Going the short route of allowing bots to be the boss of Instagram accounts was once the talk of the town. Soon, it’ll regress to becoming to the road less travelled as users begin to realize the long-standing disadvantages of bot-powered tools.
As you learn how to get Instagram followers the correct and permissible way (as opposed to going against Instagram’s Terms of Use and risking being banned or blocked), here are three crucial steps you need to consider.
1. A Solid Social Marketing Strategy
We’re starting with this baby, as daunting as “social media marketing” may sound (it isn’t), because it’s what will aid in boosting your numbers, business-wise. In previous posts, we’ve repeatedly mentioned why bots won’t work to your advantage in the long-run. That’s because relying only on followers isn’t enough to push your business goals forward.
Creating a compelling brand story has to do with brand awareness, visibility and reputation, conversion, product sales and/or service bookings, traffic, and engagement. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Working alone will have its challenges. But if you have a team that specializes in the very specific marketing divisions aforementioned, all the better. They’ll be able to create a systematized framework so that KPIs are established, metrics are tracked, and objectives are aligned with the brand’s demographic.
2. Brand Awareness And Reputation: Plan Of Action And Implementation
More than creative brand image and creatively building your brand’s profile, it’s important to also implement analytics tools to assess how your strategies are doing against the playing field of your competitors.
Impression data, responses, engagement, reach, and the like are to be measured for you to gain insight as to whether you should continue with your marketing strategy, or perhaps shift a few pieces around for better results.
3. Be Wise With Hashtags
Hashtagging is an approach to supercharging your account’s exposure and draw in more followers through your content. Only, there is such a thing as over-hashtagging. Users throw around as many words as they can think of, wrongly assuming that this will lead to greater visibility.
In truth, the opposite is the case. Instagram has a set limit of 30 hashtags per post. But that doesn’t mean hitting that max will work wonders. Doing so, especially if you don’t strategically choose keyphrases relevant to your content, may be interpreted as spam.
Subsequently, due to Instagram’s updated algorithms, any activity that’s interpreted as being manipulated by bots (i.e. spam-like messages), accounts will be Shadowbanned
Instead, look for hashtags that are relevant to your posts, are specific and concise. If you find ones that are currently trending or are “popular”, then you might want to use those, too.
4. The Right Frequency
This has to do with how often you provide your followers and potential followers with engaging and relevant content. In other words, how often you post on IG. There’s a very thin line here because it’s also important not to clog their news feed too much.
Some experts say that 2 posts a day are safest. However, you’ll have to discover the perfect “when” of posting, in relation to when your target audience is most active on Instagram and whenever online.
