One thing to remember about Instagram growth strategy is that what works today is not guaranteed to work tomorrow. The algorithm is unforgiving. So the key is to keep up with trends. This way you don’t find yourself lost in all the noise and be a dead page after a year or two. Accounts built on trends are most susceptible to this consequence. However, there’s a simple fix for this. And this is to base your account on core Instagram growth principles. Thereafter you can leverage trends to accelerate your growth.
Many people admit that it’s difficult to grow on Instagram and it’s getting increasingly more difficult. So if you’re here to make your growth on Instagram in 2020, you’re in the right place. In this article you’ll find several different tips that you can supplement into your Instagram growth strategy to help you grow in 2020.
Did you know that you can grow on Instagram with the help of paid ads? If not, we are also going to delve into it in this article. We’re going to outline exactly how you can maximize your Instagram ads to gain followers.
Be sure to stick around till the end so that you don’t make any costly mistakes while doing so.
How Exactly Does Instagram Growth Strategy Work?
A Reuters report claims that over 95 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram every day on an average. This is surely not a low figure. And all these posts create, what we call, noise for marketers who are trying to grow on Instagram. So before setting yourself up for growth, first you need to set yourself apart from this noise. Otherwise your account/brand will accelerate toward the downward curve. If you want your brand to reach a potential audience, buckle up because the run-of-the-mill Instagram growth strategies will not take you far.
$1.80 Instagram Growth Strategy
Don’t let the name fool you. This growth strategy is completely free of cost. But you sure need to invest your attention and time for this strategy to do its trick.
This growth strategy was devised by Gary Vaynerchuck to take yourself away from the noise. It helps build a custom audience base and helps you grow with your potential/target audience in sight. The $1.80 strategy is all about building a community on Instagram, one which is engaging and active. You create micro connections from within the broader Instagram social circle and then build a community that is best suited to you. By that I mean, a community that shares in your interests, tastes and likes.
$1.80 In A Nutshell
Essentially, it’s following 10 hashtags on Instagram that are relevant to your brand, your liking or interest and adding your $0.02 (2 cents) to the top 9 posts of each hashtag. By $0.02, I mean, a meaningful comment or something that’s more than a “Nice pic!” or “Love the shades!” Just be a bit thoughtful. Leave these comments before you’re about to post something or during a specific time during the day. These algorithms of different platforms keep changing. So be sure to tap and know what’s working now.
An added bonus on Instagram is to make your stories more like short videos or engaging clips instead of posting selfies or boomerangs and so on. The basic point is to make sure your profile doesn’t fall into a rut. So if a person does check out your profile, they are likely to check your story and see that it’s not an average content.
Why $1.80? The name boils down to a basic equation: 10 hashtags multiplied by 9 tops posts where you leave $0.02 on each post. This gives us the figure $1.80 to build an Instagram community of your own.
But even for this Instagram growth strategy, you need to be consistent in your effort (at least 90 days). You won’t get immediate growth results but if you’re consistent, it gives you a good chance to grow on Instagram by even 5 to 10 times.
The trick is to be social on social media. Even Gary V stated that your Instagram following count doesn’t mean anything in reality if you don’t build a community out of it; a community of people who think like you, share the same interests as you or care and engage in similar stuff. Once your community is in place, you can target them to promote your brand, increase your customers. You can turn the community of like-minded people to become your followers at first using a number of techniques. We will get into that in a while. These followers are your potential customers or the evangelists who’ll carry forward your name. If you get through the first part of this Instagram growth hack, your work is cut to half for the next bit.
What Is This Engagement Custom Audience And Why Is It Important To Build Yours?
The previous portion elaborates how to chalk out your like-minded community of Instagram users. While going for this $1.80 growth strategy, you may ask, why is this important? The size of your custom audience stands for all those users you interacted with regarding your brand. This will include every detail. Starting from those who like your post/product to someone who saves it or shares it with another. However, this kind of interaction might not result in them following you instantly. There’s another step to turn these likes, shares or DMs into followers. Turning your custom audience into followers is important because they can turn into long-term customers. You surely don’t want to lose out on them.
There’s nothing to worry about. The ones who didn’t follow you are not gone forever. Here begins the use of ad sequences. You can create vibrant ad sequences on Instagram and target your custom audience to turn non-followers into followers and possible future customers. One thing to remember is that your content is above everything. So your ad needs to be alluring enough to draw these users to your profile and make them follow you for future references.
It’s a better growth strategy to take a shot at ads when you have your engagement custom audience ready. Otherwise you’ll just be aiming at nothing and your ad might get lost in the cold traffic. Moreover, it’s a technique where you stop your money from going down the drain. Targeting custom audiences for ad sequels saves a major percentage of your money for better results.
This is how the $1.80 strategy functions. If the basic gist is clear, let’s walk you through the technical details of the process.
Create Instagram Engagement Custom Audience:
For this, what we have done is create an arrow chain for you to follow up. Hope this makes it easier for you.
Go to Ad Manager> Audience dashboard> Click on Create Audience> Select Custom Audience.
Next, when the Create Custom Audience Window pops up, select Instagram Business Profile. Now, if you have more than one Instagram account, be sure to click on the right one. Following this, select everyone who has engaged with you in the past 365 days from the drop down box below. Choose a name for this community of audience and you’re good to go. To make it interesting you can note down the size when you’re starting out. This’ll help you track your growth after using the $1.80 Instagram growth strategy any time you like.
Go For Relevant Hashtags
After setting up your Custom Audience, you need to remember that you’re going for a target audience. So choose your hashtags accordingly. It’s a good Instagram post if the hashtags are on point.
Want to know some hashtag hacks?
Hashtags are really powerful. People tell you that it’s a good way to grow on Instagram. But nobody really tells you how to use them to actually gain from them. So here, we are going to give you a strategy on how to implement hashtags the right way.
Firstly, you need to do your Hashtag Research. Remember that when you’re looking for hashtags, be specific to your page, content and your niche. Now if you have a popular, trending or competitive hashtag in mind, that can be your starting point. Then you can narrow it down from there. While others might tell you to choose the most competitive hashtags, you should rather focus on their engagement velocity.
What is that now? Well, in simple words, you need to go look for the top 9 posts. This helps you to rank in hashtags. But hashtags work hand in hand with engaging content. If you have an attractive profile and you keep using the correct hashtag, your posts feature on your custom audience’s feed. This opens up a huge chance-gate for you.
Another thing to remember is that while the most trending or competitive hashtags are right in front of you, use the one which best suits you. If the hashtag is unrelated to your Insta-game, it can misdirect your account entirely. Therefore to avoid unnecessary spamming or to focus on your promotional strategy, use relevant hashtags.
Leave Your $0.02 To 9 Relevant Instagram Posts
This the most important bit in your Instagram growth strategy. After you find the relevant hashtags, go to the top 9 posts of each hashtag and leave your mark there.
What do I mean by that? Well, it’s extremely crucial that you leave your 2 cents to those posts. Engage with each post and not just mechanically leave a comment and leave. This will take some time daily but be sure to:
-Read the entire caption
-Compare the like and comments on the post versus the number of followers, i.e, check out their engagement rate.
-Go to their profile and check out their bio and other profile details.
Another thing to follow is that make sure not to leave emojis or one word comments to the relevant posts. The $1.80 growth strategy is nothing without you giving away a meaningful $0.02.
Some hacks to input a meaningful $0.02
We recommend you not to use emojis and one word exclamations. So what to do instead?
Firstly, you can share your own experience in the comment section. You can also go for some anecdotes that are relatable to the content/caption.
Secondly, you can engage by asking open-ended questions. Asking engaging questions has a greater probability of people getting back to your profile than talking about yourself in the comment section.
Thirdly, if you are to apply the $1.80 strategy, you need to keep in mind that it’s not about you. It’s about growing on Instagram and getting to connect and interact with a custom audience who can become potential customers. So, it’s best not to be a know-it-all. You have to let others put forward their perspective.
Monetize Your Efforts With An Ad Sequence
This is kind of the last step. Take a moment to revisit the steps by far. You’ll see now you have an engaged community of Instagram users and a set of custom audience who you can turn into your followers with the help of paid advertising.
Both are the best assets to grow on Instagram. The active community that you interact with will engage with your latest posts and give them better visibility because you’ve maintained interactions with them throughout. And the next asset can be turned into followers with engaging ads for $5 a day ad campaigns.
This is the best low-cost, effective Instagram growth strategy. This, in combination with your $1.80 strategy will change the face of your Instagram account for good. But make sure to target your custom audience with your ads or they run the risk of being lost in Instagram traffic.
Conclusion
There are other Instagram growth strategies as well but to set yourself apart, this strategy is known to be very effective. Other key elements are consistency, post and page quality, to increase engagement time, to post during the peak Instagram hour of the day, and so on. The content that you put out there needs to be alluring enough for these marketing strategies to work. If you combine all these elements, your Instagram growth is bound to be fast-paced and stable.
Check out these tips for the best Instagram growth strategy, 2020 and let us know if you found this useful.
