When it comes to promoting your Instagram account, everyone’s default setting is to reach for their wallet, but what if we let you in on a little secret? There are ways in which you can promote your Instagram account that don’t require you to spend money?
We don’t advise against paid services, not at all! However, there are things you can do to help promote your account more without costing the earth, here’s how.
Prioritise Engagement
One of the most important things you can do with your Instagram account is priorities engagement on your posts over anything else.
What we mean is, don’t chase likes, chase comments! The engagement ratio is what drives Instagram to put your content on the explore page, so ask your audience and followers questions on your content that makes them want to answer!
The more engagement you have the higher the chance that Instagram will show your content to other users.
Post Consistently
One of the easiest ways to promote your feed is by consistently promoting high quality content. Instagram is a fine line between spamming and not posting enough, we recommend one post a day and as many good stories as possible.
By being consistent your audience will get used to seeing your content on a regular basis, so you can be sure that Instagram will start promoting it to other users once you have built up your audience and engagement level.
Like with anything in life, consistency is the key element to success!
User Generated Content
So, you’ve got a decent following on Instagram and they engage with you, so how can you maximise on this?
Share your follower’s content! User generated content is an amazing way to promote yourself and the user you are borrowing the content from. It may be a review of your service, or a meme or something that is salient to your brand and image.
Either way, by sharing other people’s content you are widening the net of who the post may be shown to, thus increasing the ability to promote your account.
Collaboration
Like with anything, collaboration is the key to success. If you have a good following and know your market segment or niche inside and out, then why not collaborate with an influencer that occupies the same or similar space?
By both of you working together and posting content from each other and tagging one another in it, you are cross promoting to different audiences.
Not only will you see your follower number and engagement rate increase, the person you have collaborated with will also see the benefits. Through collaboration, you can reach audiences that you may not have had access to previously.
However, chose your influencer wisely! You want to make sure that you have the same values, as if you don’t you could damage all the hard work you have put into your niche.
High Quality Content
We’ve all seen those awful photos that some of our friends post and we often put our head in our hands. When it comes to content you need to up your game.
You don’t need groundbreaking brand new material, you just need well thought out images and captions that are well put together and well edited. If you feel as though there will be times where you won’t be able to make the content that your audience has come to expect of you, then we recommend banking images.
This bank will give you the resources to pull on in the event of a dry spell. It means that even if you are having a slow content day, you can always upload a throwback and keep your audience engaged.
When it comes to posting, bad content is worse than not posting at all. So, keep well edited and well put together content banked, just in case you are having an off day.
Wrap Up
When it comes to promoting your Instagram account, there are a few tricks of the trade that can help you increase your engagement and follower number without having to get your wallet out.
These strategies do take time to realise, however, organic promotion is an excellent way to grow your account and get it out there and noticed. Some of these changes are only small ones, but they require you to be constituent.
So make sure you are developing high level, well put together content and captions that you post regularly to keep your audience engaged.
