Instagram Marketing: How To Get Your First 1000 Followers

Garnering a significant amount of genuine Instagram followers is a great Instagram marketing strategy. Whether you’re looking for a better way to improve or just starting to make a name for your brand, you should remember that the number of followers you have is a significant metric. It is vital for you as a social media marketer in communicating what you want your target market to be.

Being famous is a challenging Instagram marketing strategy. It takes much time and effort but the key to achieving this is knowing what to focus on. There are elements in your brand and in your account you can maximize to get your first 1000 followers. Read on to get to know what these are.

#1 Be Consistent with Your Brand

Before anything else, your Instagram marketing should be consistent with your brand. This includes your identity as defined by your vision, mission, and set of goals. You should also clearly identify who your target market is to be focused on the people you want to avail your product or service. Your brand tone across all your social media accounts, blog or website, and (if you have one) your physical store.

Brand consistency in your Instagram marketing will help you with the content you will be posting. You can come up with various approaches to presenting your brand and advertising your product or service, but it is still consistent with your brand’s identity. This helps people recognize you even outside Instagram. It helps with your marketing as they know who you are, and it makes it easier for them to share what they know about you.

Consistency also helps you be focused in your Instagram marketing. Whenever you get side tracked with your goal of getting more followers, you can go back to who you are to be creative about presenting yourself better. It also makes you more trustworthy as you are sure of who you are and what you deliver to your followers.

#2 Optimize Your Profile

One of the best ways to get your first 1000 followers is to maximize all the features in your profile. This is what they see first to help them decide if you are worth following. You should put your best foot forward and present yourself in the most attractive way possible.

As part of Instagram marketing, your username should be unique to your brand and easy enough for people to remember. It should also be easy to type out to easily tag you in future interactions. For your profile image, use a headshot that is on-brand with your blog and other social media accounts. Decide whether you should use a headshot or a logo of your brand.

Another part of Instagram marketing is putting the right information in your title. In 150 characters or less, make your description explain your value in the easiest way to remember as possible. Place your blog or website link in your bio to direct them to a broader source of information regarding your brand. You can direct them to your homepage, or your description, aka about page.

#3  Improve Your Media Quality

Taking better images and videos is a major factor in Instagram marketing. As a mobile app, media is taken and uploaded via your mobile device. Other brands may opt to use professional photography, but not as common as the one earlier mentioned. Using your mobile device is definitely more convenient to take, edit, and upload your content.

Get expert advice on how to take better media for your Instagram marketing. Search and follow photography experts, and take notes from their work and even ask them directly via direct messaging or email for their advice. You can also look into the accounts of the influential people and brand in your niche to get tips. There are also photo and video editing tools you can access and download online to help you do it yourself.

Instagram marketing via media quality improvement also involves as much fun and creativity as possible. You need to make these stand out and be remembered among thousands of pictures and videos online. This will also make your content get shared as much as possible, even go viral.

#4 Come Up with Interesting Captions

Captions should complement the photo and video you use for your Instagram marketing. The catchier it is, the more exposure you will get from those who read it and those who share it with others. The quality of your message is more important than the quantity. This means that even if your caption is short but sends the message effectively, that’s good enough for you and your followers.

The tone of your captions should always be in line with your brand in Instagram marketing. Consistency makes a lasting mark to those who come across your content. Be creative with the way you compose your captions. You can also combine text and emojis to make the caption more attractive, especially for the younger demographic.

You can also solicit captions from your followers in this Instagram marketing method. This makes your followers feel more part of your brand, making them feel a sense of ownership to building your brand. As you delegate captioning to your followers, it helps you have more time to accomplish equally important marketing tasks.

#5 Recognize the Power of Hashtags

The use of hashtags is popular in Instagram marketing. This also applies with other social media platforms as well, so it aids with the overall advertising and promotion of your brand. This helps link conversations of various users as when hashtags are searched, results are compiled in one page visible to the searcher. Utilize ones relevant to your brand and industry, and also popular ones to help you get noticed online.

Using hashtags to build a sequence of photos chronologically or thematically is also effective. Your blog or website can also feature a feed of hashtagged Instagram posts to drive your visitors to become your Instagram followers. You can also look at hashtags your followers are already using to know what is popular in your industry. Even though you have a lot of exciting hashtags to use, avoid overwhelming your followers with too many of those as you may seem more promotional than informative about your brand.

Hashtags also help in your Instagram marketing by coming up with unique ones related specifically to your brand. As you garner more followers, you will be more confident in coming up with these to start a trend in your niche. It also gives you a stronger sense of identity to differentiate your brand from competitors in your industry.

#6 Interact with the Users

Remember that Instagram is a social media platform, thus a significant part of Instagram marketing is engaging with the users. As a community, people share and exchange ideas about a lot of matters in their niche and even with those related with it. Learn how to engage wisely to get more people to be interested in your own content and follow your account.

You have the option to follow your current followers and potential followers as part of your Instagram marketing. You will be seeing their posts and learn about their interactions that you may find useful in your own account management. When responding to comments and direct messages, be sincere. Users appreciate how their interaction is valued by your engagement.

This sense of value is key to Instagram marketing to get more followers. Your current followers’ experience in your brand is the best testimony for the credibility of your brand. You should be able to spend time to engage with those who take the  time to respond to your posts.

#7 Host Contests

Promoting a contest every now and then will help in your Instagram marketing. You can ask them to like your account for the mechanics and prizes up for grabs. Liking, commenting, and/or sharing a specific post can be their tickets to enter. For an even stronger promotion of your brand, you can ask them to share the photo on their own account and include contest hashtags you came up for them to win.

An element of User Generate Content (UGG) in this Instagram marketing is great as well. In your contest mechanics, you can invite people to send in their entries using their unique pictures or videos. You get to know more about your contestant and hopefully come up with ideas from their entry which you can use for your future marketing endeavors.

Be creative with the prizes you will be giving to the winners in this Instagram marketing event. You can invest in prizes which you can ship to the winners. You can also give them coupons, vouchers, and special promo codes they can use to avail your product or service. You can also grant them access to exclusive content on your blog or website to drive traffic there as well.

Wrapping it up

We have just given you 7 of very effective Instagram marketing suggestions for you to get your first 1000 followers. There are also other tools available online which you can use for your Instagram marketing. All these invest on your dedication to building a steady following. While it may be faster and easier to buy followers, it is not as fulfilling and credible as the ones you have earned from being true to your brand.