Create an Instagram Following for Your Small Business is always unique idea. Growing a small business and taking it to the next level is what every entrepreneur seeks. There are many digital marketing tools that help you achieve this goal, Instagram being one of them. Over the years, Instagram has proven to be a powerful visual channel for building brand awareness and a loyal audience that really responds. With more than 500 million users logging into Instagram every day, the social media platform continues to help small businesses of all kinds increase their reach.
With this kind of potential, it is no wonder entrepreneurs are so keen on building a following on Instagram. In addition, when it comes to rates of interaction, it is known that Instagram offers much better results. In a Forrester study, the average engagement rate of brands on Instagram was found to be nearly 60 times higher than that of the social media giant Facebook.
Post at the Right Time
Getting your content seen by as many people as possible should be high on your agenda when marketing on Instagram. Not just because you want exposure, but also because you want more actions that lead to more followers. Creating an Instagram following for your small business becomes easier when you post at the right time.
So when is the best time to post on Instagram? According to Later, these are the top 3 global moments to post on Instagram for each day of the week. However, given the fact that every Instagram account is different with a different audience, you still need to find your best time to post. The idea here is to schedule your Instagram posts at a time when a large number of your followers are online. Below are two proven ways to calculate the best time to post on Instagram.
Find out When your Followers are Online
Take the guesswork out and find out the optimal time to post on Instagram by checking Instagram Insights, a feature that allows you to analyze your audience’s activity.
Experiment with Different Publishing Times
If you do not want to rely solely on analytics, you can start experimenting yourself. All it takes is a simple spreadsheet to keep track of the hours / days your content gets the most engagement. Your goal is to track the number of likes and comments your content receives.
When analyzing your analytics, you need to clearly understand in what period your followers are active, use Instagram follower tracker for this purpose. For example, let us say, you are mostly online between 2pm and 5pm PST; you can schedule your posts on this media. Keep changing the times weekly to experiment. After a month or two, you will have the necessary data to help you select the best times / days to post on Instagram to get more engagement and website traffic.
Post New Content Consistently
The type of content you post on Instagram shows potential followers what to expect if they choose to follow your account. However, when they see that you consistently post content, they will be much clearer and safer to follow you.
Creating an Instagram following becomes so much easier when you make a consistent effort to post relevant content. Compared to all other social media platforms, Instagram is known to have the best engagement levels, and that is something you could use to your advantage.
When someone follows your brand on Instagram, they are doing it, connecting and building a certain relationship with you. Not only will your consistency help them get value out of your account, it will also increase the chances that they will share and spread your content. Which obviously leads to more followers. In addition, yes, you do not want your existing followers to forget that they followed you. If you are inconsistent, they may not remember you and stop following you. Just as it is important to gain new followers, it is also important to retain older ones.
Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. She is responsible for churning out quality articles based on her research while keeping an eye on the tech world. She likes technology, gadgets, and food. Works as an individual contributor to the team.
