How To Build A Massive Following On Instagra

Used correctly, Instagram can be a highly-targeted, visual advertising channel for your brand. In fact, in a recent study it was discovered that Instagram provides brands with 25% more engagement over other social platforms. This mean that Instagram is a prime channel to build your brand for your ecommerce business. 

Like any social network out there, there are right ways to use it, wrong ways to use it, and clever ways to use it.

In this post, we will show you how to most effectively use Instagram to increase engagement and build a massive following.

So which hashtags should you use?

Just like with Twitter and other social sites, users on Instagram use certain hashtags over others. If you use the right hashtags within your photos, you're much more likely to reach new users and be discovered. 

Here are the current top 20 hashtags on Instagram according to Webstagram:

·         1.#love 546,312,756 posts

·         2.#instagood 252,226,047 posts

·         3.#me 238,166,943 posts

·         4.#follow 208,003,100 posts

·         5.#tbt 205,718,608 posts

·         6.#cute 203,174,797 posts

·         7.#like 193,577,034 posts

·         8.#photooftheday 189,818,506 posts

·         9.#followme 183,736,791 posts

·         10.#tagsforlikes 171,593,674 posts

·         11.#happy 165,534,554 posts

·         12.#beautiful 163,122,231 posts

·         13.#girl 162,838,871 posts

·         14.#picoftheday 140,266,148 posts

·         15.#instadaily 126,075,675 posts

·         16.#fun 124,017,892 posts

·         17.#smile 120,121,394 posts

·         18.#igers 118,454,910 posts

·         19.#selfie 117,998,320 posts

·         20.#friends 117,809,423 posts

Use The Right Filters

Keyword hashtags aren’t the only thing you should pay attention to. The Instagram community respond to certain photo filters more favorably than others. Using these preferred filters can have an impact on your engagement.

Here are the 10 current most popular filters on Instagram according to Populagram:

1. Normal (No Filter)
2. Valencia
3. Earlybird
4. X-Pro II
5. Amaro
6. Rise
7. Hudson
8. Lo-fi
9. Hefe
10. Sierra

TrackMaven recently did a study on Instagram accounts to see how filters affected engagement and found that Mayfair, no filter and Inkwell drove the most interaction.

Steal Your Competitors Followers

One of the best ways to find and attract new following is by seeking out your closest competitors' Instagram accounts and engaging with their audience. These people have already shown some level of interest in the products you carry simply by following your competitors' account.

So how do you effectively steal your competitors' followers?

You can steal your closest competitors' followers by engaging with them. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and predictably, the more work you put in, the more followers and return engagement you’ll get out of it.

The three types of engagement on Instagram are:

·            Follow a user

·            Like a photo

·            Comment on a photo

I ran an informal test with my business account to see how my competitors' followers responded to my marketing advances. I targeted the followers of a close, local competitor. Since I know many of his followers would be local, I added my city to my profile to create a greater sense of familiarity between my brand and the people I am targeting.

I began by simply following 100 of my competitor's followers. Later, I followed another 100 of my competitor's followers but I also took the time to like one of their photos. Finally, I followed another 100 of my competitor's followers and commented on one of each of the 100 user's photos as well as liked that same photo.

Here were the results:

• Follow: 14% followback
• Follow + Like: 22% followback
• Follow + Like + Comment: 34% followback

Although the are many variables and the test was far from scientific, the results were clear. The more you put in and engage with people, the more you’ll get out of it.

Sponsored Posts And Product Reviews

All this optimized posting to your account is great but if you really want to make an impact, you need to post to other, larger accounts in your niche, exposing your brand to a wider audience.

So how do you do that?

First, unlike the tactics above to grow your account this one isn’t free. However, if done correctly, it’s good value.

To get started, you’ll need to make a list of large accounts in your niche. For example, if you sell beauty products, you’ll want to find large accounts from beauty bloggers.

You may already be following these accounts, if not you’ll need to find them. One of the best ways is to use Webstagram and search for some of the closest hashtag keywords you uncovered in the beginning of this post. When you do a search for your keywords, not only will it show you the related keywords, but it also shows you the top Instagram accounts that feature those keywords.

There are a few things to look for in the profiles results:

·         Large following - Usually 20k-200k

·         An email address in the profile

Instagram Tool Roundup

There are hundreds of tools out there that can help you and your Instagram strategy. In this post I mentioned five key ones help you build your audience and engaged them.

• Populagram - Find popular hashtags, filters and people.
• Schedugram - Schedule your Instagram post for the most engaging times.
• IconoSquare - Info, analytics and insights into your account and followers.
• Webstagram - Find the best hashtags for your posts and people for your sponsored posts.