5 Tips to Increase Your Instagram Followers

Nearly every author is hopping onto the Instagram bandwagon – as they should be. With over 300 million active monthly users, Instagram offers authors the ability to reach their audience quickly and via simple means.

Of course, over time, you’ll want to ensure that you are increasing your presence on Instagram through more followers and content. Thus, here are 5 tips to grow your organic (not paid) presence on Instagram.

1) Cross Promote to Gain Followers

If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, you’ll want to mention that you are also on Instagram. For example, create a post for Facebook noting that you will be posting an exclusive sneak peak of your upcoming book’s cover on Instagram (note your handle i.e. @digiwriting). This act prompts your Facebook followers to follow you on Instagram to keep up with exclusive content!

2) Add Emojis to Boost Discoverability

Emojis are the universal language on Instagram. In fact, Instagram reports that nearly 50% of all captions and comments on Instagram now have an emoji or two. Since emojis are searchable on Instagram as both a hashtag or in your user name, people can find you based on which emoji you use. If you’re a romance author, you may want to consider using the books and heart emojis.

3) Add Hashtags to Gain Traction

The right hashtags can expose your images to a large targeted audience. You can add up to 30 hashtags, and interactions are highest on Instagram posts with 11+ hashtags. If you’re looking for supplemental hashtags to support your writing and genre, use Hashtagify to find relevant hashtags. Simply type in a major hashtag from an already-popular post (i.e. #amwriting) and see which of the resulting related hashtags you can add to your post to bring in new traffic.

4) Create a Photo Theme to Reinforce Familiarity

Instagram is like an always-growing digital magazine, so post content that shares a similar theme or vibe. For example, crop all of your images the same way, post pictures of the same subject matter (i.e. reinforce themes from your book), or use the same filter on all of your photos.

5) Conduct a Regular Review of Your Posted Content

Every so often, you should be reviewing your previously posted images and video to determine which received the highest engagement and which brought you the most followers. If you find that an image, filter, or set of hashtags is working particularly well, you’ll want to continue to use these in future posts.