Instagram Discovery – How Did You Find Me?
There are many positives associated with seeing the following counter on your Instagram profile slowly go up and up. While it isn’t the most important thing when running a business, it is a sort of validation that what you are putting out is being enjoyed and well received. You also have access to extra features once you hit a specific following count, 10k to be exact, which in this climate is pretty unfair to small businesses (tut tut, Instagram) but I suppose you can look at it as an incentive.
As the Instagram algorithm continues to change at a rapid pace, making discovery and engagement more difficult than ever, we thought it might be valuable to see where your followers are and can come from. This isn’t a cheat sheet on how to beat the algorithm, it is more of a guide to show you how your profile can be discovered and how you can best utilise that feature.
Organic Search
As with most things, if you are looking for something specific you will search for it. On Instagram you have the little magnifying glass at the bottom of every page, this allows you to search across the entire platform. You have the categories all across the top of the ‘explore’ page that will provide pre-selected posts for you to pass through if you are browsing a topic. These are limited to genre’s however and unless your business falls under that category, they will not be relevant. If they do, the next point also applies.
For the more targeted search, your best chance of being discovered are the hashtags that you use. This can be a tricky business as being too specific in your hashtags can reduce your chances of being found and being too generic you will be lost in all the noise. A good example of how you can combat this is instead of using #nailtechnician which generates millions of posts, try #nailtechnicianlondon which is less saturated and will make it easier for your business to stand out!
Suggestion Prompts
Instagram is geared towards giving the users what they want and building their profile to be a curation of their hobbies and interests. You may have noticed for example when you follow an account, immediately after Instagram will put 5 or more suggested accounts that are of a similar nature for you to follow. This isn’t the only way they do this, in fact your initial explore page is built up of posts and accounts that are similar to ones you have looked at, followed or interacted with previously. Same goes for sponsored ads, they are monitoring your social media behaviours and putting the promoted accounts they think you will get value from in front of you.
The best way for you to tackle this as a business is to have a full understanding of what your brand is, inside and out. Know who your market is on social media, as well as your competitors and peers. If your page eat, sleeps and breaths your brand and its culture it will easily fall into place with other, potentially more successful businesses, that you can become associated with.
Collaborations
Interaction between accounts is a great way to put your profile in front of new eyes. This can be done through a number of ways that fall under the category of some sort of collaboration. The more organic and the least like a sales pitch you can make it, the more effective it will be.
If you get lucky, you may have a client or customer share their purchase or service from your business on their profile which might encourage family or friends, to follow and potentially try you out. This is the ‘word of mouth’ collaboration, and these can be cleverly manufactured behind the scenes with Instagram Influencers (we break this down a bit more in our beginner’s guide to influencer marketing). Essentially you offer a free product or service to an influencer in exchange for exposure to their larger following. It isn’t guaranteed to work but it can be beneficial.
Other collaborations can be more interactive, for example using Instagram live sessions to speak to other business owners and promoting this on both pages. Or you could try collaborating with another business to boost each other up, for instance a young artist supplying pieces of artwork to add to the décor of an upcoming clothing shop.
Boosted Posts
You might recognise boosted posts as ‘sponsored ads’ when scrolling your Instagram feed. At first, it might have been an irritant or deterrent for most as some people respond negatively to having advertisements dominating their digital space. However, they are here to stay and have steadily increased over the years and they are ultimately a great way to discover new pages. As mentioned above Instagram is smart enough to put the ads it thinks you will benefit from in front of users, add to that the sophisticated targeting options you have when choosing who sees your ad, you’ll increase your audience with the right people.
From a business perspective boosting a post on Instagram is a pretty low budget way to build more exposure. The trick is knowing what posts will be most engaging, not just to like or comment on the post, but to actually click through to your profile and hit that little follow button. While we can’t give you an outright tick box exercise when it comes to choosing the right post to boost, it is good to consider, what posts have performed well and engaged your existing followers? Do you have an attention grabbing image or shocking statistic? Using video content is also a good option as the movement tends to catch the eye and is likely to engage more people.