I've read a lot of articles about booting followers on Instagram and have been following the recommendations. Mainly those about being more interactive like commenting on more pictures and liking other pages. It did help, but only to a certain extent. Any other tips? Maybe about posting at certain times or using the right hashtags? Here's a link to my IG as a reference.
Correct, posting at certain times would of course help, plus perfect choosing of hashtags. I'm not success story of IG yet but that is my goal and from what I see if you post at peak times where more of your followers look at the image than other less peak times can increase in likes on images which I think helps being seen by others more.
Great question! Having built somewhat of a strong following on Instagram myself over the last couple years the best tips I can give people is continue to post interesting and engaging content. It seems silly and super simple but it works the best. The smaller details of course make a large impact as well like commenting, liking and following accounts you find great. Striking up a conversation rather than just saying "great shot" is also a big one. Make relationships and connections via the app and even push to meet some folks in your own community to build your following.
With over 24,000 followers it may not be the biggest on Instagram but its what I do with it that counts. Making it my own and bringing my life to the world in a fairly basic area of the States is my own. Good ole Indiana! Hashtags is a great one too. Only using pertinent ones and keeping them few. Like Chris says timing is key as well. I post in the morning and afternoon when I know folks are coming home from work or on the way. That will boost the views up and in tern likes. The more likes and comments the more likely others will see that in the news feed of friends.
In the end make it your own and something people want to come back to see. Check out Iconosquare.com and see your stats a bit more on what is the most liked and brings the most comments. The best engagmment is going to bring the most out of it so be sure to maximize on your strengths.
Follow along on Instagram at
https://Instagram.com/the_gris/
and of course feel free to ask me questions here more and there! Always willing to help out!
Andrew- Thanks for the detailed reply. I've been on the fence with hashtags. I notice that photographers with big followings don't bother with them so much but with more up and coming photographers we're jamming them in like crazy. I've also got on iconosquare very helpful.
I'll push to add more of a convo then great shot but it does get tiring after seeing commenting on some many pictures. I'll keep at tho. thanks
Its probably 60-40 shooters not using them to not using them. I have collected a large amount of simple community tags that I jsut keep adding to the mix and add when I remember is all. I am still pretty small time and it makes a slight difference. The commenting on and making an effort to building a community is the hardest part and most time consuming part BUT its important to grow. I usually just find 1 hour solid per week or maybe 15 minutes per day to just sit back and go crazy with comments, likes and conversations with various folks to spark something. Seems less overwhelming and you have a time limit allocated to it all.
Thats good advice. I'm going to start putting away pockets of time throughout my week to focus on social media marketing. Maybe also allow more synergy between all my accounts will help as well.
A hashtag trick that I've noticed (and I see that Andrew does it as well), is to not put any hashtags in your picture's caption, then post a comment on your picture with all your hashtags. That way, once other people comment, Instagram will move your hashtag comment off your post's first page, to the "view all XX comments," essentially hiding all your tags.
I've actually never thought of that. For some reason I was under the impression that if I didn't put the hashtags in the pictures comment instagram wouldn't pick it up. but I realize that I've never read anything that backs that up. will start trying it tho
Hashtags are like a double-edged sword: the more you use, the more exposure you get, but using too many looks a bit desperate. At least with this method, you sort of get the best of both worlds. You just need some comments from other people to "hide" your tags. Just a few comments should do it.
This is actually a solid technique and I see many of the instafamous accounts and pros implementing it (I do as well). It's a great way to get the reach from hashtags without dirtying up your feed and just like Jon says, if you get a few comments (I think its 5) including your commenting back, the hashtags get hidden. I've also seen accounts use the 30 hashtags in their description as well as in the comments. It's a way to maximize reach if you don't mind the sight of hashtags, and I don't know that I've seen many people complain about it on the feeds I follow that utilize this technique (though I don't personally like tons of hashtags in my description). I've definitely seen accounts with similar following count as me get 2-3 times more likes on their images when they have hashtags in their description AND comments, though that could be due to other factors such as style, quality, engagement, etc as well.
TLDR: This technique is used by many pro instagrammers and is great!
Good article and sound advises you've got here, thanks for sharing guys ;) But there's a thing that seem to be missing, no one ever mentioned any third-party applications, but as it is known to me, every business uses them apps very actively. It's vital to know your followers interests, so a statistical app like iconosquare is an absolute must-have. Less important apps like postso.com (scheduling posts on different social media including facebook, twitter and many others, it's helpful in what Chris Adval said) and fast-unfollow.com (bulk unfollowing up to 5k users per day) won't do that much for improvement, but they save a lot of time that could've been spent on boring routine actions. And thanks Barrett for the hashtag trick, never thought about it. But will Instagram scan the tags that went to "view all" section?
Has anyone figured out a way to track the incoming engagement from specific hashtags? Obviously it would be very valuable to know which hashtags are pulling in the most engagement and use that information to shape a solid 30 hashtag group for categories of images. Aside from the "popular" hashtags that get tracked, I haven't heard much about this being done.
I use Iconosquare.com. they have an engagement and optimization tab where they show all the hashtags you've ever used and which ones are the most popular. it is pretty useful but at the same time I wonder if hashtags are popular because of how may people "use" them vs how many people actually "view/search" them. either way its a useful feature.
they also have graph of the week and time of day and shows when "your" media is most effective and when it generates the most engagement from likes and comments.
I also use Iconosquare for statistics but I'm pretty sure that hashtag tool it just compares your hashtags to the "most popular" hashtags in use and shows you how often YOU use that hashtag. The hashtag becomes bold if it matches a "popular" hashtag and grows in size the more you use it. The time graph is crazy useful though.
I tend to agree with many recent articles and opinions from instagrammers with large followings, to limit the amount of "popular" hashtags used because it is over saturated and your image has a good chance of being pushed way down in that feed before people have a chance to see it. I do mix in a few popular ones but try to isolate my hashtags to specific smaller tags that are relevant to the content of my image.
What I'm looking for is a metric on the count or summation of engagements brought in by specific hashtags. Ex. #darkwingduck brought in 32 likes while #snooki brought in 2.
I get what your saying now. and thanks for clearing up my confusion about iconosquares hashtag tool. I don't think anyone has figured out how to track that yet. it would be insanely helpful.
Great business idea!! You'd surely become an instant app-millionaire with that idea! Also, great reference with darkwingduck!!!
Since this post I wanted to share a bit more even though I still have a lot to learn and grow my following I thought it may work for you. I post 1-2 times every day, sometimes during peak times for overall system of instagram and sometimes non-peak times where some of my audiences may be awake like late at night. Other things it would depend on your goals and branding of your business, for myself I want to be an international photographer so using a ton of hashtags relevant and location based like I use my state, city, region, as well very popular cities like LA, NYC, etc. I love to travel, and if I get enough following in that city and get booking from that city I will make the trip without thought. I also created an entirely different user name just for my local business targeted to local residents/markets as they see different work than my other account being all of my work and targeted to a world-wide/US audiences.
I've been using a lot of the tips here and have been growing my following and have noticed much more traffic on my instagram (likes and comments) I've also been playing around with different hashtags and making it work. don't really post overnight tho but I have been thinking of trying it.
yea a lot of those artist type individuals are wide awake either working their art work or business like I do my retouching and marketing designs at night after my day job.
thats a good point I didn't think of that. thanks