas. 19% of Instagram users live in rural areas.
2. Search Hashtags Daily
Searching for the right hashtags can be very time consuming but very rewarding at the same time. The first thing that you need to know is that hashtags increase over 12.6 % on your engagement rate. The second thing that you need to know is that the more engagement your posts have, they will be exposed. The third thing that you need to know is that the more your posts are exposed the chances of getting potential followers (new clients for your business) increase. So yeah #hashtags are as important as the pictures that you are sharing.
There are a few things that you need to keep in mind while you are looking for the right hashtags:
Find out which hashtags your audience is already using
Find out which hashtags your competitors are using
Find out which hashtags influential people in your industry are using
Make sure you have an unique hashtag to your business
Once you find out which hashtags you are going to be using (30 is the max amount), make sure to hide them in the comment bar so that people are not overwhelmed by reading every single hashtag you wrote down. Also, make sure you switch things up here and there and track (see tip 5) so that you know what is working and what is not working for your business.
3. Post at the right time
“Marketing is all about delivering the right message, to the right people, at the right time.
With that said, it is very important that you post at the times when your content will get the most engagement. It is also important to take time zones into consideration. One example could be that your followers and your ideal audience may be in different time zones. If all of your followers are in NYC, but the audience that you want to reach out to is in L.A try shifting your posting time to one that works for both. Instagram analytics is a great tool to figure out the location (see tip #1) and the times when your followers are active!
4. Engage with your community/new followers
It’s as simple as that! If you want people to engage with you, you must engage with them. It is important that you engage with the people that already follow you. When they comment on your pictures or when they like something, you should expect to be doing the same thing. Take it a step further and check out their profile and like/comment on a few of their photos. By saying hello, commenting on one of their pictures or simply giving them a few likes your chances of them engaging with you increase. It is also important that you know that your community is not only your followers but also other people in your industry and most importantly the people that you are reaching out to (your audience) and you can usually find this same people when you create the right hashtags (see hashtag advice).
5. Measure your results
It is essential that you track your performance and measure your results in order to figure out what is working and what could be improved. Instagram from business gives you all the tools that you need to measure. It is a matter of paying close attention to the audience growth and the number of likes and comments.
Below is a very simple way of measuring your engagement rate from Buffer: The engagement rate is calculated by taking the number of likes + comments and dividing that number by the number of followers your account had at the time of posting.
Hopefully, these tips shed some quick insight into growing your ideal follower base on social media!
