7 Ideas To Grow Your Audience On Instagram

TIP#1: Follow people who are in your niche.

If you are using Instagram to build your business, it is imperative to your success that you follow people who are passionate about your niche.

For instance, if you are in the dog niche, it makes sense to follow others who are dog lovers and/or work with dogs. These are the people who will be interested in what you have to share and will be more likely to follow you back.

TIP #2: Hashtags

So how do you find people who share the interests that you are targeting? Easy. Hashtags.  Let’s take a look at the results of a search done with the hashtag #doglover.

As you can see, this is an extremely popular hashtag with many, many followers.  At the time of the writing of this report, there are over 9.3 million posts that include #doglover.  Instagram is truly an immense platform!

Check out the top posts that show up and you will find many people who are passionate about the niche you are in.

Although I may be accused of stating the obvious, take this tip one step further and look at who is interacting with the post. Most likely many of them are part of your target audience.

Going to the profile page of the poster can also be useful when looking for people to follow.  In the case of this page, they have 1.3 million followers.  You can bet you will find many people in your target audience in that crowd.

TIP#3: Share niche related content regularly.

If you want people to be interested in what you have to offer then you have to share content that is interesting to them.  And…you need to share regularly. Posting a photo or a video once a month will not work.

Keeping a growing audience of followers with peaked interest engaged requires a steady flow of quality content. Make sure to post at least once a day for best results.

TIP #4: An engaged audience requires interaction from you.  

 Show your followers appreciation by making it a priority to reply to their comments, share and comment on their posts, and build strong bonds.

As with any social network, Instagram’s value to a large degree comes from the opportunities it allows for relationship building.

TIP #5: Install trend Widgets 

Install a widget such as Snapwidget.com on your website that allows you to display your Instagram photos.  This is a subtle yet effective way of letting your site visitors know that you are on Instagram and piques their interest in following you.

TIP #6: Instagram is about a whole lot more than just photos. 

Depending on how familiar you are with the platform, you may have assumed that you can only share the pictures you take with your camera.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Think videos, memes, etc. All types of visuals are shared regularly on Instagram so never box yourself in to the idea that you can only share original photos. Since your goal is to create a large following of people interested and passionate about your niche, just make sure that what you share is niche based.

TIP #7: Create a Contest

You can use a particular product or service as part of your contest where you ask people to follow you or engage with your post on Instagram. In addition, you can also award gift certificates that can be used to purchase your product/services.

Example:

1st Winner =    $25 Gift Certificate

2nd Winner =   $15 Gift Certificate

3rd Winner =    $10 Gift Certificate