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6 Instagram Growth Hacks to Explode Your Reach

By: Jeff Bullas

 

Sankt-Petersburg, Russia, January 31, 2018: Instagram application icon on Apple iPhone 8 smartphone screen close-up. Instagram app icon. Instagram is an online social networking service .
If you aren’t active on Instagram you are missing out on a ton of marketing opportunities for your business. As it has over a billion users who can be reached better than on many other networks because of Instagram’s high engagement rate.

So, to help you grow your presence I have shared my top Instagram growth hacks below. Use them to generate engagement, traffic, and sales quickly.

#1. Create more videos

Images and carousel type posts still drive a good amount of engagement on Instagram, but if you really want to stand out you should be creating video content. As studies like this one show that videos drive the most engagement on Instagram.

videos drive the highest engagement instagram

Also, as Instagram is starting to hide likes, people will look to other metrics like views and comments to quickly determine the authority of your account. So, if you want to quickly grow your account and build up its authority at the same time, you should try and create more videos.

But make sure you assess the time it takes you to create the videos. If it is taking too long, then it will be better for you to stick to publishing regular photo posts, carousel posts, and stories more often.

An example of a company that understands the importance of using videos to generate more engagement is Buzzfeed Tasty.

A post shared by Tasty (@buzzfeedtasty) on 

If you visit their Instagram account you will notice that it is full of videos such as the above one.

#2. Use influencer marketing

One of the best methods you can use for quick Instagram growth is influencer marketing. This is where you reach out to a person with a popular Instagram account and ask them to promote your product and/or account. Some will do it for free while others will charge you an amount depending on the number of followers they have.

To generate the best ROI, get them to share a photo of your product and tag your handle in the caption and in the photo. This will help you generate both followers and sales from Instagram.

Just make sure you only reach out to relevant influencers and vet their Instagram accounts for genuine engagement and followers. As there are a lot of accounts with fake followers.

An example of a company that has had success with influencer marketing is Gymshark.

They are a brand that makes gym wear. So, they work with fitness Influencers on Instagram and get them to publish pictures and videos of them wearing Gymshark clothing.

A post shared by Devon Lévesque (@devonlevesque) on 

The above one is one of them. Many of the posts are videos of fitness influencers working out while wearing Gymshark clothing.

#3. Set up shoppable posts

One of the biggest problems businesses face on Instagram is that they can’t share links in their posts. If you share a product in your feed, you usually have to add the link to it in your Instagram bio URL and ask people to leave the post, go to your profile and click on the link in your bio.

This can discourage people from visiting your website as it can take some time. Also, it can be a lot of work for you to constantly change the bio URL.

So, if you run an eCommerce store, I recommend that you take advantage of Instagram’s shoppable posts feature. This lets you tag products in your photos and videos on Instagram.

An example can be seen from Oro Los Angeles.

shoppable posts example

This is how the post looks in your feed. And when you click on the bag icon, you can view the products and click on them and go to the product pages.

tag products in shoppable posts

Isn’t this more convenient? After implementing shoppable posts, Oro Los Angeles saw a 29.3% lift in month over month revenue from Instagram.

Oro were able to install shoppable posts on their store because they run on Shopify.

use shopify to create shoppable posts

This builder offers an integration with Instagram which lets them tag products in posts. So, if you want to take advantage of this feature, you should create your store with a builder like Shopify that offers this integration.

Using shoppable posts will also free up your Instagram bio. And you can link to a landing page that will help your business generate more leads or sales. For the best results, I recommend that you use a tool like Split.Link to create an Instagram landing page.

use an Instagram landing page tool

This will make it easy for people to find the most important links to your website and social media accounts quickly.

#4. Run ads

Another Instagram growth hack you can use for quick results is ads. Ads, just like influencer marketing, will help you get traffic and sales quickly. I recommend that you experiment with both to see which one brings you the best ROI. Then you can invest more into the one that works best.

You can actually combine influencer marketing with retargeting ads to get even better results.

#5. Utilize conversion scent to drive more sales

Whether you are using ads or organic methods you should make sure you use the power of conversion scent. As it can increase your conversion rate. To understand what conversion scent is, watch the below video…

As Rand Fishkin explains, conversion scent is the relationship between the ad and the page it leads to. When the design of the ad is similar to the design of the landing page, you are more likely to generate more sales. As people will sense a familiarity between the ad and the landing page.

But this principle doesn’t just apply to ads, it applies when publishing organic posts as well.

Instilling conversion scent might seem like a complicated step, but it is actually pretty simple. One easy way to do this is by adding your logo or something similar to your images like Gousto did in the below post.

A post shared by Gousto (@goustocooking) on 

They use the same logo they have on their website. This logo provides their followers with something to recognize them by. And when people visit their website they will see it right at the top and feel more at home.

Another method you can use to boost conversion scent is to keep the font and writing style in your Instagram captions similar to that on your website.

#6. Don’t forget story highlights

Another Instagram growth hack you can use to get the most out of your Instagram bio is story highlights. Highlights let you place your Instagram stories right at the top of your profile. You should take advantage of this feature as your Instagram bio can only be 150 characters long.

The information you can’t include there should be added to your highlights. This way you can share more about yourself, your products, your customers, etc.

A company that makes the most of the highlights feature is Van Leeuwen.

share more information in your highlights

As you can see here, their highlights include details like the ingredients they use, stores where you can find their products, their specials menu, etc. And they present them all with really neat icons.

You can’t add all this information with just the bio.

Conclusion

These are my 6 top Instagram growth hacks. Use them today to get more followers, traffic, engagement, and sales quickly.

Guest author: Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing, where you can download 100 Free Social Media Background Images.

Published: April 7, 2020
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Source: Jeff Bullas

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Jeff Bullas

Jeff Bullas is a consultant, blogger, strategist, and speaker. He works with companies and executives to optimize their online personal and corporate brands through the use of social media channels. Author of the Amazon best-selling book Blogging the Smart Way—How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media (Jeff Bullas, 2012), Jeff's own blog is included in AdAge.com's Power 150 ranking as a top 50 marketing blog.

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