“How to Grow Instagram Followers for Business” written by Mike Marko.
Figuring out how to grow Instagram followers for business is not easy.
However, with it being the social media platform with the second-most-engaged users, you can’t ignore the value of building your brand on Instagram. It can actually make businesses!
You don’t have to search too long to find proof. Take Kylie Jenner, who just became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 21 years old.
Do you know what she mainly credits for her success?
“It’s the power of social media,” says Jenner, the CEO and CMO of KYLIE Cosmetics. That’s because Jenner used her influence on different social media platforms to build her business.
Instagram in particular is by far the largest contributor to her success. It’s where she has the largest and most engaged audience.
Now your business is probably very different from hers… and you’re likely not a member of the Kardashian family.
Still, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to grow Instagram followers for business.
As a matter of fact, anyone can learn how to grow Instagram followers for business. You just need to know the best strategies for that purpose.
Luckily for you, that’s what I will be sharing with you today.
How to Get Real & Targeted Instagram Followers for Business
As a business, you don’t just need a large number of Instagram followers. Your followers need to be real and targeted so you can sell them your goods and services.
“Real and targeted” followers means ones both able and likely to buy your products. It also refers to users who are active enough on the platform to be party to your marketing efforts.
In short, you need active followers who belong to your actual customer base. That’s how you can get the best returns for your marketing investment in terms of conversions, leads, and more.
You have to consider that when learning how to grow Instagram followers for business. It can keep you from wasting time on trying to get followers who wouldn’t benefit your brand.
But now you’re probably wondering how you can be sure your target customers are actually on the Gram.
Well, to answer that, we’ll have to discuss something else first before learning how to grow instagram followers for business.
Namely, we should talk about Instagram’s userbase, which we’ll do briefly. After that, we can move on to learning how to grow Instagram followers for business.
Understanding Instagram’s Userbase
First, the hard numbers — Instagram has more than 1 billion users. More than half of those use the platform on a daily basis.
Now, my stance is that learning how to grow Instagram followers for business can be useful for just about every company.
However, the age demographics do show that Instagram works best for B2C (business to consumer) companies. 71% of Instagram users are under the age of 35, which fits the typical B2C market demographic.
Does this mean Instagram B2B (business to business) marketing doesn’t work, then?
Fortunately for all the B2B business owners out there, that’s not the case. 29% of 1 billion is still a huge number, so Instagram can’t be ignored for B2B marketing either.
Frankly, the sheer size of the platform’s userbase practically assures members of your target market in it. That’s true for businesses in various industries and niches.
As such, regardless of whether you’re in B2C or B2B, you need to know how to grow Instagram followers for business.
You could buy followers and likes from a bunch of sites and apps, as a quick solution. But as I made clear earlier, this will not work in your favor in the long run.
Fake followers will not give you any real business insights… and they definitely won’t buy your goods and services.
Because of this, you need to focus on getting real Instagram followers instead.
9 Steps to Grow Instagram Followers for Your Business
Before I share with you how to grow Instagram followers for business, let me ask a question.
What’s the purpose of your Instagram account?
You need to realize the purpose of your Instagram account to learn how to grow Instagram followers for business. After all, it organizes your efforts around a specific goal or goals.
Ask yourself this — why do you want followers in the first place?
Do you want to learn how to grow Instagram followers for business sales? Maybe you want to learn how to grow Instagram followers for business (or brand) promotion?
Only after you’ve determined your purpose or purposes can you go on to building your following. To that end, you can use the techniques I’ve listed below.
1) Upload Lengthy Videos
This might seem weird, given how many social media marketing guides tell you to publish short video content.
But here’s the thing — the more time people spend on Instagram, the more money Instagram makes.
Lengthy videos can get people to spend more time on the platform. Ergo, the Instagram algorithm favors this kind of content… which means you should use it!
Getting on the Instagram algorithm’s “good side” is a general rule when doing Instagram marketing. When you know what the algorithm favors, you can put out content that has a great chance of being seen.
And learning how to grow Instagram followers for business is often just a matter of being seen.
There are other reasons to use videos for your Instagram marketing, though. Videos in general get more engagement than other content types, for example.
Here’s a bonus tip for promoting your videos, by the way — upload your videos on IGTV and post a preview on your feed. If you do, you’ll get traffic from both your feed and the IGTV section of the platform.
2) Ask Your Audience to Engage
Instagram’s algorithm is pretty simple in some ways. The more people like and engage with your posts, the greater your reach will be.
Thus, it pays to encourage engagement as much as you can. Remember, learning how to grow Instagram followers for business involves even little things like asking for interaction.
Go ahead and ask people to like and comment on your posts. This part of learning how to grow Instagram followers for business can lead to more engagement, reach and followers.
Just keep in mind that if you abuse this tactic, it will stop working. That’s why you should only do this a few times per month for best results.
3) Go Live More Often
To understand why you should go live, you should note that Instagram isn’t just competing with other social media platforms for attention. It’s also taking on traditional media.
As a result, Instagram has been encouraging more of its content creators to go live. Live content is a big (and very profitable) piece of the video content pie, after all.
You know how people wait in anticipation for live shows like the NFL games and other transmissions? That’s what Instagram is trying to achieve with its live video services.
That’s why this is one of the most important steps in learning how to grow Instagram followers for business. It’s a way of using the platform’s algorithm to your advantage again.
Go live as frequently as you can with set schedules. You can also use your live content to connect with your audience in real time!
If you do that, Instagram will push your content more and you will get a ton of views, engagement and followers in the process. Not a bad result when you’re studying how to grow Instagram followers for business.
4) Be Social
I already mentioned that you can ask others to leave comments or likes on your content. For best results in how to grow Instagram followers for business, you should return the favor.
Leave a comment when you like something. Like posts whenever you enjoy them.
Respond to comments on your posts and answer messages whenever you get any.
The idea is to build relationships so people always come back and engage with you and your content. If your connection is positive enough, they’ll very likely follow you too.
5) Use Lengthy Captions
A lot of people are already trying their best to post quality images and video on Instagram. How then can you stand out?
You can post lengthy, valuable content, is my answer. Do this by making the most of your content’s captions.
Understanding how to grow Instagram followers for business is all about taking advantage of every opportunity to connect with your audience. So many brands forget that captions provide that opportunity too.
Note that Instagram allows up to 2,200 characters for your captions. Make use of all this space, but make sure too that the most important parts of your caption are within the first three lines.
Furthermore, remember to include a call to action. Since our goal here is to learn how to grow Instagram followers for business, you might as well make it a call to follow your account.
6) Share More Stories
Stories can be extremely effective at getting attention from a target audience. Influencers like GaryVee and Tai Lopez even post about 20 Stories a day!
At first, it might seem a little nuts to try to produce that much content. But if you want to know how to grow Instagram followers for business, you have to be ready to do more than others.
You can share as many Instagram Stories as you want in a day. Just don’t post all of them at once, as spreading your Stories throughout the day will keep your audience engaged better.
Make sure your Stories are either entertaining or inspiring too — don’t just post Stories for the sake of “meeting a quota”. You also want to combine both images and video for best results.
7) Focus on Both Quality and Quantity
People are always wondering what’s better, focusing on quality or quantity. GaryVee thinks they are both important but that if you have to choose one, then it would be quantity.
I agree to some extent. That’s because spending a lot of time trying to post only the highest-quality content might actually be bad for you.
You see, it can lead to you tweaking something so much that you may never get it out at all! Stop trying to be a perfectionist if you notice that it’s seriously holding up your content strategy.
Pushing out more content can help you learn how to grow Instagram followers for business much quicker. It also teaches you how to produce better-quality content, anyway.
After all, the only way you can tell whether your audience loves or hates your content is by putting it out there. The more feedback you get from them, the better your content production process can become.
8) Partner With Influencers
Working with influencers is another useful tip for those learning how to grow Instagram followers for business. That’s because it helps you spread your reach via others.
Influencers are people in your niche who have a lot of followers. They’re not competitors, mind you, but Instagram users who focus on much the same things you do.
Figure out who are the influencers in your space. Then, follow them and get them to partner with you to promote your brand.
At the very least, you should try to get them to like your content. If you can get people with a lot of followers to like your post within an hour, it’s likely that your post will land on the Explore page.
It works even better if they don’t like anything else during that time period. Either way, the result is great exposure!
Partnership-wise, you can co-create content with influencers. Think of music artist collaborations, for example, which are a win-win situation for both parties involved.
I also advise doing cross-promotions with them. Cross-promoting your content within your influencer network can greatly increase your reach and followers.
Overall, influencer marketing is perhaps the most powerful step in learning how to grow Instagram followers for business. The results from it are often instant and profound, so try it as soon as possible!
9) Do Your Own Testing
Last but not least in how to grow Instagram followers for business, you need to do a lot of testing.
Try your best to figure out what works for your unique audience. While you’re at it, refrain from considering yourself too much of an expert on your audience.
That can lead to complacency… which often leads to mistakes.
Instead, release a ton of content first, then figure out which performs best and why. Test topics, content formats or types, approaches, and the like.
To this end, Instagram analytics can give you valuable insight. It can reveal things about your followers like peak hours, age, sex, and location.
The more knowledge you gain about your existing followers, the easier it is release content they (and potential followers) can relate to. It’s also the fastest way to learn how to grow Instagram followers for business.
Final Thoughts on How to Grow Instagram Followers for Business
Now that you know how to grow Instagram followers for business, it’s time for you to put what you’ve learned into action.
The tips I gave you show how to grow Instagram followers for business. What’s more, they focus on getting you followers who are both real and targeted.
Let’s recap the tips briefly here:
- Upload lengthy videos.
- Ask your audience to engage.
- Go live more often.
- Be social.
- Use lengthy captions.
- Share more Stories.
- Focus on both quality and quantity.
- Partner with Influencers.
- Do your own testing.
If you execute all these steps, your Instagram following will be growing exponentially in no time!
Feel free to comment if you have any suggestions or questions concerning how to grow Instagram followers for business. You can also reach out if you need help with Instagram marketing for your business.
Be sure to also check out out this more comprehensive blog post: How to Market Your Business with Instagram And Get Results.
If you want help in building up the following for your social media accounts for business, feel free to contact me and we can talk about the different options we offer.
You can also check out Instagram Marketing Mastery by clicking here.
And always keep in mind… have fun!
By the way, if you need help in getting traffic to your website then feel free to contact me and we can talk about the different consulting options we offer. Or use the link below to apply for your “Results in Advance” free consultation and let’s get started right away:
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3. The Best Way to Use Instagram for Business
Author: Mike Marko
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