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Get More Instagram Followers In 2017

  • Alex Wilsher
  • Feb 10, 2017
  • 4 min read

If you’re looking to increase your followers and engagement on Instagram, you need a foolproof strategy in order to get there. Posting and engaging with others aimlessly without strategy will garner you zero attention, so what now?

We’ve mapped out a little strategy for you so you can increase your Instagram follower count and gain massive attention.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

1. How To Gain More Followers And Engagement

2. How To Create/Find Great Content

3. How To Best Use Hashtags

#1 | How To Gain More Followers and Engagement

In efforts to gain more followers and engagement on Instagram, a lot of people put in a lot of time to follow an excess amount of people and somewhat engaging with others. What you want to avoid doing is following more people than people are following you. If you do this, two things are going to happen:

  1. You’re going to come off as spammy and no one will pay attention to you.

  2. People will only reciprocate and follow you back because you followed them, not because they’re interested in your page.

“Know thyself, and know thy enemy.” - Sun Tzu

How does this translate to modern day pop culture?

Know your strategy and analytics, and know your competitors strategy and analytics.

You can study anybody’s Instagram analytics by using this (free) neat analytics tool: www.fanpagekarma.com

Feel free spy on us: @chad_lamontagne / @alex_wilsher

Here’s a part of our strategy:

  • Go through the homepage (this will show you posts from those you’re following).

  • Like roughly 100 photos here - this should take you about 10 minutes.

  • This will usually average out 3-4 follows per 100 likes on the homepage.

We found that by posting a photo immediately afterwards garners the best result.

Next we go to our competitors page, and engage with their followers.

  • You’ll want to engage with 100-150 of their followers from top-down.

  • Go into one of their followers profiles.

  • Like their first post - this is what we call the “soft spot”; this is their most recent post and they’re likely looking for results more so on that one than any other.

  • Like their 3rd, 4th, or 5th post.

  • Rinse and repeat till you’ve done this on 150 of your competitors followers profiles.

  • Go back to the top of the followers list, and begin following every single profile you engaged with.

This usually garners 10-20 (sometimes as high as 40-50) new followers, and plenty of engagement on our posts!

WARNING! The only way these strategies will work is if you put in the work, and stay consistent. You must be consistent every single day.

For the best results, thank anybody who comments on your posts - this activates reciprocation. Don’t forget though, you need to be consistent because only 46% of Instagram users will reciprocate. (It doesn’t hurt to go the extra mile and like all of the comments and reply directly to the most valuable comments).

After about an hour of employing these methods and giving Instagram time to cool down, we’ve found going into the profiles of those who liked our most recent post and liking/engaging/following them also garners result.

#2 | How To Create/Find Great Content

There are two types of content:

  1. USG (User Generated Content)

  2. OC (Original Content)

The best ways to find great content (USG) is simply by going through your home page, the hashtags you post, your competitors profiles, etc. and look for great content that’s relevant to your niche. Simply screen shot the post, crop it (or regram it) and add it to your content arsenal.

Remember to give credit to the user who initially posted the content, if their handle is in the photo you’re good to go.

You can also find trending content here: www.web.instamate.com

Now, if you have a creative mind, there are plenty of free tools out there you can use to create unbelievable content like:

  • Word Swag (Android)

  • Font Candy (iOS)

  • InstaQuote

Another great tool we like to use is www.canva.com : This tool is so extremely versatile and has so much to offer in terms of creating amazing content.

Don’t forget to be consistent, Chad Lamontagne said “if you can’t post twice a day, post once a day - if you can’t post once a day then quit, get off Instagram”.

#3 | How To Best Use Hashtags

Hashtags are easy peasy.

If you’re building a business brand you just need 3 hashtag categories:

1. Product Category Hashtags:

2. Brand Category Hashtags:

3. Location Specific Hashtags:

As for personal brands, you just need 20-30 hashtags relevant to your niche, whether you’re doing lifestyle, motivation, self-help, luxury, music, etc.

You can feel free to steal our hashtags if your niche is self-help / motivation or use these to model your hashtags (visit our Instagrams and check the comments ;))

To wrap this all up, we have one last tip for you.

Rather than posting your hashtags within the caption of your post - comment your hashtags on your post after about 3 minutes of posting that piece of content.

 
 
 

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