Be Engaging & Be Genuine with Your Engagements on Social Media.
I’m so excited to share these simple & easy social media tips with you guys to step up your Instagram game without paying for advertising. Yes, you can grow your social media following organically by being Engaging & Genuine.
If you have a business account on Instagram, do me a quick favor. Go to your Instagram profile and check your profile visits at the top of your page. Want to boost up those profile views? You definitely should and set the bar higher each week. Have you adventured through your IG INSIGHTS ?! This is FREE info provided to you through IG that you can use to track and measure your post reach. Yes, I said it. Social media can be trackable and you can create your own spreadsheets to track your pages progress... did I lose some of you? Something tells me this calls for a separate future blog :)
Let's cut to the action! To create a buzz around your newest post, boost profile views, and turn viewers into followers, it's going to take some natural traction. How do you accomplish this? I’ll give you some pointers!
Research Hashtags
Don’t know how to research hashtags? I got you.
Go to the search bar under the magnifying glass icon on your IG homepage and simply type in KEY WORDS relating to your industry in the TAGS section. Once you pop in a key word, it will show how many posts have been created under each # and keep the highest trending # at the top. For example, for you beer lovers- When you search under #sdbeer it shows it has 258k posts under that hashtag. You can click on the hashtag and see all of the awesome posts people have shared. You can also view the feed based on Top trending or Recent posts. Another popular hashtag is #craftbeer with 21.7m posts! But What does all of this mean? This means there are people all over the insta-world that have used those specific hashtags in their posts and they can all be discovered in just one place/under one search. It's pretty magical and awesome when you break it down. This is a great research tool!
The point in researching hashtags is to utilize the higher trending hashes in your posts to bring people to your post and eventually to your page.
Keep searching highest trending hashtags that relate to your industry and to the content of your post. This will up the chances of your post visibility.
After you've searched #'s add them to the caption of your post or add them as a comment to your post. I'll share a secret on how I save time doing this as you read on :)
Instagram is evolving into it's own search engine and rather than using Yelp for restaurant reviews, foodie pics, etc... you've got people looking up hashtags to see what's trending or what's happening under that # in general! Businesses have even caught onto creating their own catchy hashtag phrase so their followers can trace that hashtag back to their business. This is that all natural traction your page is creating. You can even search via PLACES on Instagram. So if a customer has checked into your place of business, there will be posts in the feed created by people who posted and pinned their location. This all serves as free advertising for your business, so highly encourage your customers to tag you and use your company's hashtag if you made one!
I believe Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post so go crazy if you want! Maximize your post reach with hashtags. Here's my secret... If I know I’ll be posting something beer related, I’ll pop up a group of beer minded hashtags that I’ve saved from my notepad on my iPhone, then copy and paste them into my IG post as a comment. Then I’ll add or edit #’s from there to make sure they are still related to the content of my post. Doing this is a super duper time saver too! So if you know you have specific content for your business like food pictures, you can prep ahead of time and always be ready for a post. And if anyone has easier ways of doing this I am all ears:)
Are you guys ready to kick it up a notch? After dropping in your hashtags and the likes start to stream in, you may notice you are receiving likes from pages that you might not already follow. Yes, you guessed it! Tap the follow button on their pages to simply nod that, "Hey, I noticed you like my post, you should follow me back." Especially if they appear to be a target customer or someone with similar interests. This goes right into engagement.
Engaging
So you've just liked a potential followers page... Step it up even more and give their page some love by going on a liking spree! Like their photos and leave some comments to spark a conversation. That is how you start organically engaging! If you're going about this genuinely, it can create a cause and effect. You will gain some new followers and create genuine connections with those followers all while leading natural traction to your page.
It doesn’t stop there though. A Social Media Manager’s job is never done! :) When people are leaving comments on your posts on your page, respond! Especially if they are asking questions. Don’t leave your followers hanging. A response in a timely manner goes a long way. Even if it’s a simple emoji response.
By taking action and investing the time, you can create major buzz around your posts and even get them trending on the main search page. But more importantly, you are creating connections with your audience and building your social media following naturally. Remember to always be Engaging & Genuine and you will attract the right people to your business pages.
