A strong social media presence in the modern world helps individuals and companies build a strong following and brand loyalty. It becomes even more rewarding when individuals build an audience ready to invest time and money in their art, business, and interest.

I aim to help those who desire to grow their Instagram engagement through the following simple-to-follow tips.

Please note: All tips have been tried and tested personally by me and some of my friends in the creator community. The way you decide to design and present your content will be of the utmost importance in order to get the views, likes, shares, comments, and followers you and/or your business desire. 

Do not expect your Instagram profile to make you money unless you have invested your time and energy in developing something of value and even then your Instagram profile will only pay you back when you have engaging content on it that showcases your product on service in an engaging manner.

If you are someone who only wants to share already available content on the internet for popularity, this isn’t for you.

Let’s begin:

Tip #1

Decide your niche

This is the very first step in the process in order to evaluate if Instagram is the right platform for your purpose

Tip #2

Define what you offer through your profile

If you are a business, make sure your identity is clearly established through your company logo and branding statement.

If you are an individual creator or professional, make sure your expertise or interest is clearly mentioned in your bio. You do not have to write a resume, brevity is your friend here.

Tip #3

Content planning

This Instagram account is your portfolio and your making tool. In order to attract new audiences, you need to plan your content out in advance. For e.g, if you are a content creator that relies on video content, make sure you plan out at least 5-7 good videos for the following month. If you are a business, make sure your content development team understands that frequent posting is important, especially at the beginning to build a following.

You can use Canva or Notion or any other productivity platforms to plan your content

Tip #4

Keep your content relevant

A lot of individuals and companies often tend to get distracted by political and/or irrelevant news and start sharing content that most definitely irritates their existing followers and keeps potential ones away.

In order to stay relevant, it becomes critical to follow Tip #3 and start building monthly plans. This way, you will have more content to share.

Followers tend to disengage when they can’t associate with your content.

Tip #5

Put work into your designs and posts

Up until now, my tips have focused on the basics but these basics help one build the foundation for long-term goal setting.

Instagram is a visual medium. Even when the focus of the post (picture, reel, story) is based on the audio, it’s the visuals that push a user to tap on your post. Focus on building visually pleasing posts that demand attention.

Think of the best ads you’ve come across (on TV, YouTube, and posters) and follow the design basics from there.

Tip #6

Schedule your posts 

Organising your posts is important. One can post what they want when they please if one doesn’t really care about what their timeline/profile looks like but when you are trying to build a genuine following, your discipline will be respected by the loyal followers and the “good crowd” on Instagram.

There are tools on Instagram and others provided by Meta such as scheduling your posts through your Facebook page (if you have one) or using their Business Suite to schedule posts. Hootsuite is another great tool for this purpose.

If you are not a fan of using the auto-post scheduling tools, you may set up reminders on your calendar to do so.

Tip #7

Make use of all post types

As mentioned in Tip #5, Instagram is a visual medium.

Most of the traffic generated by profiles is through reels today (year – 2022). Making videos is a challenging task but Instagram has made it incredibly easy to use their reels tool to add music, voice-overs, text, and visual effects to our photos, videos, and existing audio. It will take time for you to master these features and create beautiful reels but it is essential in the long run.

Post pictures in carousels to give a story-like feel to your audiences. These have worked extremely well for those who post written work, pictures from an event, explainer posts, and a series of videos relating to one topic.

Tip #8

Promote your work

There are professional tools provided by Facebook & Instagram to promote your posts, your account, and your website through paid advertising. Remember, these are advertising platforms and the users are either paid customers for the platform, users who only want to experience content or potential customers for the businesses that promote on these platforms. Your growth is still organic in the sense that you are not trying to cheat the algorithm by purchasing likes, followers, and views.

Tip #9

Be consistent

In order to grow, a profile on Instagram has to be consistent with its content. I have personally experienced a drop in engagement each time I do not post for more than a week.

To practice consistency, you need to remember that this platform is for you to share your art, your work, and other things you are passionate about. If you are a business, you have to remember that unless your content is engaging, even posts with the best offers on your products & services will not attract satisfactory engagement.

Try to post every 2 days if you can’t post every day of the week. If you post 3 times a week, your followers will get accustomed to seeing your posts regularly and if you have established a personal connection with them, they will end up looking your profile up to check your latest posts.

Tip #10

Use hashtags to your advantage

I will keep this short and simple. It is important to use hashtags, at least at the beginning of your Instagram journey. This helps users who follow content in your area of niche find you more efficiently.

You can use anywhere between 1 to 30 hashtags for every post you make but make sure you use relevant hashtags. You will be advised to use hashtags like #likeforlike & #followforfollow. If you take my advice, this is complete garbage and would not add a lot of value for you or your followers. Rather use one unique hashtag that belongs to you or your brand and then use keywords that resonate with your post.

Tip #11

Use the geotagging, music, and collaboration tools

It helps users in a specific demographic to come across your content if you are geotagging their city/country.

Music has been a pleasant addition to the picture posts by Instagram as it can add aesthetic value to the post but make sure you don’t use music that is completely irrelevant to the picture you are posting as the experience of looking at that picture, no matter how pleasing, can become annoying and unpleasant if the music is not relevant.

Collaboration tools help two profiles to post the same content as a collaborative piece of work. I think this is a very smart tool especially for brands and influencers to use. Use this tool wisely and you can see big growth when you are collaborating with celebrities and well-known brands/personalities.

Tip #12

Final tip: Do not cheap out on hiring a social media manager 

If you have the budget, hire a social media manager to take care of all the points I have made above. If you are a master at content creation, let the social media manager take care of all of the other aspects of your profile because that is what they specialise in. They will make sure that your content is posted at the right time, reaches the right audience and you get the maximum value out of it.