How to get organic Instagram followers
Being successful on Instagram requires a lot of effort. The platform’s complicated algorithm and vast competition have hampered a lot of people’s expected growth for their Instagram accounts, leaving them vulnerable to options such as buying followers for their profile to make it seem like they have progressed.
If this sounds relatable to you, we know the struggle you are going through. Everybody pumped you to go for social media marketing and when you finally did it, you have tried everything but your follower count just does not go up. This is where these tips come in.
Here are some invaluable tips that can help you get organic Instagram followers in no time:
Use IGTV
IGTV is a largely untapped gold mine. Several brands have started using IGTV to propel their brands to the screens of users but a huge number is still missing out.
It started back in 2018 and made a major difference in how brands operate on Instagram. Most importantly, it changed the way Instagram prioritizes content. IGTV videos are shown on a separate tab at the explore tab and is highlighted when a user opens your profile.
You can use IGTV to highlight specific product videos or show users about your work environment for that human touch. Many brands have started IGTV series to echo Netflix in a way, such that users tune in to IGTV to watch the new episode every week or day.
Examples of this include Honest Company’s #INeverExpected series, Lululemon’s Boob Truths series. Both these series are actively watched by users globally and serve as a perfect example of how you can turn viewers into followers – just post good videos!
Work with micro-influencers
An influencer can be any individual that can inspire people to take specific decisions; it does not have to be a hotshot!
Small businesses shy away at the idea of working with an influence to promote their brand because they expect to be asked for huge sums, which is not necessarily the case with everyone in the first place. However, leaving optimism apart, they should stick to micro-influence, i.e. people who are famous in the same niche as your business, e.g. automotive accessories.
Working with micro-influence can be organic if you stick to a non-monetary deal exclusively, such as a product giveaway or a shutout for shutout.
Micro-influence might not have the reach of a full-time influence but a significant lot of people still follow them for advice. A recommendation from the right influencer can boost your brand and get your Instagram profile in front of a lot of users.
Influencers can ask people to check your page out or try out your product/review your product and from there, you can rely on word of mouth to power your sales. If your product is worthy enough, customers will push it up.
Write longer captions
Long captions have proven to be vital in the success of multiple brands on Instagram. This is something relatively alien to most marketers as Instagram shortens your caption to a few lines and readers can then choose to expand the caption.
This might seem too time-taking but good captions can make or break a post’s popularity on the platform. You might have noticed that users tend to tag friends and family on posts that have kind/nice/sweet/relatable captions; this shows how much captions matter.
In itself, longer captions can be used to describe the product or post in question in complete detail. Users might get attracted to a (supposedly) small feature of your product and order it accordingly. Alternatively, as we are concerned with followers, they might follow your profile to stay updated with new posts!
Promote your posts and profile on other platforms
Cross-platform promotion should be done without any recommendation. Some business owners get scared thinking that asking users to follow you on another platform is “wrong” or “cheap”, which is wrong.
This is a call to action and it is considered extremely important in the world of social media marketing. You have to take users through every step and ask them to perform a specific task, such as following you on Instagram!
When you publish something on Facebook or YouTube or anywhere, just add a link to your Instagram profile and directly ask people to follow you. Users generally do not like jumping from one platform to another and similarly, networks like Facebook do not like you posting external links too but use it to your maximum benefit by running competitions to attract users.
Run competitions and polls
Competitions and polls are a great way of getting users to engage with your brand. Competitions can get you more followers and boost your business as a whole, helping you get higher sales and achieve greater brand recognition.
You can run a competition by posting about it and asking users to tag their friends/family in the comments and getting them to follow your page, among a host of other things.
Polls can help you gain valuable feedback from your customers about what is (possibly) lacking in your business or your Instagram profile. In addition to this, it helps garner engagement from users and is an indicator of how interested users are in your business.
Post a variety of content
Posting relevant, good content sounds easy but turns out to be difficult for almost everyone out there. Content entails a lot of stuff, such as images, short videos, IGTV videos, stories, etc. and getting the right mix of all these is essential in achieving overall success on the platform.
Videos are said to be the best way to communicate with users over the internet nowadays as users have shifted towards watching rather than reading. This is further complemented by the fact that Instagram (as with every other social media platform nowadays) prefer videos over written content.
Use your profile’s analytics to find out what kind of content works best for your channel and stick to that. Analytics can help you understand what your users like and hence help you push out content that users like from you.
It is high time you stop paying for followers on Instagram. Paid advertisements might be a method of increasing your Instagram followers but why pay for something when you can do it for free?