Growing Instagram faster has become a central part of social media marketing.
Nearly as essential as Facebook, the growth potential of Instagram makes it a great way to expose your brand to a larger audience.
Even despite the fact that organic reach on the platform has declined, if you’re creating great content you can still benefit from the platform’s over 1 billion users.
In fact, its reach is still about 22x better than Facebook, and nobody doubts that Facebook is essential.
But if you already have an Instagram presence, you may want to know what you should be doing to improve your results and your growth.
And if you don’t have it yet, you want to grow an Instagram presence as fast as possible.
So, based on a few things I’ve noticed over the past months, I’ve got some areas you need to look at if you want to grow Instagram into the monster marketing outlet it’s capable of being for your business.
Look over them and determine the best ways to incorporate them into your content marketing strategy.
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Growing Instagram Faster Requires Consistency
Before you get started, understand that Instagram is a platform that’s highly reliant on consistency.
Never have I seen engagement so tied to post frequency or stability before.
During phases of experimentation, missing a day could see my average post engagement drop by upwards of 75% for as long as a week before recovering.
Because of the drop in organic engagement already, missing an additional 75% of that could kill any momentum your brand has on the platform.
In my experience, Instagram takes more consistency than any other platform. Click To TweetWith that in mind, you have to remember that consistent posting is key to growing Instagram.
If you, for whatever reason, are unable to guarantee consistency on the platform, your growth will be stunted significantly.
But if you can continuously provide high-value, quality content without missing a schedule, you can expect growing Instagram to be a straightforward process.
Consider that as you begin putting this advice to use because your results will vary.
Working These Key Angles Will Help In Growing Instagram
Growing Instagram faster is simply a matter of knowing what content people want to consume and how to get it in front of them.
It takes an understanding of what the social network will show first, what features it has, what the limits are, and how these impact each other.
By now, Instagram should be familiar to you.
You likely use it personally if not for your brand.
The features the platform offers are probably something you’ve spent some time with and are comfortable with.
So, rather than give you an article describing all the features, I’m going to focus on how to adjust what you already know how to do.
These changes can change your growth on Instagram tremendously.
But remember that it’s all about the content, and you should never sacrifice the quality or value your posts bring to the table to meet these tips.
Manage that, and you’ll be growing Instagram faster in no time.
Adjust Your Caption Lengths
If you’re like most small business owners, you’re interested in getting out your content as quickly as possible so you can get back to what you need to do to run your business.
This might not be the best attitude for Instagram, however.
Remember that captions provide context for your post.
When your audience is truly interested in engaging with your brand, they’re going to need more than a quick sentence or idea to engage with.
You might notice that larger brands get away with very short captions.
However, take into context their follower counts and you’ll notice that they need to do fewer things to get seen.
On the other hand, small businesses need extra help.
Longer captions are your best friend for growing Instagram faster.
By creating a caption that’s between 138 and 150 characters, according to SproutSocial, you’ll see an overall increase in engagement.
Based on what we’ve discovered among our clients, longer than that is even better.
Some of the captions we see great success on are over 150 words, not just characters.
That’s just 38 words shorter than this section to this point.
Creating enough context for your audience is crucial to getting them involved.
When they have the context they need, they can see where your brand fits into their lives.
Start Thinking About An IGTV Series
IGTV is a great tool to assist in growing Instagram faster.
The video-first sub-platform gets massive attention from Instagram’s users.
Especially now that they’ve moved it within the Instagram app.
Producing content for IGTV was initially treated the same as Instagram’s feed videos by most people with the notable exception that they could upload videos longer than 60 seconds.
However, there’s been a recent emphasis on treating it more like a YouTube channel.
And with Instagram’s recent IGTV monetization prototypes, it’s a safe bet to assume you’ll see more content creators doing the same.
That’s going to make IGTV a great place to publish your brand’s video series.
Serialized content is a masterful way to take advantage of any video platform.
Because Instagram is looking to make IGTV a direct competitor with YouTube, you can expect that they’ll look for ways to make it better quickly.
Chances are they’ll be boosting IGTV in the feed.
But even without the speculation, IGTV allows you to add more value to the content you create for your target audience.
In giving them more, you can demonstrate how much value your brand brings to the table.
There isn’t a case where that will hurt your brand’s image, and it will increase your brand awareness as well.
Making people more aware of your brand leads to trusting, and trust leads to leads.
Consider The Impact Of A Micro-Influencer
We’ve discussed micro-influencers a few times now.
They’re the people you see in all kinds of lifestyle-themed pictures representing a product or service.
Most of them are people you’ve never heard of.
However, as athletes have been for years, they’re being paid to advocate for a company and product.
These personalities are not celebrities anywhere outside of their Instagram following.
But, to their following, they are respected and trusted, and their recommendation is golden.
And that’s how an influencer can help in growing Instagram faster.
If your brand were to link up with a micro-influencer that made sense, you could access a whole market of people you may not have had before and borrowed the credibility that the influencer holds among their fans.
Micro-influencers can quickly shift your visibility and success on the Instagram platform.
It’s not often that a micro-influencer is outside of a small business budget, either.
Sometimes they can even be bartered with when it makes sense, allowing you to trade your product or service for the endorsement.
That makes it accessible for many small businesses that may not have extra marketing capital on hand.
While searching for the right micro-influencer can be time-consuming, the payoff is often worth the effort.
Learn To Be More Authentic
Nothing screams cold and corporate like a forced attitude, sentiment, or message on a brand’s social media feed.
Cold and corporate doesn’t help in growing Instagram faster.
Especially among millennials, who hold the most purchasing power of any demographic.
If you want to earn them as followers and customers, authenticity is everything.
It’s rather impossible, at this point, to consider your brand a long-term company if you can’t allow your brand’s true self – which reflects your true self – to shine through.
Therefore, authenticity has to be at the core of all your Instagram content.
Regardless of what message you’re conveying on Instagram, you need to make sure you present it in the most natural way your personality can.
For me, that’s a matter of allowing myself to be goofy and still get excited about what I’m talking about.
Our Instagram videos are always “from the hip” with only an idea of what the video should say thought out ahead.
Unrehearsed and unfiltered, though not unedited.
A green screen affords me the look we want them to have.
However, each video is unabashedly me.
The same is true about our image content.
In the end, it’s all about being yourself.
That authenticity will allow your audience to get to know you and begin to trust you faster than anything else you can produce.
Find Other Brands To Collaborate With
Growing Instagram faster starts with spreading the visibility of your brand on the platform.
You can’t earn new followers if nobody new sees you.
But to get new people to see you, you’re going to need a few tricks to bypass the algorithm entirely.
After all, only the most engaging posts wind up in the local recommendations.
Which, when you think about it, is kind of a catch 22.
Thankfully there is a great way to bypass the algorithm and get seen by new audiences easily.
On a similar thread to working with an influencer, you’ve got to work with other brands.
Find other companies that think in the same thread you do and serve a complimentary need to the same audience.
Team up to make content together, sharing the other brands with your respective audiences.
Brand on brand collaborations have incredible power among audiences.
When your audience sees that you back another brand they might be interested in, they’ll have a look.
The same goes for when another brand backs you.
Together you’ll each be able to expand your reach and engagement, which improves both of your odds of showing up in local recommendations.
Don’t limit yourself to collaborating with only one brand, either.
Spreading those collaborations out works well to connect you to further audiences.
Helping your collaborators link-up can also boost your reputation.
In the end, there’s always power in teamwork.
Master Instagram Shopping
Instagram is looking to become the next big e-commerce platform.
They’ve made a recent investment in their shopping platform that allows users to buy products without leaving the Instagram app.
While that might not be great for your site traffic or SEO, it’s worth it if it helps to create a customer quickly.
But if you want the benefit of Instagram shopping, you’ve got to make sure you’re ready for it.
Growing Instagram faster can come much simpler when you embrace this product platform.
There are a few key steps to it.
First, you need to make sure you have products to sell on Instagram.
That starts by creating a Facebook product catalog.
I know that sounds odd, but let’s not forget that Instagram is owned by Facebook and the two platforms are intertwined.
As you start considering Instagram shopping as a tool, remember that you can only sell physical goods through it.
No services will be accepted in your catalog.
Once your catalog is approved, you’ll need to enable product tagging.
After your profile is all set, you can tag products in your images the same way you’d tag people.
Only instead of showing a standard profile tag, Instagram lets users know they’ll be taken to a product.
One that they can buy without leaving the app.
Couple this with the next strategy to see golden results.
Encourage User-Generated Content
Instagram is a fantastic place for user-generated content, or UGC for short, to exist.
People love to see that the products and services they’re interested in benefit others.
That’s the kind of content that turns casual interest into absolute love.
UGC falls under a content category known as “social proof”.
Social proof is content that demonstrates a positive experience working with your company.
In the case of Instagram, it’s people who love the products or services you offer and the benefits they create.
This content affects people psychologically, causing people to copy behavior they believe will get them the desired result.
When others who are considering becoming your clients see this UGC, they begin to feel like your product or service is the right choice for them.
They want the enjoyment that your existing customers demonstrate in their posts.
It’s simple to get your audience to make UGC, too.
Ask your customers to review the product on their Instagram feeds.
Create a contest where your customers send in pictures of them using your product.
Have your audience tag your product in their pictures for exposure.
If you’re creative, you’ll come up with dozens of ways to get UGC, and you’ll have no trouble growing your Instagram faster.
Improve Your IG Video Strategy
Instagram video is facing a huge year.
Because Instagram is so interested in creating a video platform that it’s users are interested in, they’ll try to make it the best they can.
Expect the video feature list to grow on the platform.
Especially considering competitors like TikTok are giving Instagram a run for its money.
It’s safe to bet that growing Instagram faster will hinge on your use of video.
After all, Instagram has demonstrated an 80% increase year-over-year in the time people have spent watching videos on the platform.
And, according to Mention.com, Instagram videos generate nearly double the comments of images or carousel posts.
Factor in the inclusion of video content in Instagram Stories and IGTV, you can see all the ways video helps in growing Instagram faster.
However, it’s only going to help if it’s a part of your strategy.
Master excellent, entertaining, high-value video content and produce it as often as possible.
The sub-1-minute videos we produce daily have been a huge benefit for us.
But if daily isn’t your thing, try to produce them with some level of frequency.
Remember, Instagram is a consistency-based platform.
Video content won’t help if you can’t be consistent with it.
Use Data To Boost Your Content
Data matters.
In every marketing campaign, content strategy, and effort to bring in a bigger audience and more customers, you need to collect data.
You need to know what your audience cares about, what content you produce that they want, and what about your brand keeps them interested in what you offer.
And, when it comes to growing Instagram faster, data is a huge help.
The ability to use statistics that were created by your audience to show them the ways they connect to your brand can be a game-changer.
Using data to create graphs, charts, animated videos, and infographics to catch people’s attention, then explaining the stats in the caption helps people to understand the value in your product.
That same data can be used to show your audience better ways of using your product as well.
This data-driven content has been of increased interest lately.
People who view it can find themselves within it.
They know how they contributed to making those stats real.
There’s a connection in the content that resonates with people.
Learn to harness the power of personalized content through the data you collect.
Your audience will be excited to engage and share with it, which makes growing Instagram faster a much easier task.
Growing Instagram Faster Is Direct
Now you know what to do.
Apply the ideas I’ve shared with you.
Learn to master the techniques and nuances.
Stay consistent and persistent.
When you can grasp all that Instagram has to offer and all it’s poised to offer, you’ll be able to beat the organic reach decline.
You’ll begin growing Instagram faster than ever.
And that’s going to make a huge difference for your brand.
