In the last lesson we have discussed development and promotion strategies and their place and necessity for Instagram business. You have learned how to create strategies and what characterizes short- and long-term strategies. Today’s lesson is about increasing the number of followers. You will learn how to quickly build up an audience on Instagram, establish the connection to your followers and disseminate the content by tagging friends.
SHORT-TERM STRATEGY
We have mentioned different strategies in the last lesson but focused on long-term types. Today we are going to show you the strategy that works right off the bat. It is called Direct Impact and its results can be seen with a naked eye. It makes the strategy ideal for impatient and mobile businessmen.
The idea is to comment and like photos related to the sphere of your business and follow relevant accounts. But make sure you are careful and polite so as not to make an impression of a spammer. Do not be persistent or you can be tagged a promotion ‘junk’ account and undermine the trust in your company.
Every person whose page you visit must be your potential client. And you need to address them personally—efficient communication is key to this strategy. But how do you make contact
CONTACT
Let us try to explore what the correct interaction looks like. Enter the profile and choose any account from the list. Choose the last post of that person, like it and leave a pleasant comment. After that, return to the profile and click ‘Follow’. Account owner will get a notification and will learn of your existence.
When somebody follows, comments or likes your photos, you see relevant notifications about the amount of activity at the top of your account. Do not skip it! Respond. Answer their comments and like back. People on Instagram like attention very much.
And they like to see interest in their page in general, especially if it is comments to their posts and likes. They will definitely want to look at the person responsible out of curiosity. They might like your photo in return or remember your name. Either way, they will certainly visit your page.
LOOK FOR INTERESTING ACCOUNTS
Search people you need by hashtags, visit their accounts and do the same show interest. Let your comments be lively, joke, use emojis, softly provoke dialogue. But be careful and mind your language. Comments are the fastest way to interest somebody, but at the same time you can easily annoy that person. Stay within limits. Do not like the whole feed of the user and comment on every photo, especially if they do not respond.
Visit pages with the most followers that could be an example for you. They might be your audience, choose the ones you like and try to talk to them. Try to carefully select those people and follow only those you like and who can potentially be interested in your business.
You do not need much time for these simple actions, 10 minutes a day is enough to bring positive results soon.
If you break the strategy into steps, in practice it looks like this:
▶ The person sees a notification about your activity—likes and comments—in their profile.
▶ They go to your profile and see the information you put there. If the profile looks fine, anybody
will notice that.
▶ The person interacts with you in response—likes, comments and asks questions in direct.
▶ Then follows you.
This is an ideal scenario. Not everybody who you show interest in will answer you, but it is still worth trying. Most people are used to answer interaction with interaction, this is how it goes. And it’s a shame not to take advantage of it! But to follow you, the person needs to notice you first. So the number of your followers depends on your activity.
INTERACTION WITH FOLLOWERS
▶ Contests
You need not only to attract new followers, but also treat the existing ones! You need to interact with them sometimes. Here are a few strategies for that. You can use them if you have enough followers, at least 500. The first strategy is to hold contests. Contests on Instagram are one of the quickest and most efficient methods to promote any account.
For example, ask to share your post and choose a winner among those who did using a randomizer. And the winner gets a prize. The contest will not get popular and people will not repost it if the prize is not worth it. Do not try to give away token gifts. You can draw certificates for a certain sum on purchases in your shop or popular gadgets. The idea is for the people to get an opportunity to win a prize for telling you about you to others, i.e. their followers. They will promote you among their friends.
You need to select a nice photo to hold such a contest. It may be the photo of the prize or just some attractive photo. It should motivate me to participate in the contest! You can also give your followers a creative task and ask them to take their own photos on a set theme. For example, let them take photos of them or their close ones using your product. The author of the best photo wins.
You need to come up with hashtags for your contest. Try to propose unpopular and unique hashtags. You see all the participants of your contest by following the hashtag.
Set the contest terms, i.e. requirements to participate and rules. They must be as simple as
possible so more people can take part. Here are the common standard terms:
- Follow your account.
- Repost the contest.
- Mention your account and put the contest hashtag in the photo.
- Specify the contest period.
- Specify how you are going to choose and announce the winner.
You need to announce the winner with a separate post—people need to see that there is a reason to participate in your contests! Contact the winner in direct. And it is even better to organize a live translation of choosing the winner so the people can see that everything is transparent and real. A little doubt in your honesty can sink your company’s reputation!
▶ Tag a Friend
Another good strategy of interacting with the audience is to call them to tag their friends. This will help you to accumulate many comments for your posts and what is more important, new people who can potentially follow you will see your profile! The difficulty of this method is that people are not always ready to intervene in the affairs of their friends. You need to give them a good reason to do so. People must be interested in the topic of your post to accept your rules of the game.
If you are in a restaurant business, you can post photos of different dishes and ask how well your followers know their friends: they need to tag their friends who love that dish very much. If you are a fashion designer, ask your followers to tag friends who liked an unusual design of a beautiful dress. It will help you to start an interesting interaction between people instead of simply asking for likes and comments. People love to communicate and you only need to choose the right topic!
In order to build lasting relationships with your target audience you need to know as much as you can about your potential clients. Find out their average age, gender, geolocation, goals and income. In addition, you can look for future clients on thematic forums and in groups.
