With ever-evolving content trends and Instagram’s algorithms constantly changing, it can be difficult to grow your audience past a certain number. You may find that your hashtags are suddenly not pulling the same amount of likes as they once did, or maybe you saw a spike in followers and then a sudden steep decline.

These five strategies will help you develop and refine a plan of action with your business Instagram. It’s important to ensure that your Instagram account is set up as a “Business” account and not a personal account so that you can keep track of your data and metrics.

1: Consistency

Posting daily at the times your audience is online is important to capturing new followers while building brand authority. You can find out what days and times of the week that your Instagram audience is most active using the Insights tab inside the app’s menu. Posting daily to both your Feed and Stories using targeted hashtags will connect your posts to your potential audience.

2: Engagement

Liking and commenting on posts that contain your targeted hashtags will strengthen your audience and build your brand authority within your niche. Be sure to tag the post author when you post a comment, and ask questions to boost your chance of getting a response and sparking dialogue.

3. Hashtags

Hashtags are key to finding and targeting your ideal audience to follow and engage with your business Instagram account. You are currently allowed to post up to 20 hashtags per post, and here’s a quick and easy way to create a custom hashtag campaign:

– Find 5 “big” hashtags”: #instamood #instastyle
– Find 5 “medium” hashtags: #caffinateandconquer
– Find 5 “niche” hashtags: #mypaleokitchen
– Develop 3 – 5 custom business hashtags

You can find the right hashtags for your posts by employing a few different techniques:

– Look at what hashtags competitor/comparable business Instagram accounts are using in their last dozen posts.
– Research hashtags using the Instagram app by entering a search for People, Tags or Places in the search bar at the top of the screen.
– Use an app specific to hashtag curation, or a website such as www.all-hashtag.com.

4. Direct Messages

Direct messages are a great way to introduce yourself to your prospective followers and start a conversation. It is recommended to not launch into an immediate sales pitch in your first message, but to instead get to know your new audience member through questions about who they are and what they do.  

Opening up this dialogue will help strengthen your connection to your audience, and ultimately can help you convert followers into customers. 

5. Calls-To-Action

Calls-To-Action, or CTA’s, help your audience know what to do once they have viewed or engaged with your Instagram account. If your goal is to grow your audience, include language in your post caption like, “Follow me at @yourbiznamehere!” or incentivize followership with a promotional post to commemorate the “500th fan” or other milestone fan number.

You can also join business groups on LinkedIn and Facebook where you can create your own CTA within the group and ask members to follow your Instagram account.

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These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg to crafting a successful approach to growing your fan following. What has been your most successful approach to growing your audience on Instagram?

Need a hand developing an Instagram strategy unique to your business? I provide strategy sessions and on-going content planning support for businesses and creatives. Let’s schedule a time to discuss how I can help you succeed in 2019!

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