In recent years, Instagram has become a major marketplace with millions of established businesses as well as individuals showcasing their products and services. Asides from the obvious benefits to businesses, there’s also the advantage of long lasting relationships that have sprung up from the social network. Instagram has become almost indispensable as it has so easily bridged the gap between individuals and has equally created a wider reach for brands.

Little wonder why growing a solid Instagram page with an engaged audience has become non-negotiable. As the need for an engaged follower base grows, so also does the Instagram algorithm rapidly change leaving several users constantly trying to keep up. Most people become perplexed about the valuable content they post which attracts trickles of likes with spam pages following and unfollowing all the time instead of the projected outcome of brand growth. Consequently, growing your Instagram page could be very frustrating however, not impossible.

Study Your Content Niche And Community

An Instagram page will record slow or stunted growth when there’re a ton of pages within that niche posting similar content. The more content creators you have to compete with within your niche, the less likely you’ll grow an engaged community. That is not to say there’s no hope for you. It simply means that you have to know your niche and do something different in order to stand out.

Amp Up Your Hashtags

Hashtags help link your brand to a targeted audience interested in your type of content. Nevertheless, jumbling hashtags together isn’t the solution. You may be using them in your posts but your Instagram page isn’t growing, this could be because you’re not using the relevant ones. It could also mean that you’re using broad hashtags with too many posts that will swallow up your content in seconds. Try using more specific hashtags so your targeted audience can see your posts. Also, ensure that the hashtags you use are relevant to the posts. This simply means, your chosen tags will change per post (sorry, if you saved up hashtags to copy and paste). Search for popular ones that are not oversaturated with millions of posts. It’s some work but well worth it.

Engage Your Audience

A lot of brands fall into the ditch of focusing on posting content and following all the expert Instagram tips that they forget the main objective: that is to keep your audience engaged through interaction. Remember it’s called “social” media for a reason. This is 2021 and the unfollowing game is strong. If a follower feels neglected or unconnected to your brand, hitting the unfollow button is inevitable.

Use Instagram Insights

Understanding the Instagram algorithm comes in handy. Thankfully, Instagram has an analytic tool called Instagram insights that provides statistics on each post. Thus, making it easy to take note of posts that are performing well. This would enable you understand your audience better, know the type of content that resonates more with them, and make more of those posts. High performing posts are likely to appear on the explore page of random Instagram users, aka potential followers.

Be Consistent

This cannot be overemphasized as the Instagram platform itself feeds on this. From posting frequently, to your use of filter, editing, writing tone, etc, everything is important. Choose a theme, filter, and editing that works best for your Instagram page and stick to it. It’s aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and attracts followers. With the high level of competition, numerous engaging content, and the low attention span of Instagrammers, posting at least twice daily is essential for brand awareness and growth.

Note: Growing organically takes time and requires patience. Keep experimenting and trying out new things until you find what works for you. Even after that discovery, seek to flow with the tides to avoid getting stuck. Success!

Featured image: Karsten Winegeart | Unsplash