There was a time when Instagram was all about pretty pictures, but not anymore. Now, the most popular brands engage with their customers using Instagram. With over 1 billion monthly active users, it has become one of the most prominent social media platforms globally. Inevitably, users keenly follow social media influencers for inspiration or guidance in making decisions. On Insta, brands and marketers collaborate with influencers to expand their brand awareness and drive conversions.

For quite some time now, becoming an influencer is seen as a lucrative career. But success on social media is defined by the quantum as well as quality of your followers and their engagement. However, building and maintaining a community of loyal followers isn't as simple. It necessitates persistent effort on the part of the influencer. Let's understand what’s an influencer before we go through some helpful tips on how to become one.

Who is an Influencer?

Influencers are people who have established a reputation for their knowledge and experience in a specific content category directed towards a specific audience, which gives them the power to influence purchase decisions. An influencer doesn’t necessarily have to be a celebrity, journalist, or blogger. She can be a regular person next door, with the right connections and a social pull. For example, you’re scrolling through your newsfeed and see one of your friends from the gym posting about a new supplement they tried and found effective. There’s a good chance you might click the link, check out the product she bought, and potentially buy your supplement based on her recommendation. Your Friend may not be Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, or a famous journalist, but she’s influenced your purchase decision and therefore she is an effective influencer._

Due to low entry barriers to entry, influencer marketing has become highly saturated. But with the right strategies and tools, aspiring creators can still make their mark as the influencer marketing industry is set to hit $15 billion in 2022, a rise from $8 billion in 2019.

In this blog post, Instore: an all-in-one social media tool that enables people to auto generate captions and hashtags and even download videos, posts and reels from Instagram, will guide you on winning this uphill battle and become a successful influencer.

While there is a plethora of tips and tricks, here are the most essential tips to increase your followers and engagement and take your influencer career to the next level:

1. Profile optimization-

One of the most important steps before figuring out how to gain Instagram followers is to have your account fully optimized. Consider your brand's Instagram bio to be the "homepage" of your account.

Make sure that your profile page has the following -

• An impactful profile picture
• A catchy bio
• A relevant but search friendly user name

2. Post Consistently-

‘Consistent action creates consistent results’. This adage is as applicable on social media as it is in everyday life. Posting content at random, haphazard times is the worst thing you can do to your Insta handle. If you’re lucky enough to get users following you in the beginning, you wouldn’t want to make them forget why they followed you in the first place. Maintain a regular posting schedule to prevent this. But, avoid spamming, posting consistently does not mean posting too much. Find the right balance of frequency keeping in mind your industry/interests. It is recommended to post not more than twice a day, but it’s also important that you post at least 4-5 times a week.

3. Post during the optimum time zones during the day/wee-

It has been observed that people access IG most intensively during 11 am to 1 pm and 7 pm to 9pm. These are times when people are either taking a break from lunch, or have wrapped up the work for the day. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday are considered to be the most effective days to post, Sunday being the worst.

4. Experimenting with different types of content-

Instagram allows you to post content in a variety of formats such as single-image posts, carousel posts, IGTV, Instagram Reels, and Instagram Stories. Experiment to find which formats your audience responds to the most. For example, if you are a dancer, reels, video posts or an IGTV of a killer dance routine you choreographed might get you the attention of potential dancers, views and an improved brand value.

5. Creating share-worthy content-

When people follow you, they expect you to create content that excites and engages them. Your followers should want to reshare your content!

Some common post types that are most shared include:

1. Humorous Content-

There's no denying that cute and funny rakes in reactions. Animals, babies, children, humor, smart statements, and anything else that makes people smile are all popular. Consider how you can integrate this type of subject matter into your brand while maintaining your existing tone.

2. Trends-

You should keep up with industry trends and forecasts, and if you can be a credible source of current information, you'll become a go-to source for information.

3. News-

One of the best ways to stay relevant is to deliver breaking news stories, but remember, staying a step ahead and being one of the first outlets to cover the topic requires a significant amount of work and dedication.

4. Opinions-

While expressing a strong view on an issue can be perilous, it can also lead to a lot of engagement. Just make sure to back up any assertions you make with evidence, and avoid addressing sensitive themes that could backfire and harm your business.

5. Data-

People respond to data, whether you're confirming or refuting someone's claim. Creating citable data is beneficial for social media sharing as well as SEO.

Having said this, do try to keep your content strategy coherent and consistent.

1. Choosing the right hashtags-

Your content only becomes valuable and meaningful when it reaches the right audience. As an influencer you want to build your community by gaining followers and hashtags are known to be an essential tool for discovery and extending reach.

Choose hashtags that your target audience is more likely to follow. These folks are more likely to follow your account if a relevant connection is created. One method to aggregate postings around hyper-relevant content to your handle is to use unique, branded hashtags.

This is where you can use Instore to automatically generate mind blowing hashtags that can propel your posts as top performing content. Instore can help you find hashtags that you can use to access your target audience better on Instagram. Instore makes the process of hashtag targeting a lot easier and quicker.

For example, M&Ms does a great job at focusing hashtags on an event where they are participating. The company promotes awareness by using hashtags like #mmspotlight to target its audience more directly where the spotlight music event takes place.
Hashtags can also be used to promote user-generated content like furniture retailer West Elm and its hashtag #mywestelm. The hashtag encourages user-generated content by promising to share the best shots.

2. Using Instagram’s interactive features-

Make use of interactive Instagram Stickers in your Stories. Stickers such as Instagram polls, questions, quizzes, and sliding scales all invite your fans to engage with your content. What's great about Instagram Stickers is that voting in a poll, rating a beautiful puppy photo with maximum heart eyes, and other short actions stimulate interaction between your followers and your content. The more your content gains engagement, the more instagram’s algorithm will promote it.

While creating an Instagram Story, you can add interactive stickers, such as Instagram polls, questions, sliding scales, and quizzes.

3. Choosing the right caption-

Engaging captions can keep your audience longer on your post. Don't just toss your content and expect it to get showered with praise, give your followers opportunities to have back-and-forth interactions with you.

Include questions or a call to action (CTA) in your posts to encourage comments. Posing questions is a great way to break the ice with your audience and get them talking. Just make sure you respond to comments and DMs the same way you would respond to your phone calls.

For example, at the end of a caption about one of its flavors, Popcorn Shed included a question asking: "Who's tried this one already?" This post generated plenty of comments, and Popcorn Shed made sure to respond to each one of them.

But staying at top in the captions game isn't always easy. Instore tools help you to get the best and most engaging captions for your content.

4. Cross-market your content on other platforms-

Make as much noise as possible about your Instagram channel across every platform. For instance, you can promote your Instagram account on Facebook by making an announcement there with a clickable link to your Instagram page. You can also use Instagram’s auto-post and cross-promotional tools.

The cross-promotional features allow you to post directly from Instagram to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media platforms, bringing followers from all of your accounts together. Just keep in mind that if you cross-promote all of your Instagram posts to other social media platforms, you risk 'cannibalizing' your material and eliminating the need for followers to visit your Instagram channel in the first place.

5. Collaborate with Other Influencers-

Collaboration with others through partnerships or influencer campaigns is another wonderful strategy to get Instagram followers.

Joining hands with non-competing influencers of other niches can generate great exposure as it has the potential to tap into a brand new audience. An ideal partnership can mutually benefit both the collaborators by allowing each to gain new followers and an overall exposure.

However, if you want to keep things simple (and low-cost if it is a paid campaign), micro-influencers (1,000–10,000 followers) can have a big impact. In fact, micro-influencer content has higher engagement rates than content from larger accounts. You can look for micro-influencers to work with or simply re-share user-generated content (UGC).

6. Makes use of Instagrams analytical data-

Analyzing your content to see what's resonating with your audience is a great first step if you want to increase your Instagram engagement rate. When you know what types of content are getting the best engagement, you can begin to plan and ship more of that type of content. For example, if user-generated content receives more engagement than other posts, you might consider sharing more user-generated content.

To analyze your content, calculate the engagement rate for each of your posts over the course of a week or month, and keep track of which posts have the highest engagement.