Instagram, being one of the most popular apps currently in the world, presents a lot of opportunity and a lot of competition. The platform attracts over a billion users monthly and even though the app is generally quite easy to use and straightforward, there are people who’ve figured out more effective ways of leveraging Instagram for their businesses and personal brands.
Influencers on social media, especially Instagram, have to put their best foot forward in terms of the quality, frequency, and engagement of their content and stories. It is not easy to gain following as an influencer unless you have something on your feed that other people are interested in following.
Having built her Instagram following and successfully established her business on social media, Kristina Edwards is sharing the best-kept secrets that Instagrammers use to build their following:
Content scheduling
Content scheduling is not such a hidden secret anymore, but it is to those who’ve yet to discover this time-saving trick. Finding time to keep up with your update schedule can be difficult, especially when you’re working on multiple things and across platforms. Therefore, scheduling your content can save you a lot of headache as it helps you keep organized and plan your content in advance. With content scheduling, you get to spend less time fretting over posting content timely, and more time working on your brand.
Interacting with your audience
A little-known fact to most, the Instagram algorithm favors engagement. One of the biggest mistakes that Instagrammers make is just posting content with no follow-up engagement. However, you can change this by interacting with your audience for at least 15 minutes before posting content or images, and for at least half an hour after. The first 30 minutes are crucial for your content. More engagement means that your content is pushed on feeds and is considered worth seeing by the Instagram algorithm.
Generate interest using available tools
Instagram has many tools that you can make use of. The different tools available for Instagram stories have become popular for most Instagrammers as they leverage this to generate interest on their posts, brands, and social media accounts. How this works is you use tools such as polls, “ask me a question” cards, etc. to attract people to your page, hence generating interest and engagement for your page and your content.
Every successful Instagrammer uses a combination of these strategies to grow their following and attract interest on their posts.