On Instagram, the challenge is to grow your community quickly and efficiently, without having to buy followers or use automated follow tools. Mission impossible, you may say: there are no follower recruitment campaigns on Insta, as there are on Facebook, for example.
Challenge accepted: the experts at our Instagram advertising agency suggest 5 additional points to get you there!
1. Instagram’s Explorer page
The first question to ask yourself is“how do you find new accounts to follow?“. Partly through quotes from other accounts, by those you follow. But also on the Explorer page (the little magnifying glass): there you’ll find content selected and personalized according to what you’ve liked, looked at, searched for, followed, etc.
According to Wired, this is probably one of the places that most reflects what interests you right now on the internet, or at least on Instagram. Because unlike your Feed, it doesn’t show you what you’ve chosen to follow, but what you’d be most likely to interact with. Try it out!
But how do you fit in?
No one knows the secrets of Instagram’s algorithms, but it’s easy enough to imagine what will go into the selection process:
- Is the content similar to that with which the user interacts?
- Does the content have a high engagement rate?
- Is the content close to that published by the accounts followed by the user?
And the best way to answer these questions is step by step:
1- Your Instagram audience
Start by asking yourself who you’re targeting: what are their needs and how will you meet them? Look at what their users are interested in, what their account looks like, what accounts they follow (and who looks like you).
2- Watch
Once you’ve done that, take a look at the content published by these accounts: images, formats, captions, hastags, and so on. To take this monitoring a step further, take a look at your page’s Explorer. Also check the profiles of people who already follow you, and the other accounts they follow.
Important: remember to repeat this work regularly.
3- Choose a theme
As you may have already realized, for your content to appear in a user’s feed, it has to be likely to interest them, and therefore have to correspond to a theme they like. To increase these chances, it’s best to choose ONE theme and work on it thoroughly (at least for a while). I know, it’s not easy, but you’ll see, it’s effective: the 2 previous steps will help you to make the right choice.
NB: don’t forget to keep your Followers interested and to recruit new ones, as your watch evolves.
4- Contents
Stay consistent in what you publish, starting with the filter you choose. Always keep the same one, from one post to the next: according to a WebDam study, 60% of the most successful brand accounts use the same filter on each of their posts.
Diversify your formats: photos, albums, videos and even stories (you have to know how to take risks: at worst, this content is very ephemeral).
Use hashtags wisely and sparingly: there’s no point in trying to win the competition of as many people as possible. Think of them in terms of your theme and your content. And why not create one or two non-branded hashtags of your own. If you want a reference point, avoid using more hashtags than text. And if you have a few too many, post them in comments: the effect is much the same! And when you can, tag products on Instagram.
Apply all this already and you should start moving up Explorer and gaining followers.
2. Collaborate… with influencers, but not only!
During your monitoring, you’ll undoubtedly notice other interests shared by your followers (and those of competing pages).
Identify the pages that address them and offer them an exchange of visibility: you have in your community some of the users they target, and vice-versa.
Another tip to help you understand what your Instagram audience is interested in: on the Facebook Business Manager, create a personalized audience from people who have interacted with your Instagram page (and its content). Then study it using the “Audience Statistics” tool: this will help you identify the other brand pages with which they interact the most.
To take things a step further, you can solicit the help of influencers.
To identify them, use the hastahgs #sponsorisé, #partenariat or #influenceur.
These services are usually paid for, so it’s best to maximize their impact: the ideal solution is to work on competition-based logics that will enable you to increase the size of your community and your visibility (with mechanisms such as “like and tag a friend”).
3. There’s more to life than Instagram
No, no, I’m not losing my touch 😉
You don’t have and use just one network, and neither do your users! Make the link between your different communication levers and your different media.
Some suggestions:
- On your site (and not just in the footer): use your Insta content to enrich your product sheets, for example. This will also enable you to contextualize your products!
- On your blog (if you have one).
- On your Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages share your Instagram content with a redirect to the account.
- In your emailings: make the most of transactional emails, which generally have an informative purpose and don’t call for any action: you might as well make the most of them!
To generate interest, think about offering content that’s a little different from what you’re used to working with on these media.
4. Rely on your community
Your community is your greatest strength. Thanks to it, you’ve been able to identify the themes to be covered, the content to be used, possible partnerships… but it can also be a recruitment vector, thanks in particular to contests! These can have several objectives: recruiting followers, engaging your community, creating content, etc. To help you, here are a few mechanisms that work quite well:
- A competition to promote the creation of content around your brand, your products, your values. For example: this summer, share your best vacation memories with #XXX and enter the draw to win a great gift! Ideally, use a unique, unbranded hashtag to isolate the content.
- A quiz to promote engagement and virality. For example: who would you share this brunch with? Like our page and tag a friend for a chance to win brunch for 2! Don’t forget to @ your page 😉
Now, like all good things, it’s best not to overdo it, at the risk of going from being a recruiter of qualified followers to an uncommitted competitor.
5. Amplify your work!
After all that, congratulations are in order: you’ve done a great job!
To make it even more profitable, consider amplification (or boost post).
Start by identifying the posts with the best engagement rates, especially with audiences other than your followers.
As there is no follower recruitment objective on Instagram (unlike Facebook), the best thing to do is to focus on campaigns with an interaction objective, and reproduce the content of the posts identified. A little tip: add an @ to your page in the description to maximize recruitment 😉
You can also amplify your contests, or even run them exclusively via sponsored posts, in order to remain focused on pure recruitment for specific audiences.
By the way, when it comes to audiences, consider creating a lookalike from the custom audience of people who have interacted with your Instagram page and its content.
And there you have it, all the keys to growing your Instagram community.
Working on and developing your community therefore takes time, but it’s a strategy that can pay off handsomely, especially with the developments to come.
It’s up to you!
