Although I have been on Instagram for the past 2 years, I really started developing a following only in the last 4 months. As a self-employed artist there’s limited time you can devote to promoting your work so you want to make the best of what time you have available.
Here’s how I went from a few hundred followers to 5000 + followers in under 4 months. Things may work a bit differently for different businesses based upon the industry but this is a great guideline to start with. Head over to our Instagram now to see these tips & tricks in action.
Craft a Memorable Bio
Take time to create a bio for yourself that tells the visitor exactly what you offer and what he/she should expect to gain by following you. Try to include the most important stuff – like any awards you have received or where you were recently featured – as high up as possible because on mobile devices, after the first two lines, visitors will see a “more” link that they will have the option to click on if they wish to read the rest. So the lines at the top have the best chance of getting read by more people. You can also write down a similar note or a tagline that you can add at the end of your every Insta post.
Next is deciding what kind of things you will be posting. Post onece a day, sometimes twice a day. No More.
1. Your Work
Let’s start with the no-brainer. You should be posting photos of your recent projects or artworks on a regular basis and let your work speak for itself. Make sure these photos look as beautiful as possible and in the post caption, include a call-to-action that will help your fans and potential customers contact you for a quote or shop your products.
2. Stuff Your Clients Like
This is a little-known one. You need to do some research and look into who your target audience is and what they like to see on Instagram.
For example, since I sell art prints in my online shop, I include home decor/interior design posts in my feed because typically these are interesting topics for people who want to buy wall art to style their homes. If you’re a lettering artist, you could include short quotes written in inspiring/appealing font styles. This is a content type idea that many newbies miss out on.
2. Reposts
Reposts are great because they can help in two ways.
- You can repost photos that you may not have available (for example, I need extra home decor photos sometimes) so basically these can be fillers for when you do not have your own content to post. But remember, only repost photos that are connected to your industry.
- You can repost pictures from people that are already posting in your target categories – in this case – home decor/interior design. And because you credit them by tagging them in your repost, if they like your post, they respond which increases interaction with your post + they might turn into your customers themselves.
Next Steps
Check out my Instagram profile now to see how well these little pointers are working for me. Then head over to your own Instagram profile and start making it more engaging so you can attract more visitors, followers and sales.
Contribute
If you have any tips of your own that you would like to add to this list for our readers, please write them using comments below.