Instagram is used by more than 60% of our audience and it’s definitely a platform where engaged couples are finding inspirations and suppliers for their wedding day.
But with users sharing more than 95 million photos and videos every single day (according to Reuters), it’s also a platform where standing out and making sure your content is seen is essential.
But aside from using hashtags that will help your content be seen, having the right audience, and an engaged audience, will also help further get your brand out there.
So how do you get more followers on Instagram?
Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk’s strategy to get more Instagram followers is a great way to start working towards building the right audience and engagement. Known as the $1.80 Instagram Strategy, it should take you less than half an hour a day to start strategising towards a stronger social presence. And despite its name, it’s actually completely free.
Search for 10 hashtags relevant to your business every day
Searching the hashtags that you want to be related to, might have interesting content for you, or could share the same audience is a great way to start building on where your brand is seen.
You might have two or three hashtags that you already follow, but making sure you mix these up is important to be searching through different groups and audiences.
It’s also good to mix it up with a range of different searches, such as a more general search for #rusticweddinginspiration or something more related to your category, like #brisbaneengagement.
Whatever it is, think about where your couples are in their planning process and what they might be searching for. If you’re unsure what sort of hashtags to use check out these hashtags for Australian weddings businesses as a good place to start.
Find the top 9 posts for each of those hashtags
Once you’ve got your 10 hashtags of the day, find the top 9 posts of those searches. Luckily for you, these are automated on Instagram for you already and will appear as a top 9 grid before the most recent posts pop up.
Check out the captions of these posts, what else they have hashtagged (you might get some ideas for your next search!), as well as how their audience is engaging with them.
Finally, leave your 2 cents on those posts
Finally, leave your 2 cents on those posts2 cents for 9 posts x 10 hashtags is $1.80 – see what Gary has done there!
Once you’ve found the top posts that are relevant to your business, it’s time to leave a meaningful comment. Emojis alone don’t cut it here, you should be commenting in a natural way to show that your business is authentic and drive more people to your own Instagram profile.
If they have a quirky caption, great pic, or have just got engaged, a natural post such as “Congratulations! That’s so exciting for you – I wish you all the best!” is going to work better than just trying to promote your business.
Remember – Instagram is not just about how many followers you have
At the end of the day, you can pay for as many followers as you like on Instagram, but unless you have the engagement rate to match you won’t have a relevant community who are going to offer qualified engagement to your brand.
An account might only have 200 followers, but if they have 30 likes on every photo they actually have a 15% engagement rate – which is excellent! Compare this to an account who gets 3000 likes on every pic – but actually has 600,000 followers (meaning they only have a 0.5% engagement rate).
Building your followers on Instagram is a great way to build your presence and get more of an audience. But it has to be relevant to your brand. So go forth and build your community!
