5 Effective Ways to Increase Your Reach on Instagram
Instagram is one of the instrumental social media platforms when it comes to marketing. A good strategy will surely increase the number of followers and help you to market your products and services better.
But unfortunately, many marketers follow strategies that ultimately do more harm than good. They tend to forget that numerous brands are competing to gain the attention of millions of users on the platform. Without creativity and original thinking, your brand will sink into anonymity.
Here are some simple but effective methods to stand out from the crowd and increase your organic reach.
- Understand the algorithm
As you know, all social media platforms, search engines, and so on run on algorithms. If you want to get ahead of your competitors, the best thing to do is understand the algorithm of the platform. In other words, you should try to understand how it works. This is the best way to find the techniques to use Instagram to your advantage.
- Time is crucial
The time at which you post in your profile is significant. Though Instagram uses an algorithmic timeline, this factor has remained mostly unaffected. First, understand at what time the majority of followers are online. This is easy enough if you are using an Instagram Business Profile as you can check the Insights page. It will give you an idea of when most of your users are active. Then schedule your posts at the optimal time.
Most experts agree that the preliminary reception that your posts get will determine how well the post gets promoted on Instagram. Posting at the time when your followers are online will get you more likes and comments which in turn translate to more reach.
- Create Instagram specific content
Many marketers make the mistake of sharing the same content on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It can sometimes spark the interest of the viewers but mostly is a useless exercise as each platform has its idiosyncracies. Instagram is a highly visual platform compared to others. Hence it is more likely to generate followership for photos and videos more than text content.
This doesn’t mean that you should never do crossposting. It is better to repurpose the same content to suit the Instagram platform before doing that. Make sure to shape the right captions and phrases specific to the platform before using it.
- Engage with your followers
Do not just keep posting content that you think is good. Take an effort to know the feedback from your followers. Dedicate your time to reply to the comments and questions. If you are not getting any, you have to create such opportunities. Asking fun questions is a great way to engage your followers.
You can also conduct surveys and contests to catch their attention. Give away contests usually get an excellent response on Instagram. Make sure to create a legitimate contest with straight forward rules. The giveaways also should be fair.
- Post optimal amount of content
Now, this is quite difficult. Most marketers have the illusion that the more they create content, the more reach they get. They focus on generating a bulk load of posts every day with no value for the follower. Subsequently, the customers grow weary and tired of seeing the useless posts and gradually lose interest in your brand.
Creating too little content is also not beneficial. You have to find out the optimum amount and focus on value-added content. It is better to think about the intention behind each content before posting. Make sure to check the viewer’s response and improve your approach each time.
