Day 14 of 60 Days Blogging Challenge: Go Social Part 3: Instagram Tips

Hey Spiders,
We are hoping that you all are having a blast there working towards your new blog. Well, we want to see you guys working so do join our Facebook group and drop your link there. We will review and give you a honest feedback with tips for improving your blog. In addition to that, you will get to meet other fellow bloggers to communicate and share your ideas with.

Today we will guide you on How to increase your likes and targeted followers on your Instagram account.

With Instagram growing from 600 million to 800 million active users, Gary vee said that if he were asked to choose only 2 social media accounts only for marketing, Instagram would be one of them.

So we cannot lose out the large audience base on Instagram. If you post a picture even at 3 o’clock in the morning, you will receive at least 20 likes even with the non-targeted use of hashtags so you can imagine the number of active users using Instagram per minute where time is not a limiting factor.

Today we will share some tips to grow your Instagram account which works in our case:

The first thing that we suggest is to convert your account to business account. It is totally free of cost and in return, it gives you reports and insights of your Instagram account. It also allows you to run advertisements to gain followers or increase traffic towards your website.

Post at least 2 times in a day. The timing of your post must be determined by your targeted follower’s location and their availability. The best time to post is at 10 o’clock in morning and at 7 o’clock in the evening.
Use high definition pictures with the correct filter to increase the engagement of your users. Eye soothing filters attract more engagement rather than loud filters. But it totally depends on the type of followers from whom you want to seek attention.

You can make out the difference of the likes in the two pictures. The left picture with dark filter received less likes compared to the right picture with a light filter.
Write long captions in your post with the frequent use of smileys. Long caption encourages the user to spend more time on your Instagram page and tempt them to visit your profile and your other posts along with your blog. So it’s a win-win situation both for your blog and your Instagram account.
Use correct targeted hashtags to increase the reach of your posts to the right people.
You can search for hashtags in Instagram search or you can use third-party websites too. Some of our favorites are:
– Hashtagify
– HootSuite
– All Hashtag
Instagram gallery and videos are more engaging than single post updates. People spend more time on your post so you are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm in form of increasing the reach of your post. This is because if people spend more time on your post as soon as it is posted than Instagram concludes that your content is worth more reach.
Use Canva.com to make exceptional looking posts quickly.
Use Instagram stories. Post in every 2 hours for your account to stay in the first or second place on your follower’s wall.
You can even include hashtags in your stories for it to feature in the Instagram’s explore section. If you don’t want your followers to see the hashtags- then just decrease their size and cover them with a clip art or smiley over them. Awesome isn’t it?
Do live streaming if possible. Live stream always come in the first place on your follower’s wall and in addition to that they are notified of you going live.
Even if your account is on your blog, don’t forget to post personal pictures of you working or enjoying regularly in posts and stories. People want to know about the real person behind the account thus rewarding you with more reach and engagement.
If you want to promote your article you can play around a little i.e
– You can post the featured image of your article with the headline and write about the article in the caption and ask followers to click the link in bio to read the full guide. ( Links doesn’t work in the caption or comment. you can only add the link to your profile -> website.
– You can add a gallery which contains information about your article and then at the last slide ask them to click the link in the bio to read the full article.
There are many ways to do this, innovate your own ideas and share it with us.
To increase followers go and search accounts with similar post and target area as yours and follow their users following them. Chances are they will follow you back as they will stalk the person who followed them. You can also like and drop the meaningful comment in the posts of the similar accounts or posts of the followers of the similar accounts. Chances are they will view your profile and follow your account.
Note: Don’t follow more than 30 accounts an hour to prevent your account from getting banned.
You can also direct message admins of account in your reach and ask them for a shootout ( a mention of your account in their posts or story ). Strike a conversation and ask them a favor of giving your account a shootout. Some account charges a fee for it, but some can negotiate returns in form of a shootout with you or anything they require. You can play smart and get at least one shootout a day. Shootouts are an excellent and quick way to gain more followers.
Connect with your followers and ask them to visit your website and articles. A beneficial way to increase traffic on your blog.
Run giveaways and competitions to increase activity and engagement on your account.
Always use taglines and captions which includes a call to action i.e, Tag your three friends or Comment down your thoughts or Click the link in bio, etc.
Try to post according to a theme and at the same time, you do every day. A theme is something you can find in a lot of Instagram profiles. For example, Post a photograph of yours, then a written quote and then a gallery of images about your article.

We have maintained a theme of posting one motivational quote with one photograph or article related post.
Visit your account insights to check which time of the day and week works the best for you and which post has the highest engagements and likes. Which hashtags have the higher reach? Which posts have grabbed more followers and plan your content accordingly? For example, if most of your followers are men then you can post something about men to increase engagement.
Use Instagram post scheduling tool to plan your whole week in a day and save a lot of time. You can use tool like Buffer for scheduling your posts.

So these were some of the ingenious tips which we use to gain followers. Social media management is not an easy and time absorbing task. So play smart, study what works for you and be a pro-Instagrammer. If you are already a user of Instagram and are doing well enough – Do comment down below what works for your account.

And if you people still haven’t followed us on Instagram DO IT NOW :). Our username is @weboftwo. We will love to interact with you people on instagram.

We will see you guys tomorrow in the next post. Till then