Over the years Instagram has become an established social media platform with nearly one billion users and is the second-largest social media network. Instagram’s rapid growth has led to it being adopted by individuals, businesses, and brands as a place to deliver marketing content to their audiences. The advantage Instagram has over its competitors such as Facebook is its engagement rate which is multiple times greater than other social media networks. The sheer number of users and their regular activity creates the perfect outlet for marketing and selling content, products, and services. The success of an Instagram marketing campaign depends on several factors, these include creating a thorough plan and ensuring the content is regular, relevant, and interesting.

Creating a personal or business Instagram account and filling out your profile is simple, however, if you want to amass thousands of followers and monetize your Instagram then you have to put in hours and hours of work. Fortunately, here is a list of seven hacks and tips to help you out.

1. Use Apps To Get Instagram Likes

Although it may seem a little bit like cheating, buying Instagram likes and even engagement can be a real boost to how your Instagram performs as it guarantees an increase in comments, followers, and likes. Deciding to get automatic likes for Instagram is a convenient and most importantly fast way to grow your Instagram audience if you already have plenty of content ready to post. When buying Instagram likes it is worth considering how the company you buy them from will deliver the service. Will all the likes arrive at once? Will they be spread out over different posts periodically? These are important questions because ideally, you want your Instagram growth to look natural. Some companies selling Instagram engagement give the option of spreading out likes and comments over posts, additionally, the process can be automated so that likes are dispatched when new content is posted.

2. Target Your Audience

An essential component of any Instagram marketing campaign strategy is a comprehensive understanding of the target audience. If you don’t know the wants and needs of your existing and potential followers then you will struggle to make content that they find engaging. One technique employed by marketers is creating social media personas, which are fictional profiles of your ideal customers. When making a social media persona you should detail the demographics, wants, needs, attitudes, personalities, and pain points of a target customer. The information provided by a target customer profile is crucial for an effective content strategy, as the preferences of the target customer should feed into the content.

3. Research Your Competition

Spending a bit of time identifying and researching your competition’s Instagram audience will provide you with much-needed insights into the demographics and tastes of your target audience. Getting hold of audience insights from competitors can be relatively simple if you use programs such as Phlanx Influencer Auditor which will create a detailed report of their follower base including locations, ages, and rates of engagements.

4. Use Specific and Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags should not be used randomly and sporadically if you want to gain more followers. The most effective hashtags are specific to the interests and likely keywords users will use to search or browse on Instagram. Adding relevant hashtags related to areas of interest or even something quite niche to your content can help you target your audience and differentiate yourself from competitors. Furthermore, getting into the habit of tagging every post according to its theme or type of content will provide an organized catalog of your content to refer back to later.

5. Write Descriptive Captions

Even though Instagram is predominantly focused on visual content as photos and videos are the fastest way to get a message across, that doesn’t mean you should ignore and skip captions completely. An interesting caption that tells a story or is amusing will increase the chance of getting more comments, likes, and shares.

6. Use Calls To Action

There is more to monetizing Instagram than posting content and building a following, to make sales on Instagram you need to use calls to action. A call to action is the process of pitching your product or service to your followers and explaining to them why they may need or want it. For a call to action to work, it must convince users to act. Calls to action can be included in your profile and content by adding ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Shop’ buttons to sponsored adverts or posts of products and placing contact buttons in your profile and posts.

7. Partner With Influencers

Incorporating influencers into your Instagram campaign can be an effective way to grow your audience. When considering this, you should ensure the influencers are working in the same niche as you and that they have a following in the thousands. You can then contact them and ask how they would like to work together, whether it be paid or cross-promotion. Instagram is a great way to reach your audience and drive sales, but gaining a large following and being able to monetize your Instagram can take a long time. Fortuitously for the millions of budding Instagram marketers, there are several ways to save time and get thousands of followers faster.