We often talk about what you should do if you are trying to get more Instagram followers, but there are also some things you should try and avoid if you want more followers. Here are a few of them that come to mind:
Incomplete profile
You are very limited on what you can include on your Instagram profile, but that doesn’t mean you should leave it blank. Put as much (relevant) information as you can on your profile so people can quickly learn what your account is all about. Make sure you include at least the following:
- Description of your account.
- Address and phone number if your business is a brick and mortar.
- Link to your website (this is the only place on Instagram where you can display a clickable URL).
- A relevant profile picture (do not leave this blank).
You can also include one or a few hashtags in your profile if you have space. If someone comes across one of your posts, they will often visit your profile to see what you are all about. Giving them as much information as possible will likely result in a new follower if they like what they see.
Making your account private
If you are using Instagram to help promote your small business, why would you want to keep it private from anyone seeing what you post? Instagram can be free marketing for you if you use it correctly. Make your profile public and post things that you don’t mind the whole world seeing.
Infrequency of posting
Be consistent with your posts. This can be tricky because you don’t want to over-post, and you don’t want to under-post. If you post 10 pictures in a row, all within 10 minutes of each other, there is a good chance your followers will consider this spammy and unfollow you. However, if you post one picture and don’t post another one for another two weeks, your followers may also unfollow you because they may think you aren’t an active account. So, where’s the happy medium? At Keep It Real Social, we like to post 3-6 pictures a week. However, if you have a lot to post and you would like to post multiple images a day, there is nothing wrong with that. Just be consistent with it.
Pictures with no captions
Pictures without any captions won’t do too much for you. Research has shown that posts with longer captions do better than posts with shorter captions. If you are struggling with creating a caption, a shorter one is better than no caption at all.
Pictures with captions only having hashtags
Pictures that have captions with only hashtags can also come across as spammy. While it is important to use hashtags in your posts, having 30 hashtags as the only words in your caption is very visually unappealing. Write out your caption and place the hashtags either a couple of lines after the last line of your description or as the first comment. This way, people won’t see your hashtags unless they want to.
Complicated/Hard to understand graphics
As social media managers, we spend a good part of our day on Canva, creating graphics or resizing pictures. It can be a ton of fun for creative people, and you can sometimes get carried away with it (I’m guilty of this)! If you create a graphic to use instead of using a photo, make sure the graphic is visually appealing. Don’t include a lot of words in your graphic. Whatever you are posting about, you want to convey right away when someone looks at the picture. Remember, people are scrolling pretty fast through their feed and you want your post to stick out so people stop and read it. It is also important to remember that people are looking at Instagram on their phones so the pictures are small, to begin with.
Reposting without giving credit
Social media is all about sharing! If you like a post and it is sharable, there is nothing wrong with resharing it! However, it is so important to give credit to the person who posted it first. If you don’t, then you are technically just stealing someone else’s content. If you are resharing a post in your story, Instagram will automatically display the profile name. However, if you are reposting a post on your grid, you want to acknowledge where you got it. You can do this by including the word ‘repost’ and tagging the profile it came from.
Want more social media tips and tricks? Sign up for our newsletter, and we will send them directly to your inbox weekly!
