8 Instagram Growth Tips Every Brand Needs To Know

8 Instagram Growth Tips Every Brand Needs To Know

With Instagram on your side, you can reach thousands of people you can’t otherwise – 1 billion people, to be exact, up from 800 million in September 2017. If your business isn’t already on Instagram – you’re missing out. If you harness Instagram’s power properly, you can tap into a whole new audience and reach your potential. Instagram growth will certainly lead to overall brand growth. 
Here are some tips to stepping up your game on the number one social media site for brand engagement:

Provide Value To Build Engagement

Your page needs to provide viewers with a reason to keep coming back. It  should be professional – yet personal, designed to build a like-minded community. Your audience should be informed and entertained – it’s social media, after all. Keep in mind that entertaining content should still be valuable. Audiences enjoy visual content like how-to’s, tutorials, and videos the most – so don’t think that those little squares are only limited to photos.

Take Advantage of all Instagram Features For Instagram Growth, Not Just Posts

Instagram, like every online platform, is constantly evolving. What was once a place to share sunsets and selfies solely on a timeline, has morphed into a forum of sorts – with features like:
  • Instagram Stories
  • Instagram Live
  • IGTV

Get Personal on Stories and Live


Stories are the best way to talk directly to your audience. There are plenty of features exclusive to stories to take advantage of – Instagram Live being one of those tools. It was introduced in late 2016, and has been evolving ever since. This gives your brand a more natural presence by giving people a genuine look into your business. Small businesses can hop on and shoot a video around the office or even give advice. Big businesses alike can use Instagram Live to give their brand a real face instead of a logo.
A creative way to utilize Instagram Live is doing Q & A’s (promote this on posts ahead of time, so people know what time to get involved). When going on Instagram Live, it should feel natural – not rehearsed or staged. Now, Instagram has introduced a feature where you can bring someone in the audience onto your screen for a FaceTime-like conversation.

Experiment With IGTV 

In an effort to compete with YouTube, Instagram recently launched IGTV on June 2018. However, unlike YouTube, the videos are in a vertical format in order to be more mobile friendly. It’s the perfect place to share longer-form content and get creative by setting up a mini IGTV series. Tutorials, unboxings, product demos, team introductions, office yours, behind the scenes are just a few ideas to spark your creativity. At the moment, IGTV allows searching for channels by name or username so make sure your stories and posts help to direct followers to click on your channel icon located to the left of your highlights and underneath your bio.

Run Instagram Ads For Instagram Growth 

Promoting a post or creating an ad can lead to to Instagram growth if you have a clear strategy behind it. When running an Instagram advertisement, you have two options:
  1. Creating an original ad
  2. Boosting an existing post
The more favored option among advertisers is the latter. Boosted posts seem more like native advertisements that naturally fit into your audience’s timeline.The three options that you’ll receive when boosting a post for Instagram growth are more:
  • Profile visits
  • Website traffic
  • Promotion views
With Instagram ads, you can tailor almost everything about the post – the time, the audience, range, location, budget, and duration. Tapping into a specific audience can actually boost your organic followers without having to resort to buying fake engagement. In fact, buying your engagement could potentially ban your account or have it never appear in any search results.

Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags


Too many hashtags can be #annoying, but using them right can actually lead to Instagram growth. Hashtags make you more discoverable, as 70 percent of Instagram content goes unnoticed. Now that Instagram allows users to follow hashtags like accounts, hashtags are all the more necessary. Your posts become known to relevant, interested audiences without having to pay for advertisements. You can hashtag cities and places to tap into wider communities to broaden your reach. Creating a hashtag specific to your brand has also proven useful in boosting engagement. Some brand hashtags you probably recognize are #ShareACoke, #LikeAGirl, and #PutACanOnIt. Coca-Cola, Always, and Red Bull (respectively) all used their own hashtags to spark engagement, and it worked. These simple yet witty hashtags can help your brand:
  • Boost user-generated content (UGC)
  • Gain followers
  • Generate brand awareness
  • Monitor engagement and analytics

Find Instagram Influencers

Influencers are becoming increasingly prominent in Instagram advertising for several reasons. With the algorithm that shook everything up, business content is less likely to be seen. Influencers on the other hand, “removes the barriers of traditional advertising and introduces your brand to a new audience via a more trustworthy source, your influencer partner,†the Instagram scheduling site, Later said. Make sure to connect with influencers that line up with your brand’s mission, so you can reach that relevant audience. These advertisements come across to users as recommendations from a friend – adding a genuine dimension to your brand.
For example, Wedge Effect – a fitness prop business – teamed up with Modern Tarzan, a talented and respected acro-yogi in the fitness community. This benefited Wedge Effect by boosting brand awareness, and Modern Tarzan by increasing followers through a giveaway.

Don’t Be Afraid To Get Creative


Like we said, inform and entertain. Spreading the word about your brand doesn’t always have to use a corny stock photo. Finding (or taking) quality photos/videos and brainstorming captions that create a call-to-action can be tricky, but that’s the key to marketing via Instagram. Use your Instagram to emphasize what makes your brand unique through visuals.
For example, at Into the Blue, we love to emphasize the color blue on our Instagram. Why? Because it’s unique to us. Capitalizing on what makes you unique can lead to uncommon outcomes so don’t restrict yourself to doing the same things over and over. Test out new ideas to find new and even more effective strategies. GoPro’s Instagram is full of creative UGC (with their hashtag #ExperienceDifferent) like this:

Importance of Engagement

Instagram favors posts that receive more engagement (likes, views, comments, etc.) – so it’s especially important that you create content that stands out. One of Into the Blue’s most successful Instagram posts was this one:

It’s not every day that you see a business bring in their dogs to work – so we took one of our quirky traditions and showed it off on Instagram, and it yielded great engagement.
Instagram can be one of your many great tools. Into the Blue Creative Agency can take hold of your Instagram and other social medias to maximize your online reach. Our experienced team of social media experts can help you reach the right demographics, create engaging content, run effective Instagram ads, and use the right hashtags to help build your following. To learn how take control of your social media strategy, call us at 561-299-3381 or email [email protected].
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