Monday, November 20, 2017

15 Instagram Tips & Strategies To Grow Followers



Social media can be a huge time suck for authors seeking to promote a book, market their brand, and build a large following.  If you don’t do it, you injure your career and ability to get your message out, but when you tackle it you find yourself losing hours that could be used for writing or more effective marketing efforts.  But if you’re going to pursue social media, do it wisely and do it well!  

Want to be an Instagram star?  Follow these 15 steps and strategies and you will grow your connections, increase book sales, and influence more people:

1.      Share Relatable Images
Post images that are personal, interesting, original, and unique.  Come across as genuine, passionate, and authentic.

2.      Use Geotags
Geo tag your updated and uploaded photos with a location.  Perhaps others in that location will be browsing photos of nearby places.

3.      Follow Others
Follow random users in the “suggestions for you” section.  A certain number of people that you follow will follow you back.  Those who don’t follow you can be unfollowed.

4.      Have A Call To Action
Tell people what you want them to do with your posts.  Find clever and smart ways to get others to share your stuff.

5.      Use RelevAnt/Popular Hashtags
Use Instagram Auto Complete to find relevant hashtags for your genre, industry, or area of expertise or use hash tags – if relevant – that are popular, including #love, #cute, #photooftheday, or #followme.

6.      Post On Sundays
The fewest number of images are posted on Sundays, so posting on that day may give you less competition and more visibility.

7.      Get Creative With Hashtags
Try going for humor, irony, or emotion.  Be outrageous.

8.      Ask Questions In Photo Captions
Engage people and challenge them.  Invite lot of opinions.

9.      Post At The Best Time
Traffic is highest on Thursdays and engagement is highest between 5-6 pm. EST.

10.  Host A Contest
They are easy to start and run-and coupled with a strong image you’ll get attention.

11.  Post Frequently-But Not Annoyingly
A few posts per day is perfect.  If you do it too often people will tire of you and if not often enough,  people will forget you.

12.  Like Or Comment On Others’ Photos
To attract attention, give attention to others.

13.  Uses Filters And Apps
Make sure you use filters.  Also use the “tag for likes” app.

14.  Fill Out And Update Your Bio Completely
A good bio can be used to feature a call-to-action, branded hashtags, and links, which go a long way to securing followers.

15.  Follow And Unfollow Celebrities Frequently
You can find followers on the follower lists of big-time celebrities, just following a few hundred of the most recent followers on a given account.  Follow up follow celebrities repeatedly, allowing you to keep your name at the top of the “recent followers” list.  This ploy really works!

If all else fails, you can buy followers, but I don’t advocate for that.  But if Instagram is not your thing, try Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube, and any of the other zillion platforms out there.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs

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