If you have a business or a brand, marketing to the right people is both easier and more important than ever. Gone are the days of direct mail, phone calls and even email spam. Today, with social media, marketers have a unique opportunity to reach their targets directly and engage them in a real and impactful way.

Instagram is one of, if not the best social media platform to reach your target market. There are over 1 billion people worldwide who use the photo and story sharing platform. With those types of numbers, marketing to your followers on Instagram is an incredibly efficient and rewarding way to build your brand.

In order to market yourself or your company on Instagram you first need followers and to have that marketing pay off, you need the right followers. Here I will explain how to get the right followers on Instagram, so that you can take your brand to the next level.

1. Have the Right Interactions

Building your social media presence is all about interactions. People follow accounts that are active and post and interact with the same types of accounts that they do. To build the right Instagram following you need to interact with other people, companies, and brands that are in the same category that you are.

The more people see you interacting with accounts they are interested in, the more likely they are to follow you. Make sure you like, post and comment on pages of both your target audience and the pages that you aspire to be.

Keep the interactions targeted and on message as well. If you are looking to market some type of cosmetics, for example, don’t spend your time interacting with posts about football. I know this sounds simple but many people get lost in the vast expanse of Instagram. You need to stay focused as a marketer on making interactions about your message because that is what will help you build the right following on Instagram.

2. Have the Right Hashtags 

Yes, hashtags are sometimes silly and have become the butt of late-night jokes but for a marketer, hashtags are vital. Hashtags allow users to click on them and see similar posts using the same hashtags. For example, if you were again trying to build a cosmetics brand, you would hashtag a post with something like #eyeliner. If an Instagram user clicked on that, they would see all the other posts that used the same hashtag. The great thing though is that if they click on that hashtag from a major cosmetics brand, they would see yours come up as well. 

This is why it is important to use the right hashtag in order to gain the right followers on Instagram. While creating your own hashtag is good and can lead to growth down the line, to gain followers now you want to use targeted and popular hashtags. Take a look at your competitors or similar pages to see what hashtags they are using. If you use the same hashtags as pages you believe have the right type of followers for you, those followers will be able to find you more easily.

3. Follow the Right People 

Unless you are an ultra-famous celebrity, you probably will not have a follower/following ratio of 1 million to 1. In order to get follows you need to give follows. By following people in the same space as you and who have the same interests, you will start to build the right following on Instagram.

It’s not just the big players in the space you want to follow either. Take a look at the people who (like you now) are active and engaged with the companies, people and brands you are looking to emulate. If you can’t get their attention through engagement, you may be able to by giving a follow. Most people tend to follow back Instagram pages they see have similar interests.

4. Target Followers who Follow the Right Accounts

 Another way to gain the right Instagram followers is to target the followers of other accounts that are in the right space. If you have a competitor or an Instagram page you are trying to be similar to, go after their followers.

 You can use the strategies above to target very specific people who have already demonstrated an interest in your market. If they follow a similar page, they are likely to follow your too if you can demonstrate value. After you identify who these people are, engage them on Instagram with likes and comments or follow them to get a quality follower in return.

“I’ve been using Gainsta’s Automation software for about a year now, I’m nearly at 200,000!”

 

Verified Gainsta User @franktobinuk

5. Be Consistent

This last tip may be the most simple but also, the most important. How many times have you gone to an Instagram page or a website’s blog and seen that they have posted in 12 days or 6 weeks or 9 months? This happens a lot and it turns people off to those pages. To gain the right followers on Instagram you need to be consistent with your posting. 

This doesn’t mean spamming posts out there every 20 minutes. There is no right answer to exactly how often you should post but for the sake of consistency, posting at least daily is a good idea. Keeping up engagement with regular posts will show the right type of followers that you are a valuable Instagram page. 

There are also times that are better than others to post to get engagement and draw followers. Depending on what you are marketing and where will determine when these times are. Do some trial and experimentation to figure out what the best times are to post and then consistently post during those windows to boost your followers.

Summary

Marketing on social media platforms can be a lot of work but, ultimately will be incredibly rewarding for you and your company or brand. If you follow these simple tips you can grow your Instagram following in the right way. Interacting with pages and posts, using hashtags, following and interacting with the right type of followers and being consistent will help you and your Instagram page grow into a marketing powerhouse!