7 Organic Instagram Growth Hacks for your Brand

It’s no secret that Instagram is currently the most viable social media platform to grow your brand or business organically. However, it takes a series of consistent efforts and the right approach to get results through this platform. 

Through this blog post, we aim to provide you with 7 organic Instagram growth strategies for your brand to achieve maximum visibility, engagement & audience growth.

1. Weave a Visual Brand Story / The Power of Visuals

Does your Instagram account have a set aesthetic layout or a visual guideline? From usage of colors, artwork templates to adoption of trending post formats, it is important to establish an effective brand pull with minimal text & maximum visuals. 

Create a platform-specific content calendar that hosts a variety of images, videos, story options and interactions that are human & relatable. To transition a visitor into a follower, capture their attention with content they would like, packaged & presented with impactful design. 

2. Quality Content Matters

Are you a furniture brand? Talk about having an aesthetic home setup, functional needs of an individual that your product addresses, and real life shots of your products placed in various natural environments that your consumers would love to see, rather than bluntly promoting or selling your inventory. 

And if you are a B2B brand trying to establish a strong presence on Instagram, showcase customer testimonials, your brand culture & employees, engaging material on thought leadership & industry expertise, company initiatives & celebrations, product demo & trial sessions, impactful infographics on company growth, and so on. 

Remember, all the content you post or interactions you engage your audience in, is not primarily intended for direct sales but to build trust, create familiarity and influence their purchase decisions in the long run.

Thankfully, Instagram has made it easier to create diverse content with their posts, LIVE sessions, IG TV and story formats that provide good scope for topical content, branded updates and customer-centric communication to achieve the above mentioned goals. 

3. Have a Basic Hygiene Checklist

Having your contact details updated on the Instagram account and including necessary engagement CTAs on your posts, is as important as furnishing the right details on your business card. 

Tag your customers, third-party vendors and partners while publishing content that involves them, use a bio link tool to host important website links, check your ‘tagged’ section and ‘message requests’ regularly to not miss out on any user interaction. 

Follow the right handles, hashtags trends that are relevant to your business and acknowledge interactions by profile visitors & followers. All these little efforts can help in improving the brand reach, be accessible & engage instantly with customers online.

4. Is Your Hashtag Game Strong?

#Dont #include #30 #hashtags #just #because #you #are #allowed #to. 

Hashtags play a very important role in bringing the right audience and discoverability to your posts. Use only optimal & relevant hashtags and divide them into industry, branded & generic categories to maintain consistency. 

Use anywhere between 11-15 hashtags per post item and 1-3 hashtags on stories for better engagement & visibility. If you feel that your post is cluttered with too many hashtags, it is recommended to add them as the ‘first comment’. This can also encourage users to comment or interact with your update. 

5. Stories! Stories! Stories!

If you think that stories are only available for 24 hours and are not worth your time or effort, YOU’RE WRONG! 

1/3 of the most viewed Instagram stories are from businesses, and have better viewership or engagement rate when compared to regular posts on the platform. In fact, most brands are now focusing on creating vertical and story-first content to improve their organic traction and get featured in their customer’s ‘Explore’ page. 

There is no set rule for crafting your IG Story strategy. However, use high quality images, prompt users to engage with the help of stickers (polls, questions, countdowns and ratings), do story telling or engage with a series of updates, include location tag, hashtags and your business or content related GIFs/ graphic/stickers.

Play with emotions and have a ‘likeable’ approach to your story content, so your audience is glued to your updates and don't ‘skip’ them.  Check your ‘Story Analytics’ to understand consumer behavior and tweak your content strategy based on it. 

6. Make Use of New Features As They Roll Out

Social media platforms often change their algorithms, release new tools and test out changes in their existing features. As a marketer, one needs to be aware of these constant platform updates and try them out to gain qualitative benefits or experiences.  

One such instance is Instagram’s introduction of new features to help small businesses engage or sell during these tough COVID-19 times.

• ‘Support Small Business’ stickers help individuals & communities to show their encouragement and love for small businesses they know. One can directly click on such listings, view their offerings and transact or get in touch with.

• Interactive story stickers on the other hand, are available to businesses in the F&B, Gift Cards and NGO/Fundraising space to directly lead customers to make a purchase or take action.

Making use of these timely features can open new doors for businesses on Instagram to engage with their audience and also measure their success.

7. Embrace Innovation

Great ideas can often add virality and steer the direction of your Instagram strategy. Re-think your existing approach, gauge your creative strength and execute campaigns that others can take inspiration from. 

Once you have the initial set of audience and engagement going on Instagram, plan for disruptive campaigns that are strong in its core idea or execution. 

Last year, Swiggy - a leading food delivery portal in India broke its own engagement record with a ‘Musical Chair Contest’ on its 5th anniversary. They capitalized on the trending grid format and created a rectangular dining table on their feed grid, with each chair being a ‘tile’.

In order to win gift vouchers, customers had to follow the account and ‘occupy’ any one chair at the grid table by commenting first, with the hashtag #HBDSwiggy. The exciting rules and special offers within the game made it the one of the most engaging campaigns of the year. 

The brand garnered huge followership and organic traction through this virtual game campaign and continues to keep up with customer expectations with innovative campaign executions.

Conclusion

We hope to have covered most of the key action items required to help your business see results on Instagram, without depending on paid budget. If we have missed out on any important growth hack or haven’t stressed on it enough, do write to us in the ‘Comments’ below.