Instagram is one of the social media platforms with the most daily active users. No wonder you want, if not have, to be present on this visual jungle. But Instagram, as it turns out, is not an easy platform to succeed on. Of course, you can post pretty pictures and fun videos, but good content alone is not enough. Not anymore.
With all the so-called influencers, brands, fake bots and algorithm changes, Instagram is a hard one to tackle. But there are ways to still grow your presence on the platform and the first one I want to discuss is to engage beyond borders.
What does that mean?
Instagram is all about engagement. If you want to grow, you’ve got to invest time and effort. (Don’t have the hours to do so? Hire Tremento as your social media partner) You need to actively be present on the platform and react to, like, follow and engage with not only your current followers, but also potential followers.
Your potential followers can be found by hitting up your competition’s social media accounts. Scan through their posts and start engaging with the people that are liking and commenting on their content. Respond to their photos, follow them, give them a like, refer to your own account. Be sure to be not too commercial. Just be there.
You could do this by first just liking 3 photos, then the week after responding to one of their pictures. Maybe you could even follow up by sending a DM the week after that – but that’s up to you.
Keep usernames in an excel list to keep track of your work. This way you can get a clear overview of who actually followed you back, who didn’t and who’s now actively engaging with your content.
How to find my competition?
Luckily, this one’s easy. Just visit your profile page with your own personal Instagram account. Hit the little arrow next to ‘following’ (‘volgend’ in Dutch), and a list of accounts will appear. You can do the same thing with those accounts after you’ve followed them. So look at the suggestions Instagram gives based upon your own account, and then at the suggestions it gives you after liking one of those.
What numbers should I aim for?
In order to stay off everyone’s spam radar, I’d recommend to follow no more than 100 new accounts a day. Since I highly recommend doing this manually and investing time in liking, commenting and engaging with the content of the new people you follow, I’d even say no more than 30 to 40. Actively engage with them, and don’t unfollow the next day.
In terms of ‘liking posts’, you can go pretty crazy. However, it is recommended to spread your Instagram activity out over the day. So maybe you can log in and like relevant posts like 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon and 20 minutes in the evening.
Evidence Please
Using this exact method, we’re currently growing the Instagram accounts of our clients De Koffieschenkerij and Bistro Bon. By actively being engaged with their (potential) followers, we’re getting over 20 new followers a day. But what’s way more important is the huge increase in engagement and actions on our page. See the examples below. And oh: this is only the start.
On Thursday the statistics for De Koffieschenkerij were lower than the 3 days in advance: I didn’t have time to work on the engagement on Thursday. So the increased engagement that’s still visible is a result of Monday – Wednesday.
I started using the same technique as I did for De Koffieschenkerij for Bistro Bon one day later. Again, the results are clearly visible. Remember: this is all about actively getting engaged with potentially interested guests. Liking, commenting, following, reacting, responding. And so on.
I don’t have time to like and follow such an amount of people
Well, you just need to get a system in place. And that’s exactly what we’ll help you do when you are a member of our Tremento Tribe Membership. This membership will help you to get things streamlined and improved. You’ll get a personal success coach which will guide you to become better and better and better, on your own. No more hiring graphic designers or ad companies: we will teach you how to do it, on your own, and give you plenty of content ideas to never get stuck on creating new posts!
So, do you need help to incorporate Instagram into your business? Then you’ve come to the right address. Tremento offers social media management, strategies and content consulting. Besides that you can hire me at any time as a photographer, videographer, webdesigner or graphic designer for your hospitality business. Interested? Let’s get in touch!
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I’m trying my very best to put out content that helps you, the owner, designer of manager of a hospitality brand, to bring your business to the next level. All posts on Tremento are created with hospitality brands specifically in mind. Articles talk about practical tips and inspiration for social media, design, photography and more.
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