Today’s blog is a special guest post by Megan Arevalo from Website Buildr.org, the authors of the excellent infographic 139 Facts about Instagram to be aware of in 2017

Since Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 the social media platform has slowly become more accessible to business owners and marketers. Websitebuilder.org new Instagram Facts report reveals that almost half of brands now have a profile and half of the network’s user base follows at least one business. There’s no better time to leverage its 300 million daily active users.

A successful Instagram marketing strategy must be able to gain targeted followers and convert existing followers into customers. Methods for both of these goals overlap, but growing your number of followers should be given more weight in the beginning. Then fun contests and other campaigns can be utilized to get your followers to take action.

Here are 5 tried and tested ways of getting users to click follow on your profile.

1. Hashtags and Emojis

If you just publish posts without including hashtags or emojis in the caption, you are limiting the potential for users to see it. This is because hashtags and emojis are searchable by anyone. For example, if you run a restaurant and post a photo of a scrumptious menu item, using the popular hashtag #foodporn will make the post visible to all users following and searching this tag.

Likewise, a professional photographer or even a camera retailer might use the camera emoji in their posts and bio page to appear in searches for this symbol.

2. Interact With Others

The name social media implies being social and this is especially important if you want to gain followers. Exactly how you approach this may depend on your type of business and its industry, but liking, commenting on and even re-sharing (with credit and a tag back) other people’s posts is a great way to get noticed – especially if you have insight and expertise to add to the discussion.

The simple act of following others will also prompt many to follow you back.

3. Geotargeting

If your business has a localized presence or you make a post from a certain location, using the geotagging feature (like hashtags and emojis) allows users looking at the map and following those locations to find you. Likewise, you can even have your business listed as a geotag able location if you have created it on Facebook. Simply create a new post and enter your own custom location.

4. Spend Some Money

Social media is an invaluable tool to grow your audience for free and organically, but businesses should still be prepared to spend an advertising budget. Instagram now has several advertising options that allow you to target its users based on all sorts of demographic options. Over 500,000 businesses are already promoting their posts and the company claims that 70% of campaigns have generated conversions.

5. Video Has Best ROI

What you post obviously has a big impact on whether people will want to follow your account. Data suggests that video content has the highest return out of any other post formats, so if you’re only posting images it’s time to get more creative.

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