What is Instagram? Let's talk about and with numbers
Instagram is a social network, if not THE social network, which has 1.074 billion (yes, you read that right) monthly active users and a whopping 500 million daily active users worldwide.
In Italy, Instagram users are equal to 42% of the entire population, that is, approximately 25.6 million and the trend is constantly growing.
Instagram allows its users to produce, edit, and share photos and videos.
If, when you read this sentence, you are turning up your nose, you are not entirely wrong, this is because yes, Instagram was born with this primary function but it is also true that today it has undergone such a rapid and dynamic evolution that it has incorporated into its characteristics many more features than the primordial ones.
There are few elements that distinguish this platform from others: Feed, Follower, Reel, Stories, Bio are just a few.
How to increase Instagram followers?
No, if you keep uploading and re-uploading your Instagram profile you won’t magically see your followers increase, that’s because it takes a lot more than posting and sharing a few photos every now and then.
But if you have seriously tried and applied a strategy aimed at an adequate use of this social network to grow your personal brand or your business and you have not yet obtained results, then perhaps you are not using the right strategy.
In this short article I will guide you step by step to optimize your Instagram profile to obtain satisfactory results especially in terms of how to increase followers on Instagram and therefore acquire that popularity and authority that will allow your Brand to differentiate itself and be recognized within the platform and compared to your competitors.
Index:
Differentiate yourself from other users by personalizing your Profile
Imagine yourself in a supermarket : would you choose the cereal package of an unknown brand with cold, anonymous colors and a blurry image or the cereal package with bright colors, an inviting image and perhaps a slightly unusual shape? You don't need to answer, it's clear.
Likewise, your Instagram profile must be able, while respecting the platform's guidelines, to differentiate itself from others and provide users with that added value that makes them think that following you will be worth it.
Be careful! Form and substance are two sides of the same coin, do not promise what you are not able to provide to your users because then the facts count. But enough chitchat.
Here are some elements of your profile that you could optimize:
Use a profile photo that attracts your potential users and is distinctive of your brand.
Your Bio should tell who you are, what you do and maybe how you do it in a clear and unambiguous way.
Add links that allow your followers to follow you on channels outside the platform or contact information and connect the other social networks you are subscribed to.
Publish quality and useful content, consistently
The content you post is the first step to success on Instagram, the images must be of quality and above all real and the attached descriptions must tell something about you or your brand.
Obviously, everything must follow your profile settings consistently, remembering that your users will be target users and will therefore expect a certain type of content from you.
Along with the quality of your content, there must be consistency in your publication , because regularly publishing interesting content will encourage your users to visit your profile regularly.
If you decide to use filters in your images, you can do so, taking care that they do not distort the final perception of the image and do not take away attention from the subject of the image.
Find a style that distinguishes you thanks to a photographic typology or a color scale that characterizes your content.
Use Hashtags Correctly
Hashtags allow you to collect content and divide it into categories in order to facilitate the user's search for a specific topic and allow them to find relevant results.
Proper use of hashtags requires a right mix of hashtags of different sizes, from the most popular to the smallest and most relevant to your brand, so as to increase the visibility of your content and scale the hashtags themselves.
You might consider dividing them like this:
brand hashtag (#brand name #category brands);
product or service category hashtag (#pasticceria #pasticceriaartigianale);
hashtags for locations (#roma #pasticceriaroma #romafood) and others.
Do not use hashtags that are not relevant to your content, otherwise users who are searching for them will find unsatisfactory answers and will consider your content not very authoritative or relevant.
Be an active user and interact with other users
Instagram must be a pleasant experience for you too: interact with other users, like, comment, express your opinions, create constructive dialogues, tag your friends, partners, suppliers to increase your interactions.
This is always respectful of those on the other side! Be careful, your influence on the platform is like a spring, then it comes back with positive or negative feedback.
Take advantage of the platform's various features
You can create as many contents as the formats the platform allows, test them and have fun creating different ones to understand what your audience appreciates:
Reels
Stories
Post
Guide
Live
Shop
Featured Stories
There are so many Formats that you can use to increase your Instagram followers and audience engagement.
Get inspired by popular Instagram content and tightly brand your competition
In the popular section of Instagram you will find the trending content of the moment and here you can get inspired to create new content that responds to the needs of the community.
Following trends using the right hashtags will allow your content to be easily consumed and generate interactions and therefore visibility.
Warning : Always remember who you are posting for and what the purpose of your presence on Instagram is.
Furthermore, you will be able to peek at the contents of your competitors, even those more established than you, to understand what works and what doesn't and possibly test them on your profile.
Don't buy followers
I know you might be thinking that this is the quickest solution to increase your Instagram followers but if it is in terms of quantity it will not be in terms of quality.
Buying followers using dedicated apps involves a significant cost from an economic point of view, but not only because the followers purchased may not remain as such.
These followers may unfollow you and then your spending will have been in vain.
But this is not the most important point.
If your goal is to provide valuable content that engages valuable people then this is the wrong path.
Acquiring followers without using tricks will certainly be a longer path and will require more effort but at the same time it can bring you quality results also in terms of acquiring new contacts, sales and many other objectives.
Conclusions
Increasing followers on Instagram is a clearly strategic necessity for any type of business that decides to approach the world of this social network.
However, this is only a small part of a more complex strategy that must not exclude as cornerstones the purposes of the social network itself, namely socializing, sharing, knowing and making known.
Without keeping these aspects of using the platform in mind, it will only be a passive use that will not bring any benefit.
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