instagram tips

7 Ways To Get More Instagram Followers

October 7, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Photo: (cc) Pixabay

How hot is Instagram for businesses? Well, the social network boasts over 300 million daily active users and engagement is through the roof compared to other social networks. So what’s the trick to increasing your Instagram followers?

I recently posted a picture to my 2,000 Instagram followers that was liked over 40 times. That high level engagement is normal on Instagram. If any of my tweets was retweeted or favorited that many times, I’d be overjoyed.

That’s why brands are scrambling to master Instagram as quickly as possible. They want large, targeted, and active audiences who will fall in love with their pictures and products.

I recently started taking the social network more seriously and was happy to discover that many Instagram growth methods are similar to those used for growth on Twitter. If you know how to get more Twitter followers, then you have an edge when it comes to Instagram.

But there are also some differences that I will discuss within this post. Here are seven ways you can get more Instagram followers:

#1: Follow The Right People

You could technically follow many Follow4Follow accounts to increase your following. However, those followers are more interested in adding you to their own list of follows than your content.

You don’t want an audience of real, yet non-targeted and non-interested followers. Rather, you should be looking to build an audience of targeted individuals who have a strong interest in your brand. Here’s how you find those people:

Find a person in your niche with a big audience.
Go to that person’s most recent post.
Follow the people who liked that photo.
Repeat the process with more influencers’ accounts.

While Instagram requires a few additional steps compared to the Twitter approach, you’ll be following people who are:

Interested in your niche.
Active.
Engaging with content related to your niche.

Making a careful selection of who to follow will help you build a relevant audience that engages with your content. Try to be sure that the people you follow will be likely to follow you back.

Not only is it possible to find targeted and engaged users who are likely to follow you back, it’s also easy.

#2: Like The Right Pictures

Google the phrase “how to get more Instagram followers” and you’ll come across the tip I previously mentioned: follow users who like content related to your niche. More people are clicking on particular images to see who has liked them, then following those users.

This is a method people use to gain liked-minded followers. Liking hundreds of pictures related to your niche will put you in front of thousands of potential targeted followers.

Like photos posted by influencers in real time. The sooner you like the picture, the more exposure you’ll get. If you know an influencer posts pictures at a certain time each day, be sure you’re logged into Instagram at the same time so you can be one of the first people to like his or her post.

#3: Post Consistently

Engaging with other people’s pictures and following their active users will put your account in front of more people. But unless your account makes an impression on visitors, you won’t get many followers.

Posting consistently makes your account more impressive. Consistent posting makes it clear to potential followers that you are an active user. Until recently, there was no free way to schedule your Instagram posts. Now you can get the job done with HootSuite, but keep in mind that you must be logged in to the Instagram app in order to post it.

HootSuite doesn’t actually schedule the Instagram post. Rather, it notifies you to post to Instagram according to your schedule. So if you schedule a post for 6 pm, but don’t log into Instagram for the entire day, your picture won’t get posted.

Posting consistently on Instagram requires a bit more work, but it is also more rewarding. Far more people engage with Instagram posts than with Twitter and Facebook posts.

I have two predictions: the first is that the scheduling problem won’t last very long. My second prediction is that Instagram will keep growing, and you’ll want to post consistently now (and let other people complain about the technological restraints).

#4: Optimize Your Bio

Let people know what you do professionally, and who you are personally. List some of your personal interests and professional accomplishments. People who have never heard of you before should immediately get a sense of who you are just by reading your bio.

And no bio is complete without a link to your blog or website. This link will help you increase your traffic from Instagram, and that traffic can equate to subscribers and sales. So should you link to your post or landing page?

If you post your blog post pictures on Instagram and want people to read your content, simply include “Read this post by clicking the link in my bio” at the end of the post description.

If you prefer to include your blog’s link within your Instagram post descriptions, link to your landing page in the bio. Social media is a means to an end.

Successful Instagram users aren’t getting more followers just for the sake of having a pretty number and bragging rights. The purpose of Instagram varies for each person. Some people view Instagram as a way of building an audience and getting more blog traffic, while others want to funnel as much of their Instagram traffic to their landing pages as possible.

If you are using Instagram to grow your email list, then why link to your blog? Link to one of your landing pages to expedite the process.

Of course, if you view Instagram only as a means to an end and don’t bother interacting with your audience, your Instagram experience won’t be a smooth one. No matter which social network you use, interaction is a must.

#5: Include Hashtags

Use Hashtags to get your content found on Instagram. They’re the SEO for Instagram. Choose the right hashtags and your pictures will get in front of all of the people searching for that hashtag.

I like to use at least three hashtags in a given Instagram post. Before I choose hashtags, I’ll put the hashtag into Instagram’s search engine to see how they rank.

When choosing my Instagram hashtags, I’ll mix in the most popular hashtags with hashtags that aren’t as popular. Often less popular hashtags still get a lot of visibility.

Getting a lot of engagement for those hashtags boosts social proof and helps out with the more popular hashtags.

#6: Comment On Other People’s Pictures

Here’s a fun activity. Find a successful Instagram picture related to your niche. Then see how many people liked the picture and how many people commented. I decided to do this with one of my pictures:

41 likes
2 comments

Foundr Magazine is crushing it on Instagram. I decided to look at the stats of one of their Zig Ziglar pictures:

5,021 likes
34 comments

Why does this fun and insightful game help you obtain more Instagram followers? Instagram pictures don’t get nearly as many comments as likes, which makes the comments section an easier place to stand out.

Post a meaningful comment, and you’ll get more followers from that person’s audience.

Foundr Magazine currently has over 800,000 Instagram followers but the case study post only received five comments. So if you add comment #6, you are automatically exposed to thousands of people. You won’t get in front of Foundr Magazine’s entire audience, but a few thousand people seeing your comment isn’t so bad 🙂

#7: Post Awesome Pictures

Not all pictures are created equal. In the end, there are only three types of pictures that I post on my Instagram account.

The first type is something personal. I like it when people can connect with me on a more personal level. I’ve had numerous conversations with my audience about running, dogs, and the Red Sox. I love those types of conversations.

Not only does my audience get to know me better, but I get to know them better, too.

The second type of picture is a motivational quote. I like to inspire my audience so much that I created an inspirational quotes board that currently has over 4,000 pins. I am that serious about inspiring others (to be fair, I’ve got almost 600 contributors helping me with that board).

The third type of picture I post is a picture of one of my blog posts in order to drive more traffic to my blog.

Understand what types of pictures you want to craft and make them epic. For personal pictures, I like candid shots take in the moment. I hire a freelancer for my blog pictures because choosing those images is not my strong suit. For motivational quotes, I edit images using Canva (although I may begin outsourcing those as well).

In Conclusion

Instagram is a social network seething with new opportunities. You’ll tap into a powerful, highly engaged audience that can take your brand to the next level and beyond.

Foundr Magazine is doing very well, and the owner attributes much of the magazine’s success to Instagram. If you take action, you may attribute much of your business’ success to Instagram as well.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for your business? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Instagram

September 30, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Ever get random blog traffic? It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and the question, “What can I do to get more traffic from that source?” I was recently surprised by Instagram traffic to my blog.

I followed targeted people on Instagram to grow my account, and I noticed that Instagram brought 10 people over to my blog that same day. Ten visitors a day adds up to 3,650 new visitors each year. I’m not doing cartwheels over an additional 10 visitors, but neither am I discounting the potential power of Instagram to increase my blog traffic.

In fact, I am doing cartwheels precisely because those visitors came from Instagram. At the time, my last Instagram post was two months old, and the one prior to that was almost a year old. I attracted 10 people to my blog via an inactive Instagram account. Imagine if it was an active account.

That’s why I was doing cartwheels.

Now I’m dreaming of the day my monthly Instagram traffic surpasses my monthly Twitter traffic. One-thousand daily visitors from social media alone has a nice ring to it. Today my blog is consistently getting more traffic from Instagram, and that traffic is growing.

Want to get blog traffic from Instagram? Follow these five tips:

#1: Link To Your Blog In Your Bio

This is how I got my initial 10 visitors. I followed people, they followed me back, and some of those people decided to check out my blog. I was also experimenting with a second method (but more on that in a second).

Linking to your blog in your bio is perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic. It takes a few seconds and requires little to no effort. All you do is edit your bio and add a link to your blog.

It’s that easy!

#2: Grow A Targeted And Active Audience

There are many ways to grow an audience on Instagram. Many sites out there offer myriad ways to grow your Instagram fans, particularly those encouraging you to buy followers.

That method doesn’t interest me. In fact, buying followers will not give you an authentic picture of your account activity and most will be bot accounts. At one point, I used a point exchange site to build up my Twitter audience during its infancy stage (I stopped when my account had 1667 followers), but I did nothing like that for my Instagram account.

I am more interested in methods that will actually result in an audience of people who are interested in my pictures and ready to engage with my posts. And you should be too.

Build a targeted and active audience by hanging out where the targeted and active people hang out. How? First, find an influencer in your niche with a big audience. Next, visit the influencer’s account and look at his or her latest post and who has engaged with, or liked it. Finally, follow all of those people.

It’s that easy. People liked the picture because they were interested in that topic (your niche). These people are likely active and engaged on the platform, so this simple follow strategy will help you build your own audience.

#3: Post Pictures Of Your Latest Blog Post

The day I received 10 visitors from Instagram to my blog I did not include an image from my latest blog post. But if I had, I would have easily doubled my visitors. Posting pictures of your latest blog posts on Instagram is a creative way to use the platform to increase your blog traffic.

Most of my blog post images are 300×300 pixels, but I can quickly and easily resize them to 400×400 pixels so that they are optimized for Instagram.

#4: Post Pictures Made To Spread

If I share a motivational quote on Instagram, it doesn’t usually result in a direct increase in my blog traffic. If anything, I’ll receive an indirect increase in traffic because some curious people will click on my blog link.

These types of posts are designed more for spreading power than traffic power. The stronger your image’s spreading power, the more people that image reaches. Motivational quotes happen to perform very well on virtually every social network. These pictures normally get a lot of engagement and attract followers.

This means my blog post images are seen by a larger audience. Motivational quote pictures motivate others and increase my following, which brings more attention to the blog post images that drive my traffic.

#5: Make Those Pictures Awesome

Each picture you put on your Instagram profile needs at least 10 minutes of care and attention (with the exception of random pics taken in the moment). I hire a freelancer to choose and edit my blog post pictures, and it looks like I’ll be hiring another freelancer for the motivational quote pictures as well.

If you want to create the pictures yourself, use Canva. It’s a free tool that makes image editing a breeze.

In Conclusion

While ten visitors in one day doesn’t look like much, Instagram is attractive because of its potential to bring in serious traffic and revenue.

Instagram users are active and engaged, so if you aren’t already using the platform, start now. You don’t need many followers to get dozens of likes for each picture you post.

The potential Instagram has to transform your business is huge. However, the only way Instagram will transform your business is if you take action.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for business? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Have any Instagram tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Things To Do On Instagram Right Now

October 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Instagram is booming. With over 300 million users, Instagram has quickly emerged as “just another social network” to one of the top social networks on the web. Brands have capitalized on the opportunity and have accrued large audiences on Instagram.

However, not everyone uses Instagram for business. While Twitter and Facebook are established as great social networks for business, Instagram is usually left out. Although Instagram gets left out, it has a lot of firepower.

Instagram recently rolled out paid ads, and these ads should soon enough bring forth sensational results. Why? Facebook owns Instagram, and Facebook ads are the best type of social media ads today. You can get highly targeted likes for less than $0.01 per like.

Facebook has mastered the social media advertising game. Instagram is next. Imagine how game changing it would be if you could get highly targeted Instagram followers for as little as $0.01 per follower.

It’s going to happen, and at this stage of the game, you can grow a large Instagram audience without paying a penny. While a post on a Facebook Page is seen by a small percentage of your fans, an Instagram post will get seen by a large chunk of your audience. The average photo or video posted by an Instagram brand reaches 25-35% of that brand’s followers.

You don’t want to wait any longer. Instagram is the social network that needs your attention now. Regardless of whether you’ve been focusing on Instagram all along or Instagram for business never crossed your mind, these are the four things you must do on Instagram right now.

#1: Post Daily

Each time you post a new picture on Instagram, your audience sees your content. As you begin posting pictures more often, the people within your audience start to remember you. Some people in your audience will remember you so well that they will go to your profile for new posts.

In other words, they won’t wait for your posts to show up in their home feed. They want to see your latest Instagram posts the moment you cross their minds.

When you post every day, you become a familiar face to the people within your audience. As more people engage with your Instagram posts, there will be certain people who you also become familiar with. This is how relationships on social media are built.

The relationships you build on social media can lead to great opportunities. Some of the relationships I built on social media led to podcast interviews, guest blogging opportunities, and more.

Finally, by posting daily, you have a stronger incentive to grow on that social network. If you have thousands of pictures on Instagram, that is an incentive to make all of the work you put into your Instagram account worthwhile. That same incentive is not as powerful for a Twitter account with only five tweets.

Posting daily lets you embrace Instagram, see its potential, and grow an audience of people who appreciate your content.

#2: Use Canva To Create Awesome Pictures

One of the main reasons people don’t post on Instagram every day is because they don’t believe they have that many pictures worth sharing. There are only so many pictures within the camera roll. What do you do when you run out of awesome pictures to share?

There are two solutions.

Take another picture
Create a picture

I prefer creating my pictures and then posting them to Instagram. Canva is the best free tool on the web for creating pictures. You get numerous templates, background colors, and add-ons to choose from.

If you don’t like their add-ons, you can always upload your own pictures (or pictures from the web) to Canva’s dashboard.

#3: Consider Outsourcing The Work

The largest barrier that held me back from utilizing Instagram was time. I saw Instagram’s potential but would never have the time to get to it. With the mix of growing my Twitter audience and now focusing most of my time on Udemy, my time was spread too thin for Instagram.

Now most of my work is outsourced. All I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers because everything else has been outsourced. All of that time I once spent following people and scheduling tweets gets devoted to other parts of my business.

Now I am putting more time and effort towards Instagram. But even now, outsourcing still reigns. I hire people to create the pictures for my Instagram account and this blog. I didn’t create the picture you saw at the top of this blog post.

And I have no shame in admitting that. Outsourcing some of your Instagram activity allows you to buy back valuable time that you can repurpose into other parts of your business. Even if you don’t outsource your Instagram activity, you need to outsource something in your business immediately.

#4: Use HootSuite To Schedule Posts From Your Desktop For Free

The second largest barrier holding me back from utilizing Instagram was poor desktop compatibility. Since I do most of my work on my Mac Book Pro, and Instagram isn’t as optimized for the desktop as it is for mobile, I didn’t spend much time on Instagram.

Then HootSuite came through in the clutch (again) by making Instagram a part of the dashboard. Now it is possible to schedule Instagram posts for free straight from the HootSuite dashboard regardless of whether you are using a mobile device or a desktop.

The bridge has finally been connected and made free for everyone. But if you do not cross that bridge to Instagram Domination, then the bridge serves no purpose.

If you don’t have time to schedule your Instagram posts, you can easily outsource that work to someone else so you can focus on your Instagram account’s growth.

In Conclusion

Instagram is a booming social network that is only going to get bigger and better for business. If you do not utilize Instagram yet, then now is the time to start. Right now, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts about Instagram for business? How do you use Instagram? What tips do you have for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Awesome Ways To Use Instagram For Business

September 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Many people see Instagram is a social network with an emphasize on the social and selfies. However, if you utilize Instagram properly, it can be more than that. It is important to remember that there are over 200 million monthly active users on Instagram and that posts with pictures have been proven to get more engagement than posts without pictures. Many brands take full advantage of Instagram while others wonder how they can do the same. In order to use Instagram for your business, follow these five tips:

Take pictures of coupon codes. Only posting pictures of coupon codes on Instagram will give people another reason to follow your business. Better yet, posting coupon codes weekly or monthly will give people a reason to go back to your account and see what has recently been added.
Post a tip of the day with a relevant picture. If you provide a tip for your followers with a picture that correlates with the tip, you will create the type of posts that your audience will like and share with their friends.
Host a giveaway that encourages interaction. Whole Foods knows how to use Instagram very effectively. One of their pictures was of a girl riding a bike with groceries in the bike’s basket. Whole Foods invited its audience to post a picture of themselves riding a bike with groceries with #BikeToShop in the post. The prize was a $250 gift card.
Let your audience know more about business life. You can use Instagram to show people what goes on behind the scenes. Perhaps if McDonald’s did this, we would realize once and for all what really gets used to make those McNuggets.
Let your audience know more about your personal life. Many people forget to do this, but it is very important to include your personal life. This allows people in your audience to know about you and have a stronger connection with you. If a billionaire decided to post on Instagram a picture of a sports team, you would be able to relate better with that billionaire.

Those are the five ways to use Instagram for business. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on using Instagram for business? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Methods To Easily Get More Followers On Instagram

September 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Instagram Logo

There are hundreds of millions of users on Instagram who, combined, like a grand total of over 1 billion pictures every day. Although there are many pictures getting more likes as the days go by, there are many people who have not built large audiences on Instagram. In order to get more likes for your Instagram pictures, it is essential for you to grow your audience, and here are five ways to make that happen:

Post a new picture on Instagram more than once a day. People need to see you on Instagram often so they have a reason to continue following you and liking your pictures.
Post pictures that people would want to like. Only post the types of pictures on Instagram that you would be happy and proud to post under your name. If the picture is blurry then forget about it.
Share your Instagram pictures on your other social networks. Why not utilize the audiences you have already built? Promoting your pictures to your other audiences will allow you to build your presence on Instagram.
Allow people to follow your Instagram account on your blog. Promoting your Instagram account on your blog will allow more people to see it. The ideal button would be a button that allows people to follow you on Instagram without leaving your blog.
Use hashtags. Hashtags allow you to spread on Instagram because people who search for those hashtags on Instagram’s search engine will find your pictures.

Those are the five ways to get more Instagram followers. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have a 6th method to getting more Instagram followers? Please share your thoughts and advice below.