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Instagram growth strategies to build your brand organically

Instagram initially portrayed its impression as a fun application for the youngster and later become a platform for content marketing, selling and networking for individuals and brands. With more than 300 million active monthly users sharing 60 million images and 1.9 billion likes per day, it offers a great opportunity to the businesses for reaching new users without buying advertisements. 

Most of the people believe that Instagram growth only means the number of followers an account has, but this is not true. It is the combination of increasing followers, engagement rate, brand exposure and compelling content. 

Check out some attention-seeking strategies for your Instagram account to get more followers, visibility and engagement. 

CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT 

Posting on a consistent basis sets up an expectation for the followers to look forward to the next post and hence increases the rate of engagement. For the most consistent engagement, Tuesday to Friday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. is the best time to post (This is the standard timing and varies for every brand). It is recommended to have one set of analytics to find the best time to post for your brand. Consistency in content quality is also very important to stand out on the users feed. 

INVEST IN CONTENT GENERATION & DIVERSITY

Engagement is no longer confined to in-feed posts. It includes metrics such as stories replies, views on IGTV and story mentions. Generating more relatable and diverse content increases the engagement rates and consequently, your brand account organic growth. Augmented reality (AR) filter is the best way to relate your brand with the target audience. It is not necessary to generate plenty of content every time, User-Generated Content (UGC) can also be used to increase the engagement rate. 

RUN CONTEST AND PROMOTION  

Free is awesome! People love free and discounted things and this will not change. Many times marketers do not post what the users expect and due to this mismatch marketers losses opportunity to create social content. It was found that 72% of the users want discounts and sales to be posted on brands’ social media pages. Delivering the expectation of the users will, in turn, lead to organic growth. Contests must also be part of the content strategy to increase your brand awareness on Instagram. If consistent contest and giveaways are planned, such as monthly or quarterly, followers will be more likely to stick around and look forward to the next one. 

CROSS-PLATFORM PROMOTION

Don’t keep your brand alone on Instagram. It is recommended to target friends of your current followers along with the other target audience to tap into. One can also use a visual-heavy platform like Pinterest to increase the reach of Instagram content which might have a short lifespan due to the highly active Instagram feed. 

Beyond social media, adding social media buttons to other digital spaces such as email newsletter and website’s footer also acts as a great cross-platform promotion. You can also add your digital presence to the offline presence such as in-store signage promotion. A minimum in-store promotion like Instagram followers receive 5% off and QR code works well to increase the followers and hence engagement rate. This strategy works well to gain known followers than pushing advertisement to people who might not know your brand. 

WEALTH SHARING WITH INFLUENCERS 

Associating influencers helps to grow your brand on Instagram as their account have already grown over the last few years. For a low influencer marketing budget, micro-influencers also work who might have fewer followers but often a highly engaged audience. They have niches and willing to work with brands. Working with influencers establishes trust in the brand as they talk and post about the brand to their followers which helps to grow your brand organically.

CONCLUSION

While there are many methods to gain organic growth on Instagram. Here few of them were highlighted such as running contests, cross-platform promotions, etc. The way your brand engages the audience also matters to a great extend.  A combination of the above strategies will help to grow your brand Instagram account organically and steadily. Start by adding one or two of these tactics into your Instagram marketing plan and see what works for your brand and what doesn’t.