How To Increase Visibility On Instagram

By Mahendra Bajiya

Do you want to increase the number of your Instagram followers? Whether you have 200 or 3,000 followers, by increasing the reach of posts, you will also increase the audience, that is, for someone to follow you, they first need to know that you exist (we know, it is quite logical). The more people see your posts, the better your chances are of getting new followers. 

How can more people see your posts? There are two ways: organic and paid reach…

Organic Growth on Instagram

You have probably heard of the Instagram algorithm. It determines which post deserves to be shown to a larger number of people based on the interactions. In 2021, we can say that the “SAVE” option is the most deserving for greater organic reach because it gives the proper signal to Instagram that someone really likes your post, and that they like it so much so they want to save it. However, “COMMENT” and “LIKE” are not options to be ignored as well.

Another important option is “SHARE” because if your post is shared by 200 people, each of their fans (well not exactly everyone, some 10 % of the audience) will see it on their stories, and then they will come to your profile and follow you - but only if:

• your content is interesting (knowledgeable, fun, unique, quality)
• you are from the same niche (this means that if you are shared by someone who loves cars, they think that their fans will be interested in that as well)
• your content is educational (people tend to rather save a valuable post than the image of the sunset)

To increase the reach of posts create a carousel that contains CTA (call-to-action). Why a carousel? Because in addition to the interaction, the time spent on the post itself is also counted. While some follower swipes your carousel post left and right, he actually signals to the algorithm that your post is worthy of attention, so the algorithm will probably recommend it to others as well.

How Can a Hashtag Increase the Number of Followers

Everyone uses hashtags in posts, but rarely do any of them really manage to draw out the benefits. By using hashtags correctly, you can increase your reach, and this can result in new followers. How to use a hashtag correctly? Add a hashtag relevant to the image to the post, e.g. if you took a picture in the Alps, use #alpsmountains #alps #swissalps #mountainnature instead of #mountain #nature #lifestyle, and the like because generic and broad hashtags are followed by people from all over the world and you can get a lot of spams and bots that you don’t need.

Why is the choice of hashtags so important? If you want the audience to connect with you, then it is more logical that everyone who follows the example #alpsmountains or #alps sees your picture in the feed, enters your profile, sees that you are, say, a travel blogger from Paris, and is more likely to follow you. Because they believe that in the future you will show them more beautiful destinations to visit. 

We hope that you have understood the essence...

Comments Increase Reach of Posts

That’s right, interaction is as important to the Instagram algorithm as it is to all of us because, after all, this is a social network where we need to bond and socialize online. Each signal counts and increases the chance that more people will see the post and find out about you. How exactly does it work? 

We mentioned that Instagram measures the time someone spends on your post, so “LIKE” has become a less important signal because anyone scrolling through the feed can hit “like”, while for a comment it is necessary to enter the post, read it, and write a meaningful response (although most just leave smile emoji or similar). It all means that the user himself needs to spend more time on one post and that is why Instagram, due to the fact someone took the time to leave a comment, considers that post as important.

As for leaving the emoji in comments, the new update of the algorithm says that Instagram does not take into account comments that have less than 4 words. So, you will have no benefit at all from “Hi”, “Cool”, “Haha”, “Top”, etc.

Your Current Audience Brings You Even More Followers

When you nurture your audience, it rewards you by always being active on your posts, sharing and saving your posts, and spending time on your profile. All of these are good signals that your content is worth it and you get a new fan every day. Don’t forget that this is a two-way communication and that getting connected to the audience is one of the most important things for the growth of the profile and the brand itself.

Change your personal Instagram profile to a business profile and you will have an insight into all the statistics. They are important for growth because you will understand what your audience likes the most if you analyze your profile well. That way you don’t have to come up with new ideas again if some ideas are already working well and you will be able to focus your energy on them. Optimize your profile as you optimize your blog or a website and in time you will succeed and achieve your goal.

Speaking of a website you might have created in addition to your Instagram profile, at one point you can turn to develop a marketing strategy based on both channels. More precisely, you can set up and optimize your email marketing campaign by directing your fan base to a web page with a form that captures user emails. The next thing you should do with this is to utilize these collections of emails for, as we already said, email marketing campaign(s).

How to Quickly Reach 10k Followers

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for something like this if you want to develop your profile into a realistic and sustainable one. All the known ‘instant’ ways - from buying fans to shoutouts will result in Instagram banning your profile or in having a profile full of ‘ghosts’. These are people who followed you with a goal and not because they think you are worth it, and they will unfollow you as quickly as they followed you.

Create a strategy/plan for your Instagram profile. Think about how you can help the target group? For example, building a community means helping a wider mass of people, so you become recognizable and gain in value.

Visual Identity: It’s Important to Be Recognizable

Remember whose post you see on the feed and you immediately know whose it is without looking at the profile name. Exactly such profiles grow faster because they have built a visual identity. In the case of Instabloggers, this can be some filter or just a way of presenting the event, the product, and the like (that, of course, if the purpose of their profiles is not to show themselves).

Design your identity by starting with colors. When you design colors that are prevalent in you, then use them in posts because, that way, after someone sees your post 100 times, the next time they come across a similar color, you will first come to their mind.

Advertising on Instagram: Paid Reach

Facebook bought Instagram a long time ago and now the whole planet is using these platforms for advertising. This means that organic reach will be lesser and lesser because the main source of income of the Instagram platform is advertising. How much someone likes this or not, is debatable, but the fact is that it works that way and that it will only change further in that direction.

Even if we take as an example that you have 100,000 followers, not everyone will see your posts even if they were all active at the same time because, if it worked that way then no one would pay for ads and Instagram would go bankrupt. Let’s take a rough estimate that 10 % of fans see a post after you publish it - it takes about 2 hours and then it drops. That is why it is important to be active all the time because that is how the percentage grows and your post is seen by other followers.

You need to use all the resources wisely and learn how to set up an Instagram campaign so that your post can be seen by as many people as you want (target group). Advertising can be used, in addition to sales, to increase the number of comments, likes, saves, as well as gain new followers.

 

Author Bio

Mahendra Bajiya has always been interested in marketing and has built a successful career around it. He is particularly focused on content marketing right now. If you want to get in touch you can find him on LinkedIn.

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