1. Use Your Bio to Tell Your Story
When people want to learn more about you, the first place they’ll check is your bio. Your bio should include your passions, what you do, what you love, your projects or your dreams. Make sure you add your full name (your real name) and your website. To make it original, add your personality and some quirky phrases.
2. Choose a Captivating Profile Pic
Your small profile pic may mean more than you think. If you have a captivating profile that is colorful and makes you look like a cool person, you’ll gain more followers. If not, most people won’t even notice. That’s Insta’s culture.
People on Instagram have a “take it or leave it” approach. If you don’t look interesting or engaging, then people are not likely to take an interest. The moral of this tale is, take a sweet profile pic, that’s well-lit and showcases who you are.
3. Follow Back and Give First
Whether you want to grow your audience or increase your brand recognition, you should follow other people. It’s a form of mutual respect. Attention is the most valuable resource on Instagram and by giving someone that attention and respect, you will get respected by your audience.
When you see an account or photo you like, give out favorites and hearts freely. These are compliments to the poster. When you see great photos, send some love. You’ll be surprised by the amount of traffic you’ll receive by giving first in the form of comments and favorites. Here are some good accounts to connect with.
4. Use Traffic-ed Hashtags
If you’re just starting out, don’t worry about creating your own hashtags. While most people would like to “own” a hashtag, that’s not what they’re for. A hashtag in Instagram is a way for people to search for and discover other photos and accounts from people who have similar interests.
Use popular hashtags to have your photographs discovered. If you don’t use hashtags, it’s improbable that people will be able to find you. Look up the popular Insta hashtags and use the ones that are relevant, in your comments and descriptions. Here are some good tips from Neil Patel.
5. Give Re-grams and Shout Outs
In life, and on Instagram, you’ll meet many people who are awesome, so add them to your Instagram. Create photos native to your feed that give shout outs to other Instagrammers. For example, if you have an illustration a friend made and include it in one of your coffee photo shots, give her props and credit for her work, by tagging her in the photo.
If you want to find amazing content to post, you can locate photos on Instagram to curate and re-gram. Make sure that you give credit for each photo to the original creator by tagging it. This can boost your feed and attract the attention of the person who you’re re-gramming.
6. Make It Native
Instagram provides entertainment to its audience. The feed you build should natively speak to your audience. People want to find inspiration, new foods, explore travel, and experience different lifestyles. They even want to see the “behind the scenes” of your day to day life. This will help you get more Instagram views. That may mean you have to sometimes leave your business out of your photos if you’re deep into your business.
7. Be Active
Remember, Instagram is social media. That means you need to be social. If you get on Instagram and start talking to your followers, people with similar interest and others who want to get to know you, you’ll get results. You can go through and thank all of your followers, personally. As a results of doing this, many of them will come to your account, chat, like or comment on your photos. This little act of engaging your audience and followers, can help to build your community, drive engagement and boost your website traffic.
Author: Cormac Reynolds is a writer and journalist who has worked in the content marketing arena for over 5 years. He writes for Buzzoid.com and takes a deep interest in social media and SEO. Why not follow him on Twitter at BrightonCormac
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