If you’ve made it here, chances are you recently started an Instagram account for your business (or your company is digital) and want to expand it. 

That is often not easy. Gaining a substantial following on Instagram is challenging. Simply posting exciting things and calling it a day is nowhere near enough.

You will have to craft a profile carefully, plan things out, and utilise the most effective tactics to allow your brand to gain followers and, more importantly, engagement. 

1. Create an Instagram strategy

Having a clear strategy is essential for developing a brand on Instagram.

When you struggle to come up with fresh ideas, you’ll produce underwhelming content and a disorganised feed if you don’t have a defined approach.

You’ll need to complete the four following things to craft your Instagram strategy:

• Establish your objectives.
• Limit the population you are aiming for.
• Do some competitor research.
• Create your content strategy.

2. Be the early bird for trends.

It just takes one person’s video to become famous on social media and everyone else to jump in with their copy.

Most such trends are relatively short and dissipate within a few weeks with few individual lasting implications.

Why should you participate? It’s a chance to engage your audience uniquely and enjoyably. You may get an immediate increase in engagement and reach if you join the trend when it is just beginning.

There are two questions you should consider before committing to any trend:

• How can I apply this to my company or sector so my audience can relate?
• What is the source of this style, and might it conflict with the principles of our business?

3. Be frequent with posts

You and millions of other companies are vying for users’ attention as they navigate the app.

Therefore, visibility is crucial. There are numerous options to reach your audience with various methods to distribute information, from Reels to Stories to Lives, each requiring a different amount of work and planning.

For brands, this is fantastic news. You should share on the platform daily, but you may customise your sharing depending on your resources and the strategies that give the best return on investment.

For instance, because an in-feed post will appear on your profile, it probably needs more effort than a Story. Because a Story will be gone after 24 hours, you should rapidly engage your audience with a poll, a question, or a re-shared post.

A decent rule of thumb is to share a story daily and post an in-feed piece a few times a week.

4. Be open to trying out the features the platform offers

Instagram is constantly changing. The head of Instagram posts a weekly video outlining platform upgrades and new features.

In one of his most recent videos, he disclosed that the company was developing a subscription function to let viewers subscribe to the artists they liked the most to access their Lives and Stories.

Along with all the experimental new features, the social media network also offers several tried-and-true features, including hashtags, scheduled Lives, and Live Rooms, to mention a few.

We recommend choosing one or two things each month to try out. By doing this, you’ll avoid feeling overburdened and be able to gauge how each element affects the overall experience.

Using hashtags, for instance, might help you connect with individuals who aren’t already following you but could be interested in your goods and services.

If you are unsure how many to use, then a good rule of thumb is to use only a single hashtag per post, as that tends to bring in the most engagement.

You can reach more people by testing Instagram features, which is another justification. The platform has acknowledged prioritizing accounts that take advantage of features like Reels that the business wishes to showcase.

It’s a win since you can grow your reach while staying ahead of the curve and learning which features work best for you.

5. Keep your followers engaged

Instagram users may interact with your material in various ways, such as sharing it, liking and commenting, tagging their friends, and clicking on your calls to action. You should maximize such forms of interaction among those who view your posts.

In attempting to do so, however, you will certainly have at some point shared something that you were expecting would go viral only to get silence in return. Low shares and likes, and all of your comments were spambots.

While it’s simple to think that you misjudged the post’s potential, it’s also possible that you just submitted the update at the incorrect moment.

Go to your insights dashboard to find out when your followers will use the app. You may get helpful information about the location, age, gender, and activity of your audience on the app if you have a business account, which you need to have.

From there, you can plan your articles depending on the days and hours your readership is most engaged.

It’s easy as a business to open an Instagram account, only to become upset when users gloss over your content.

Even though it sounds straightforward, sometimes explicitly asking your audience to participate may make all the difference. The action you want your followers to perform may either be a part of the picture itself or be in the description.

6. Take advantage of Reels

Reels are entertaining videos that you may share with your Instagram followers. They offer tools for creativity, audio, and effects. You may publish them publicly in Explore and on your feed to reach new audiences.

Some tips to get the most out of Reels:

• Keep your writing original and trend-driven. Put your take on popular Instagram and TikTok trends. Doing so raises the possibility that your Reels may become viral and seen by more people.
• Make material basic and relatable. Every Reel does not have to be an expensive production. Low-quality videos can easily do just as well as expertly crafted Reels.
• Inform the audience. In your Reels, strike a balance between pleasure and information.

Your current top priority should be Reels. It’s an excellent tool for potential customers to learn about your brand.

Entertaining Reels are a part of new and seasoned businesses’ Instagram strategies. Anyone has the chance to connect with new target audiences, thanks to reels. No learning curve exists. Additionally, content producers may create community-driven material that gradually increases followers, sales, and trust.

You may see trends and distinct interaction peaks that impact your exposure on the platform with Reels Insights. By doing this, you may produce material of a better quality that attracts more followers and interaction.

7. Monitoring outcomes with analytics tools

You must monitor your success in accomplishing your objectives while utilising Instagram for business.

You get access to Instagram’s built-in analytics feature if you have a business profile on the site. Remember that Instagram Insights currently only records data going back 30 days.

Third-party analytics solutions can monitor more extended periods, automate reporting, and make it simpler to compare Instagram numbers with those of other platforms. 

Taking advantage of these tools can give you a better picture of what content your following better engages with and what content is best for expanding your follower base.

Accordingly, these can be incredibly useful for determining the nature of future posts.

Final Thoughts

Building a successful brand on Instagram is challenging. But if you take advantage of the following tips, it is certainly achievable. Another potential strategy beyond organically growing your brand is relying on specific third-party programs.

GrowthBeast, for instance, offers a service that automatically performs activities such as liking and following users who engage with brands matching the parameters you set. Accordingly, you can make it more likely that the algorithm will present your posts to them.