It’s not a secret that Instagram is the most popular social media channel right now and it’s great when it comes to growing your audience whether you’re a photography enthusiast or an entrepreneur. Although it is super easy to use, many people fail by posting reckless content. After testing many different Instagram strategies, I’ve finally found the best way to create engaging content.
Images
On Instagram, it’s all about the images we post but the mistake many people do is posting separately nice looking images that have nothing in common. The first to make your images more similar is by using the same filter. Choose one or two filters that you like most and stick to them. Similar tones and colors will create a vibe of your content and will make it synchronic.
In order to reach more audience, you need to post various images. If you’re an amateur photographer, you might post wonderful images but if they’re too monotonous, people won’t follow you. That’s why you need to divide your images into categories and I recommend you to have five of them. Five categories are the best option if you want similar images not to “touch” each other and create an appealing feed. Decide in what sequence they should be posted and whenever you’re about to post something, make sure it matches your categories sequence.
Descriptions
When you’re creating a content, not only images matters, the descriptions also have to be captivating. Think about every image you want to post, read it between the lines, tell a story, true or imagined doesn’t matter, just make it mesmerizing and in a tone of your own or your brand’s voice. How long should it be? Between 20 – 55 symbols. If you struggle with the captions, you can always find other similar images, get inspired by their texts.
To get the most of your post, hashtags are must because they help you to reach more people who might find your content interesting. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags but it is way too much. I usually use between 8 – 16 hashtags, some of them are general and I use them most of the time and some of them are specific and related to a particular post, event or day. When you will be choosing hashtags for your posts, choose the ones that are relevant to your post and aren’t used too often or too rarely. Hashtags with 500,000 – 1,500,000 posts are the best ones to use because they aren’t too niche (this means no one uses them) and they’re not so popular that your post would get lost after a minute when you’ll post it.
Follow others!
Everyone wants to be followed but doesn’t want to follow – this is the most common mistake that stops you from growing your audience. There are a lot of different tactics how you can grow your followers by playing follow – unfollow game but by the end of the day you would only end up with a tragically uninteresting feed of people you’re following and tons of fake followers who are just waiting for the right time to unfollow you. To get real followers, you have to find accounts that you truly enjoy, like two or three recent posts and follow them. Don’t expect them to follow you right away but I assure you, if that account has up to 1,000 followers, they will notice you. Later on, when you will be checking your news feed, like the images these accounts post, by doing so you will show them that you sincerely like their post and after some time most of them will follow you back and like all the images you’ll post! Isn’t this the best way to grow your audience?!
By following these tips you will get the most of Instagram, your content will be outstanding and your followers will truly love it.
P.s. How often should you post? There’s no one right answer, just the one that you should find your tempo and keep it (or 1-3 posts per day).