Over the past couple of years, I’ve been involved with social media more than ever before. A large part of my job in the corporate world is to manage all of the social channels for my company. I work for a large wholesale beauty distributor who caters to licensed beauty professionals and we were tasked with huge growth goals with no budget and very limited resources.
After navigating the world of social media growth in my professional career, I was motivated to work on my blog more and realized I had neglected my Instagram page, and over time it has become a focus of mine. Instagram has been the social media channel where I’ve seen the most growth in a short period of time. I’m learning so much about the platform daily and wanted to share what I’ve learned about how to build a stronger Instagram following.
1. Leverage the friends you already have on social media.
One of the best ways to continue to build your Instagram following is by connecting with the people who follow you on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You can pretty much integrate your Facebook and Twitter friends with your Instagram account. While in the app, go to your account page and click on the gear icon in the upper right corner to display the Instagram Options screen. Scroll down until you get to the option that says Settings > Linked Accounts. A list of your social accounts will appear and from there you can link your accounts ans start following people.
2.Create an aesthetic that’s an extension of your brand identity on your Instagram page.
When I first started managing my company’s social media page, we struggled to create content. We pretty much re-posted a lot of low-quality pictures from some of the brands that we work with and we threw up a lot of promotional images that were very cartoon-like and didn’t really resonate with the licensed beauty professionals that we were targeting. I went to several social media conferences and started educating myself. My company hosted a social media boot camp and one of the biggest takeaways was to create a brand experience on your page–whether it’s personal or business. Does your website have a certain color scheme? If so, maybe you want to incorporate that into your Instagram posts. Do you always come up with quirky quotes and funny sayings? Create a graphic using a tool like Canva or Word Swag to create graphics (with a consistent, branded look and feel) to share on your page. Your Instagram page should connect with your brand identity in a cohesive way.
3. Engage with like-minded people.
This may sound like common sense, but a big part of growing a solid following on Instagram is by liking and leaving comments on pictures. If you are a beauty blogger, follow other beauty bloggers. Don’t just go with the motions, leave meaningful comments on the pictures. This is hands-down one of the best ways to discover new pages to follow, build relationships and grow engagement on your page.
4. Take great pics!
Instagram in all about posting great pics that instantly grab people’s attention. Whether you’re posting an outfit of the day or a snap of your recent brunch outing the look and quality of the pics matters. Make sure you have interesting composition and consistency in the quality of the photos. No blurry, dim or overly-exposed pictures. Also, take an inventory of your most popular posts. If you get more likes on outfit pictures than beauty collages, then you might want to focus on taking more fashion pics.
5. Run a contest or do an Instagram Giveaway Loop
People love freebies and hosting a contest or giveaway is a great way to build your social engagement and following. It can be as simple as having your followers to re-post a picture and tag you in it, or having a call to action using a special hashtag that you create. Last month, I tried my first giveaway loop, where I partnered with a few other bloggers on Instagram. This was great for networking with like-minded bloggers and it gained me a good amount of followers over a short period of time.
What are your go-to tips for getting more Instagram followers?
Ciao Bellas,
