When you’re building your business and your own brand, Instagram is THE social network of choice if you want to attract new customers (and retain your existing ones). We will see in 5 steps how to get Instagram followers quickly but more importantly … how to keep them?

Instagram, the ultimate social network for your business

Today (2021), the platform has more than one billion users each month and 90% of them follow at least one company! When a brand is born, it is therefore almost unthinkable for it not to be present on Instagram.

Your Instagram page is a real showcase and allows you to build a solid brand image: it’s an opportunity to share your news, to communicate on your graphic charter, to transmit your values, etc. It’s also on your page that you can share with your followers!

The 10,000 follower milestone is highly sought after by a startup: it shows that you’ve figured out the Instagram tricks and that you’ve been able to gain visibility over the long term. Here are the 5 steps to follow!

1) Stay true to your brand image

One of the most important things if you want to gain visibility and Instagram followers is to communicate your brand image well. To do this, you must establish a real graphic charter that you will follow as you post! In the same way, try to adopt the same tone on a large number of publications.

The important thing is to remain consistent! If your followers continue to follow you, it’s because they appreciate the whole universe you’ve built around your brand: they’ve gotten used to it and changing too many guidelines could lose them and make them unsubscribe… and that’s definitely not what we want here.

Small experiments can be done from time to time in order to introduce new types of posts, but it must remain light, otherwise you will not manage to keep your followers!

2) Be active and responsive

In order to keep your page alive, you need to be active on Instagram: go and like and share on other accounts than yours! It’s a great way to get noticed and quickly increase your following. You shouldn’t spam at the risk of having your account suspended, but interacting with other users frequently will help gain visibility.

When interacting with other pages, try to look for influencers in your field: observe their content, the hashtags used, the tone used etc.

Then, be responsive on your own page! Instagram is primarily a sharing platform; you should be able to respond quickly to comments or private messages. Today many brands are using Instagram as an after-sales / Q&A platform so don’t miss out on this aspect! If a customer requests you by private message, they should be able to receive a response within a day, otherwise they will probably unsubscribe. So it’s a daily job, but one that is very effective in getting Instagram followers and keeping them loyal.

3) Be organized

Although it may seem obvious, organization is the key! Don’t just post when you feel like it and because you’ve just created attractive visuals. You need to be able to plan your posts to ensure regularity, but also to post at the right times.

To do this, you can create a marketing publication calendar that lists all the highlights of the year that you can communicate around! For example, the beginning of the Euro soccer tournament allows you to push the communication and create a communication around the event (if your products are suitable of course). So stay on top of the news and information in your sector, it’s very important.

With this calendar, you’ll know when to post and what topics to cover. As for the Stories, you can also plan some of them according to the strong events of the year, but most of them are more « spontaneous ».

4) Play it straight

Today, brands and content creators are often accused of being « fake » because, on Instagram, everything can be transformed, improved, embellished. Don’t be afraid to be authentic: to do this, you need to create content that people can relate to!

Another way to get closer to your audience is to communicate (in Story for example) about the life of the company, who are its employees, how a day goes, etc. People love it when brands are transparent about how they do business. So, don’t hesitate, it will help to keep your customers loyal and to make them talk about you in a positive way on the networks!

5) Try a cross-channel communication strategy

It is crucial to promote your Instagram account on your other social networks and vice versa! You need to create a real synergy between your networks and communication channels, in order to reach the maximum audience possible.

For example:

• Put photos from your Instagram feed in your newsletter,
• Include your social networks in your email signature,
• Make a « Shop My Instagram » page on your website, where viewers can find your feed and buy products they’ve seen on Instagram,
• List your other social networks in the bio on each of them

IF you follow these steps, you should get Instagram followers very quickly (the famous 10,000 followers), but more importantly you should manage to keep them in the long run, and that’s the most important thing! Your goal should be to build a solid and loyal audience base.

Besides, this is why buying fake followers is a very very bad idea: it doesn’t allow you to have a qualified and qualitative audience and will certainly not allow you to develop your brand quickly on Instagram. Building an engaged audience takes time and patience. But, if you apply all these tips the result will be very quickly!

It is a tedious work and for which it is necessary to be present at 200%; if the time misses you you can be made accompany, in order to create an effective and coherent strategy. This is what I can offer you at Pierre Videau Community Management, so don’t hesitate to contact me!

In future articles we will look at influencer marketing or creating an Instagram Business page, to help you better understand the workings of the platform!