Social media is an integral part of building up any small business’ client base and reach in the community. If building up your Instagram presence is one area that you’re struggling with, it’s time to put a strategy in place! The wrong kind of posts or unplanned content can often be a waste of time. So whether you’re hoping to gain more followers or you’re just wanting people to be more engaged with your page, here are a seven ways you can improve the effectiveness of your posts.
Cohesiveness
When someone visits your feed, you want to make sure that everything you’re sharing is in line with your brand. Everything from the processing of images, the text used in shared quotes, the colors you use in your graphics, etc should all reflect your business’ brand.
Targeted hashtags
Hashtags became a little trickier after last year’s “shadowban”. Unsure what the shadowban was? It’s a way for Instagram to block or filter a profile so it only shows your images marked with a hashtag to you and your followers. So if someone who doesn’t follow you were to search for a hashtag, your image wouldn’t show up! Which kind of defeats the purpose of using hashtags to grow your following, right? While it originally was used to deter spammers and other toxic users, other people started to notice a drop in who was seeing their posts.
Now it’s more important to make sure you’re using relevant hashtags and not copying/pasting the same group of them onto every post just because it’s popular. Do some research. If there’s a hashtag that you follow, click on it to see what other ones people are using on their images. Try to vary it up by using a mix of descriptors of the image, customer centric, and community or business related ones.
Great Bio
Don’t forget about that little space at the top! If someone happens to stumble on your feed, you have great visibility to quickly introduce yourself to the viewer. I know I read it on almost every new person I find! It’s a great way to connect with someone and quickly tell them what to expect from your feed.
Call to Action
Along with a great bio, you’ll want to make sure you have a great Call to Action link in there too. A simple “learn more about how to book here:” at the end or “Check out my lastest work:” with a link to your blog will help drive traffic to your website. Plus bringing attention to it in relevant posts will help direct potential clients there as well.
Within Instagram stories, if you’re using a business profile and once you have reached 10,000 followers you can add a Swipe Up call to action for people to view link that you’ve shared. Getting to the 10K mark is a great goal so that you can take advantage of this feature!
Engage with others
We all love getting likes and comments right? Well, don’t be someone who only posts and never likes or comments on other peoples’ posts. By doing so, those people will want to come and engage with your feed too which will increase your visibility when people do searches. Just make sure not to overdo it or you might get marked as a spammer! Ideally, don’t exceed more than 150-200 likes, 60 comments, and 60 follows/unfollows per hour!
Social Media Scheduler
Rather than trying to make time to post something new each day, why not streamline it and batch schedule your posts for the week? Spend some time once a week to schedule everything out, and then all you have to do is push out the post when it’s time! We recommend using a program like Hootsuite, but you can check out our list of other social media schedulers here.
By using a scheduler, you can also make sure that you are being consistent with how often you are posting. No more disappearing randomly sharing images after disappearing for a week or month!
Post Ideas
“But I’m not shooting much right now… what should I post about?” Here’s a tip! It’s not just about sharing your most recent session images. Find ways to share content that will help potential clients connect with you! Below are a handful of ideas that you can use to mix up what you’re sharing each day.
At the end of the day, the main keys to growing your presence on Instagram is to be consistent, be authentic, and be engaged with others. You’ll find that when it comes to Instagram, you get out what you put into it.
What are your tips for increasing your Instagram following?
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