Step 1: Evaluate your target market audience and determine who or what Instagram accounts your page has the most influence on. Find and make a list of the Instagram accounts that have a large following and has the same target audience as your business.
For example: If you are responsible for growing an Instagram account for a business that is a North Carolina sweet potato distributer, you would want to target and search accounts such as those involving healthy eating, food distribution, chefs, sweet potato lovers, North Carolina agriculture, along with food and agricultural accounts in general. These are just a few examples of the types of accounts you could target if you are trying to enhance the following for such a business.
Step 2: Search the hashtags that are associated with your page, and follow these accounts.
For example: Again, if you are working with a sweet potato distributing business in North Carolina, you would want to look up hashtags such as: #SweetPotatoLove #SweetPotatoFries #NCSweetPotatoes #SweetPotatoLove. After searching these, you want to follow and like the pages of the main 9 at the top that come up. Then proceed to look at their accounts and follow accounts that follow them, and follow accounts that they follow. This assures that they already have an interest or have an affiliation of sorts with your type of business.
Step 3: *The most important step* Engagement.
At Social Vantage, we’re constantly working on new strategies to increase engagement and followers on Instagram for our clients. If you are trying to grow your account in followers, likes, and comments, you will need to put out what you want to receive. In other words, you will want to interact with other accounts to gain recognition. You should look up hashtags and go to those people’s pages. Liking and commenting relevant information (on numerous pages) is a great way to show followers you are active and want to be involved with their page and business. The idea is that those accounts will reciprocate your action, and follow, like, and comment on your account as well. Comments such as “Great picture!” only work so many times before people perceive you as a robot.
Put a little effort into the comment, something such as “Beautiful picture! I really like your page. Have you ever thought of trying our product?!” You’ll be surprised at the amount of engagement you will receive when people know there’s a real person behind your account.
Lastly, you always want to consistently post to the account. A little trick that I have used is that if the post didn’t do well the first time around, after posting a half dozen or more posts, you can go back and repost the image with a couple more hashtags and a catchier text to re-engage your following.
In my experience, I have found that consistently posting images, searching relevant hashtags, commenting, liking, following, and unfollowing pertinent accounts on a daily basis is extremely important to growing an account in dependable followers, likes, and consistent engagement. Of course I always recommend taking advantage of the new Instagram advertising option as well. Running Instagram advertisements increase engagement rates drastically!
