Currently we have 4.1 billion users online. It is expected 2 billion more users will join the internet by the end of 2022. The majority of them from developing countries like Brazil, China, India and Africa. There is a explosion in people within these areas who are now able to afford cheap smartphone technology which allows them to connect to the internet. This is Moore’s law at work. This means there is huge untapped potential online and Instagram is one of the biggest opportunities you should be focusing on.
Instagram as a platform has produced income opportunity for many. This has become the platform many people use to promote their products and services for free, using social media and to build a following. I know of very successful realtors, car salesman, insurance brokers and entrepreneurs who leverage Instagram to generate more leads for their businesses. This is why you should learn to take advantage of this platform. Another platform which has grown greatly is Tik Tok.
TIP: The job marketplace as we know it is shifting completely. Automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are eradicating a lot of jobs. Companies in the future will hire people based on their social media footprint and number of followers. They will also seek out people to do more mentally challenging tasks as discussed in the video above.
DISCLAIMER: The methods I’m about to share I learned from some of the best Instagram influencers. I have used these strategies to help friends and business owners grow their followers and organic reach on Instagram. I have not used them to grow my own account (YET) but I will leverage all of these in the future. If you do find this information to be helpful support with a simple follow or leave me a positive comment.
Note that to make this work is all about creating win/win situations. Sometimes the easiest way to join certain private groups and communities is to pay an small INVITATION FEE.
Hey by the way if you are a solopreneur and you are feeling burned out. Here is another post which can help you a lot. I share plenty of information and strategies which you can leverage to conquer the search engine rankings.
Here is the way to get more Instagram followers:
1- Find a set of hashtags which are relevant to your niche/instagram account.
2- Note that #’s with less impressions are easier to rank for. Less than 100k impressions is recommended.
3- Find (curate), or create excellent content which is relevant to the hashtags you want to target. You can use canva to edit pictures, create flyers or infographics. Also you can find and repost viral videos to do with your #’s and audience.
***Remember automation may get you banned.***
NOTE: Add captions to your videos. It helps substantially because often times people look at videos with sound off. Maybe they are at their job. Some may also have hearing problems.
For example:
Some people find pictures of the most influential celebrities like The Rock, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk… and to that picture they add relevant quotes those celebrities said using tools like canva.
The Rock on the road to success and greatness. Credit fearlessmotivation
In building an Instagram page like this, they are able to promote books of those iconic figures through affiliate programs and partnerships. In the process, generating income from affiliate sales. They can also charge people who are trying to become more influential to put a post on their Instagram page with their image and their favorite quote… creating value by featuring them as more influential.
The most clever Instagram entrepreneurs I know. Have built digital lifestyle portfolios in the way of websites (travel blogs), and Instagram pages about luxury travel and beautiful 5-star resorts located in remote beautiful islands and mega cities across the world. They also partner with other Instagram entrepreneurs in this space. The goal: to have as many followers as possible across multiple Instagram accounts in this niche and through their websites.
With this, they can leverage those digital assets and reach out to 5-star hotels located worldwide, and pitch them deals. Offering to advertise the superior experience of staying in the best VIP suites these upscale places have to offer.
In essence what they do is take high quality pictures of the resorts with good cameras. They may also record lifestyle based videos of the experience. More importantly, they share the pictures and videos in their websites and across the various Instagram accounts they own and those of their partners.
The power in this process is that a couple hundred dollars worth of value some of my Instagram friends provide to the 5-star resorts, results in thousands of dollars the house is willing to waive for them to stay. Some hotels are even willing to pay them, on top of giving them free access to the best suites.
The reason why they do this is to earn powerful backlinks from authority lifestyle blogs and also to increase exposure in Social Media channels which increase sales. Instagram is similar to a search engine so when a post made ranks for a hashtag it will continue to be seen and drive traffic indefinitely as long as the users keep searching for those #’s, and key terms. Solidifying your rankings is easier and faster if you use the method above.
NOTE: Travel companies also offer discount and deals to Instagram influencers, especially those who travel often and stay in great hotels. You could also leverage credit cards and earn miles and rewards to travel at very economical rates. If your reach is sufficiently big the hotel will even pay the airfare.
Some other ideas To Get More Instagram Followers:
1- On the name of the account you can use the two or three keywords you want to rank for
2- Use the section to describe the profile (BIO) to add more relevant keywords. Emojis used in this section DO RANK and drive traffic when users search for them.
3- Like and comment on the posts of other influential accounts in your niche. Their followers will find you and you help these accounts rank more and reach bigger audiences, which will also find and follow your page if the content is good. This also helps build relationships… so posting an add on the given page may cost you 1/10th of what the owner would charge other people ;). Leverage this. Good relationships are worth more than money.
4- Build your posts so that it encourages the target audience to leave likes and MORE IMPORTANTLY COMMENTS. Since comments are the hardest to produce search engines and social media platforms give them more weight as ranking signals.
5- The most popular and trending hashtags are not the best to target at the start. It’s too competitive. Target those once your account has lots of followers and produces hundreds of likes and comments consistently for your target niche.
6- The optimal number of hashtags to use PER POST is somewhere between 15 and 25. Using 60 hashtags produces diminishing returns and can be detrimental to your efforts.
7- Instagram is not like Twitter where you can post many times per day and see positive results. Habitually, post once or twice per day, or three times per week. Stick to your schedule consistently. You can use automation tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. Check this post for more Instagram tools. Post multiple pictures and videos at once if you have a lot of content to share. Otherwise release your content slowly during different days so you have more to share.
NOTE: Big influencers like Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, Dan Fleyshman and Gary V, document their day to day and this is some of what they post. This works best for PERSONAL BRANDS but you can use the same strategy for other verticals and niches. Take plenty of pictures and videos when you go to nice places and post the content on your pages later based on your posting schedule. This reminds me I need to go out more.
Also keep in mind, the most successful athletes, bodybuilders and celebrities in the fitness niche use the strategy above all the time. They cut down their body fat until their physique looks chiseled and ready for competition. That’s when they take 3 months worth of pictures to cycle in social media and on their websites. Even the best athletes find it hard to stay “picture ready” all year long, although photography tricks help a lot.
Be careful with the Instagram automation tools you use. There is great productivity technology out there which will autofollow and autolike users according to preset rules some of which are based on desired #’s you want to target. However the Instagram algorithm has become smarter at detecting bots. So I would recommend you to do everything manually. Or to find a virtual assistant to do this for you. This in order to minimize the risk of getting banned.
8- Instagram contests and giveaways are some of the best ways to reach bigger audiences and attract more followers. Post can become viral.
9- ***Join Instagram engagement groups***
NOTE: Instagram engagement groups do work but this is a GRAY HAT technique which can result in penalty. To avoid penalty some entrepreneurs have built Instagram engagement groups in forums outside of Instagram (OR FACEBOOK). They also use messaging apps Whatsapp and Telegram. The downside with this is that Instagram has deployed software which can examine where traffic and engagement is coming from. Your account can easily get flagged if all the traffic comes from the same places. Resulting in less organic reach and even being banned. I recommend you not to risk it or you may end up like Amazon’s top reviewers. (I was one of them). The best strategy is to share your Instagram pages with your friends, on meetups, and by word of mouth so the engagement is ORGANIC. Some day you can even sell it for thousands of dollars.
10- Producing your own layout and style for your Instagram page is really helpful. Your account gets noticed, remembered more, and more influencers would be willing to work with you to promote your projects and products/services.
11- ***You can buy followers for cheap***
NOTE: This is another of those techniques which can result in penalty. Is best to stay away from doing this because later on when you partner with companies to promote their products and services they will track results. If your posts produce little value you will lose the sponsorship and the company may leave a bad review if they found you through an influencer platform. This will make it much harder to succeed if your goal is to generate income and deals with the Instagram page you are growing to replace your job. Instagram looks at the raw engagement metrics your account generates as a percentage. If you want the feed to push you higher, is better to have less followers which engage more, than many who don’t interact.
12- Post excellent content ALWAYS packed with VALUABLE INFORMATION. Curate all your pictures and videos very carefully and think how the post will affect your target audience. Bad posts will lose you followers. Stick to your niche. This is how the account will rank for the keywords you target. Experiment with filters but don’t overuse them.
NOTE: Valuable information comes in various forms. Sometimes is powerful quotes that help your audience achieve their goals. Other times is humorous or educational content which reveals powerful information in the form of infographics or statistics.
13- Using geolocation helps you rank on Instagram. This strategy engages followers searching for places which are related to your niche.
Try all of this and also find more strategies you can use in other forums and websites on the web. I have given you what I have found to work best so far for my friends and business owners I have helped in the past. I may start using all of these strategies on my personal account but I prefer to stay low profile for now. If you learned something useful leave me a comment. Instagram is currently producing more impressions and engagement signals than Facebook. So is a huge business opportunity.
Until next time! I hope you learned something useful.
-Rey
PS: One of the most powerful ways to find influencers is by taking advantage of meetup groups. Check this podcast if you want to learn from someone who has launched multiple private label brands. Google and social media algorithms can easily detect review manipulation and traffic coming from groups online that trade likes, shares and comments. A practice which can be labeled spam or manipulative business practice. Meetup communities are passionate and meet in the real world. Producing positive and powerful ranking signals to grow brands.