3 Quick Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram

We don’t do a good job of using Instagram at our office.  And if you check out our page, you’ll see we’re still WAY behind where we should be.  Part of my job at Tag Team is to improve the digital marketing efforts for the firm and for our clients.  A client recently came to us for help promoting their video and image site and I was forced to jump into the deep end of the pool and learn about Instagram by doing it.  Though we’re still just barely scratching the surface I’ve learned a couple of things already.  Here are my first 3 lessons in getting more followers (aside from posting, which should be obvious):

1. Use Popular TagsLike Twitter, Instagram has the #hashtag system and certain tags are more popular than others.  When you use these tags, you instantly show up among photos with the same tag and in front of the people searching those tags.  Here are the top 10 tags as of this morning:1.#love
   2.#instagood
   3.#me
   4.#tbt
   5.#follow
   6.#cute
   7.#photooftheday
   8.#followme
   9.#tagsforlikes
   10.#happy
2. Make an Effort to CommentThere is an old saying in business that goes, “People do business with people they know, like and trust.”  If we were to rephrase this for Instagram it’d go something like, “People like, comment and follow those who like, comment and follow them.”  Don’t fall into the Ronco trap of “Set it and forget it”.  Be active on Instagram and make an effort to leave comments. These stats are a little dated but they show that Instagram users leave 575 “likes” every second to only 81 comments.  How will you stand out and start getting more followers and engagement?  By commenting (and then following) others.
3. Don’t Worry About TimingYou’ll find different studies out there that talk about the “perfect” time to post to get the most likes.  Most of that data is based on peer-to-peer data and not business-to-consumer data.  If you look at other companies posting to Instagram, you’ll see that they average about 16 interactions per 1,000 followers no matter what time of day or day of the week they post.  The lesson to learn?  Just post!

What lessons have you learned?  What would you like to share?