Small Business? Here's How To Increase Your Instagram Following And Engagement
Instagram is a social media platform that facilitates the sharing of compelling visual content. This can be a great asset to more creative based small businesses, like designers. Visual content, in general, triggers more of a response than written; if your actual product is a visually compelling piece, this makes the process of content creation a cakewalk. If not, there is still a place for Instagram within your social media and marketing mix. We’ll avoid mentioning the same old strategies of going hashtag crazy and the like.
The majority of Instagram users are between 18-35, if you’re a small business or startup targeting people within or close to these age ranges, then this could be the ideal channel to reach them on.
The main goal when using Instagram should be to increase brand awareness, communicate and display a brand ethos and possibly to draw some followers back to your site in order to convert. This is, of course, a general rule of thumb, it depends on your business.
How do you increase your following?
To put it simply, this is done by following and unfollowing. Set yourself a target goal of how many followers you’re aiming to get by the end of a particular timeframe, be it a week, month or day. Make this goal smart and achievable given your starting point. It’s important to note that you can only follow 160 people per hour, and you should ear on the side of caution with this, in order to avoid facing restrictions and blocking by the Instagram algorithm.
On average you can expect to get a 20% to follow back rate, so for every 100 you follow, 20 are likely to follow back. This can be improved by targeting the right accounts based on their interests. Searching hashtags relevant to your business and service, or the interests of your target audience, you can find engaged accounts to follow.
As a helping hand, find your competitors and companies who provide a service complementary to yours. Their followers are a list of prospective customers for your business and if this is done correctly, the follow back rate should be greater.
If you’d like to get more sophisticated with this you can change your businesses page description dependent on the type of accounts currently being targeted for following. An example is adding a relevant hashtag to the bio in order to communicate that a topic interesting to them is the main interest of your account.
Whether or not your business is location-specific, always tag a location in order to capitalise on local searches and event/location-specific feeds.
Don’t forget to unfollow those who do not follow back. There are caps on this action too but it’s important to regularly spend time culling. Set a ratio in which to stay within and utilise apps and services to help make the process quicker. But remember, slow and steady, unfollow perhaps 20 or so accounts per hour in order to avoid the dreaded algorithm.
How to increase your engagement?
First things first, be engaging and entertaining. You cannot hope to gain better engagement rates, in terms of likes, shares, and comments, if you’re not doing so yourself. Be active on the platform, interacting with relevant accounts to show that you’re not just a stale business trying to gain followers and sell, sell, sell.
Test out the times your posting to discover the best times to get engagements, this will help you to post your content at an optimum time to maximise the chances of your active following seeing your post whilst browsing.
With every post, encourage followers to turn on your post notifications, this will allow them to be notified every time your account puts up some new content and helps to avoid the mess that is Instagram’s non-chronological order.
Set targets on how many of each type of integration will be carried out in a time period. Not only will this help with your engagement rate as other accounts reciprocate, but it will also help the Instagram algorithm determine that your account is real.
Don’t just post your content, you should also repost others’ content and attribute it to them. Find clients and partners accounts on Instagram, and shine a spotlight on them; not only will they engage with this, but it’s also pretty awesome customer service.
Post Instagram stories when at events and company events. This is perfect for startups and small businesses, the group tends to be tight-knit and have genuine friendship groups that often go on informal outings. Whether it’s a group gym session, a few drinks at a bar or a conference in a different city; show a little character by sharing this on your Instagram story.
Be creative with the types of posts and test out what works and what doesn’t. Beware the trap of becoming just another quote account. Many small businesses and startups are given this strategy, after all ‘everyone likes quotes’, but this can get repetitive and doesn’t give enough of a reason to follow you. Of course, you can use this as a foundation but avoid relying on these quotes. Add a variety to mix things up and keep your following engaged and entertained.
Set a style that aligns with your brand guidelines and sticks to it, or as close to it as you can. This lets your follower’s spot one of your posts when they see it and even better, if they do take the next step by clicking through to your site to check out your product or service, they aren’t shocked by a change in style and branding. Consistency is key in the conversion process to make it as smooth of a journey as possible.
Final thoughts
As with any other social media channel, it takes time to achieve your desired goals, but these strategies will work. Set your targets, create your plan, and before you know it you’ll be experiencing exponential growth. Just remember to pay your followers the respect they deserve, after all, they’re potential clients.
Happy Small Business Marketing!
