UPDATED: August 2022

Instagram is proving to be a real winner in the realm of social media. It’s gone through a lot of changes since its early beginnings as a simple photo sharing app. These days, the bells and whistles of the platform make it a marketer’s dream.

There are so many ways to engage an audience and showcase products. It can definitely become overwhelming and a bit confusing. If you want to experience growth and get real followers for Instagram in 2020, take a look at the tips below.

1. Know your audience and post accordingly

First and foremost, you must post what the people want to see. This means you have to know your intended audience pretty well. You can accomplish the feat by developing an ideal customer avatar. An avatar is merely the detailed demographics of a fictional individual who would be likely to buy from your company or follow your brand.

Have fun and get creative when creating this person. Decide on a gender, age, geographic location, interests, needs and more. When you’ve developed your ideal avatar, your posts should be directed at this “person.” Think of your avatar and what would appeal to them prior to creating an image or story. Your content will reach the right audience when you employ this strategy.

2. Know your hashtags and use them

Are you using hashtags on other social media platforms? They’re popular everywhere online, but they’re
absolutely essential on Instagram. Relevant hashtags help people who are interested in what you have to offer find you. It’s kind of like a road map.

You don’t want to use just any tags, though. The ones you choose should be relevant to your brand and your post. That way you’ll attract the most targeted audience possible. You also want them to be
specific, rather than broad. Don’t just use #marketing as your hashtag. Instead, find something that conveys the type of marketing your post references. Finding hashtags can seem overwhelming, but there are lots of ways to discover the good ones.

Do a query through Instagram’s search bar. Check out what your competition is doing. Then research particular hashtags to see how many people are following them and whether that tag might be saturated. Again, more specific is often better because it eliminates some of the competing voices within the general field. Don’t forget geotags. These are location-specific tags that help you to connect with others in that area or who have an interested in the region.

3. Plan your posts

It may seem all you have to do is post some pictures on a regular basis, and the people will come to look at them. Unfortunately, that’s far from the case. The most successful accounts on Instagram devote a great deal of time and dedication to their posts.

You’ll want to plan things out ahead of time to ensure you have an appropriate flow of material. You can create a calendar with your tentative daily post material. Then pull together your resources such as photography props, models and other assorted essentials. Some people shoot several Instagram posts on one day.

Others spread things out. You’ll find a groove that works for you, but you absolutely must plan. Winging it rarely works when it comes to running a successful social media account. Take particular holidays, campaigns and even days of the week into consideration when deciding what to include in each post.

4. Engage your audience

Social media revolves around relationships. That’s what makes it social. Engagement is essential to any successful Instagram account. Not only do you want to get a lot of followers, but you need to keep them interested or they’ll leave you for something shinier. Basic ways to engage followers is to acknowledge them by responding to their comments, answering their questions in DM and visiting their feeds.

That’s right. Put yourself out there. Follow people in your niche. Like and comment on their content. It may seem obvious, but it’s what is absolutely necessary and the foundation of social media.

5. Keep the conversation going

If you want to up your engagement game and increase your chances of gaining loyal and long-lasting followers, dedicate time to finding ways to bring your followers back for more on a regular basis.

You can do this in a number of ways. Holding contests and giveaways is always good because it requires people to interact with your account in order to be entered. You can also recognize individual followers on a regular basis by giving them a shout out in your feed and sharing their content. It’s flattering and will build bonds.

You might also want to encourage your followers to share photos of themselves using your products. Come up with a special hashtag to identify such posts, and then recognize them by sharing with your audience at large. User-generated content like this is gold. It makes followers feel special, provides you with social capital and keeps your feed full of interesting, engaging content.

These are a handful of the top ways to gain followers. Take some time to explore Instagram and try out all the cool features they offer. See what works for you and your audience, but don’t forget to employ these basic, proven strategies to maintain consistent follower growth in the new year. Your effort will pay off, and you’ll be building a brand that people love to follow.

5. Use an Instagram Bot

Let’s admit it – no one enjoys tedious and repetitive jobs. The truth is that managing social media accounts can sometimes be just like that.

Imagine you’re working to increase your account’s overall engagement and measure performance and you stumble upon the most effective ways to do that. It’s clear that liking, commenting and following users in your niche can have a huge boosting impact on your account’s reach, because those users will end up visiting your profile, one way or another.

But honestly, who has time to manually like, comment and follow users on Instagram to get those results? That is where using the best Instagram bot on the market comes into play. Simply put, automating your Instagram activity is such a no-brainer if you truly see your time as the most valuable asset. At the end of the day, you will end up achieving even better results compared to manual interaction, all while saving valuable time.

And that is exactly why the smartest marketers and social media managers in the world utilize platforms like AfterSocial to boost their brand’s impact in the online world.

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UPDATED 2022

The first thing that most people do when performing a background check on a brand is to check its Instagram page. Checking Instagram is a huge part of the modern-day consumer’s vetting process and it plays a huge role in determining whether or not someone will end up buying from that brand.

That is exactly why I decided to do this experiment in the first place. I committed to using an Instagram bot for the next year at our agency, as a marketing test.

So… what happened?

The great thing about Instagram Automation is that it’s incredibly easy to get started with it, and all you have to do is sign up, choose your targets and watch everything grow automatically.

However, in order to ensure success, you need to interact with your Instagram followers, use the right hashtags and get involved in all the right conversations. This process obviously requires a huge time commitment because you’ll be communicating with people from all over the world.

Now, there are two ways to minimize the amount of time it takes to grow and maintain your brand’s Instagram account:

• You can either hire a full-time Instagram Marketing Assistant, or;
• Better yet, you can use Instagram automation tools

In this article, we’re going to explore the second alternative because it’s by far the most
convenient and cost-effective one.

Best Instagram Automation Tools

1. AfterSocial

AfterSocial is the best Instagram automation platform on the market and it’s known for deploying experienced social media managers to develop and manage your brand page from scratch.

A lot of their clients have been able to gain real Instagram followers, and grow their accounts organically because of the tried and tested methods that SocialCaptain uses to increase followers and drive engagement.

This means no more having to buy likes and comments, and at the end of the day, you’ll have genuine followers that follow your Instagram page because they like your vision and want to support your brand.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite functions as a sort of virtual assistant that effectively manages all of the important activities on your Instagram account.

This includes publishing posts and managing engagement automatically. You can also use the
bulk upload feature to curate and schedule the posts ahead of time so that they
get uploaded at the right times throughout the day.

There are also other convenient features like the post preview tool which allows you to develop your posts and see what they’re going to look like when they go live.

3. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an advanced social media management service that will help you grow your Instagram account organically, and using it usually leads to significantly improved engagement.

It’s definitely not about getting fake likes and followers, so you can rest assured that you’ll be gaining valuable supporters. Plus it’s a service that’s trusted and widely used by social media professionals as well, so you can rest assured that it really does deliver.

The best part is that you can use Iconosquare to manage all of your other social media accounts as well.

4. Buffer

Buffer is another versatile tool which has the ability to manage all of your social media channels automatically such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

It’s important to note here that this platform has been specifically optimized for laptops and desktops that run on the Windows operating system specifically.

They also offer a 14-day trial period so that you can use the service for free before you commit to the paid option. This will really speed up the process of managing your accounts.

5. GramGrowth

GramGrowth is the most popular Instagram growth service authority – think of it as the Trustpilot of Instagram services. Finding the best Instagram Bot for your account needs is essential and that’s what GramGrowth helps you with.

Based on the results, the best Instagram Bots to use in 2021 are HKAgency and Kicksta.

Make sure you opt for a growth services that puts your account’s safety and growth at the center. The most common issue when finding the best Instagram growth service in 2022 was the concerns around uncompliant bots that appeared over night. Obviously those put their user’s accounts at risk and caused numerous suspensions – Yikes!

Also watch out for coordinated review networks (or blogs) that cross-promote the same services in an attempt to get you to pay for the Instagram bots they actually own. At the end of the day you really get what you pay for, so don’t sacrifice the growth results and account safety for a few bucks.

Instagram Automation Tool Types

Instagram automation tools are different types of tools that businesses use to automate the activities that drive growth and engagement on Instagram. This means you’ll still have time to focus on your business activities while knowing that your Instagram account is completely taken care of.

Some of the best automation tools include:

1. Instagram Bots

Instagram bots will keep track of follows and unfollows, as well as likes and comments, in the
same way that an Instagram assistant would.

It’s important to note here that there are different Instagram bots available that offer different degrees of convenience. For example, some bots will perform additional tasks such as liking, commenting and following users that are relevant to your content, by keeping track of the right hashtags, usernames, and locations. This will help you expose more relevant Instagram users to your account every day, some of which might even follow your account and visit your website to make a purchase if they like what they see.

• Schedule Posts

Another important consideration to make when you want to increase your rate of engagement on Instagram is to be mindful of the times during which you post on the account. That’s because posting at certain “high traffic” times on Instagram increases your chances of higher engagement. AI-Powered Growth tools can help you pre-schedule posts so that they automatically go live during those opportune times without you having to log in and post manually.

• Auto Direct Messages

Certain automation tools are also able to send welcome messages to new followers, activate events and even introduce new products to your followers automatically.

Conclusion

Running a modern-day business requires more than just managing operations, developing new products or engaging in traditional promotional activities. You also have to maintain a strong online presence, especially on Instagram.

A lack of presence on Instagram or discovering a poorly managed account is a sign of unprofessionalism and usually sends the customer looking elsewhere. Well, if you’re one of those brands that only post once in a while and you don’t engage with your audience on a regular basis, then you might be losing out on a lot of potential sales.

This is a time-consuming endeavor and since most entrepreneurs feel like they don’t have enough hours in the day already, it’s good to know that there are convenient tools that one can use to decrease the workload.

Instagram bots can significantly boost your ability to grow your Instagram account faster while gaining followers and likes. It’s also way more cost-effective than hiring a social media assistant and yet it gives you the edge you need to compete in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

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UPDATED 2022

There are a number of social media automation tools designed to save you time and effort with your social media marketing. A number of those tools are dedicated to Instagram specifically. Here is how you can grow your Instagram following by using automation.

1. Automate finding and following new accounts.

Though many Instagram automation bots vary in terms of the services they offer, all of them will offer the ability to automate finding and following new accounts. Generally speaking, all you have to do is tell the bot hashtags and accounts you want to follow.

Then, using that information, it will automatically start following those accounts and pick random ones from within the hashtags to begin following. It will gradually follow a certain number of new accounts every day so that your account activity looks as natural as possible.

2. Automate your posting schedule.

Some Instagram bots will allow you to automate posting to the social network. If you use a bought that does not allow for scheduling posts, many other social media management platforms allow you to schedule posts for Instagram alongside the posts for other popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

This makes it easy for you to batch your content creation process so you can focus a certain amount of time every week on creating the posts you plan to share with your audience. This also allows you to keep a consistent posting schedule, posting at times when you know your audience is most likely to be active to engage on the post.

This way, you do not have to manually post content to your account every day and you can focus on other tasks to promote your business that cannot be automated.

3. Automate commenting.

There are some people out there who will advise against automating comments because it can come across as spammy.  However, when done correctly using neutral yet positive comments and including a variety of options for the bot to rotate through, you can still leave relevant comments on photos without coming across as fake.

To make sure you’re not completely wasting time, it’s best to only automate commenting for a few photos every day. Because the best Instagram bots will interact with hundreds of photos every day, it’s impossible to program it in a way that will create context relevant comments for all of the photos it comes across, So that’s why you should set aside some time to craft genuine comments manually every day.

4. Automate likes.

Automating likes is safe to do with an Instagram bot. It won’t come across as spam or get flagged by Instagram. Likes are a non-intrusive way to make people happy increase your odds of engagement. Likes or a subtle nudge that will only show up on a person’s activity feed. Many people don’t have issues with getting likes from people we don’t know and everyone benefits when their content gets a like because Instagram’s algorithm picks up on it as a signal of it being popular.

Unless you are someone who has thousands of followers, chances are you’re checking your activity feed to see who liked your post and discover new Instagram accounts this way. Automating liking banks on the fact that you’re liking posts from people who will discover that you liked their post and will turn around and follow you.

Automating likes through a bot is similar to paying Instagram to have your account shown on people’s home feeds through ads.The activity creates weren’t even aware of the fact that you existed. And,because it’s not a formal add that you are running through the Instagram platform, it’s free.

5. Automate direct messaging.

Like with comment automation, you can also automate direct messaging to Instagram accounts. However, because it is also difficult to make contextually relevant to every single follower the bot will encounter, you want to keep it limited to a small number of accounts every day.

You will, of course, have to use generic phrasing, so keep a variety of positive, neutral statements such as, “Thanks for the follow!” in the repository for the bot to work with.

6. Automate unfollowing some accounts.

With this strategy and Instagram automation, you follow users who may be interested in your account using automation tools. then, you wait a few days to see if they follow you back, and if they do not, you use the same automation tool to unfollow them. most of the time you’ll find that 20 to 35% of the people will follow you back.

The actual percentage will vary significantly depending on how effective your strategy is for the people you start to follow. The idea is you want to use filters to make sure you were engaging with users that are most likely to engage back with you.

Using the follow/unfollow method without automation is unlikely to help you achieve those results. Manually following 1,000 users in the span of a week in an active niche compared to automation you may find the manual method only achieves at 10% follow back rate which is significantly lower. When you consider the increased time you spend with the manual method, you have a diminished return on investment and no real reason not to use automation.

Taking the time to unfollow users who don’t follow you back keeps you with a good follower ratio and ensures you’re not wasting time and effort on people who are not going to engage with you keeping your engagement rates high and making your account look more appealing to the Instagram algorithm for better chances of viral posts and increased follower growth through viral activity.

7. Focus your efforts on quality content creation.

Use the time you save with automation to make sure the content you’re creating to post on Instagram is of the highest quality and is targeted to your audience. If you’re posting for quality content, it doesn’t matter what kind of automation results you’re getting because you won’t be able to keep your followers happy.

8. Check on your automation efforts regularly.

From time to time, you want to check and see how your automation efforts are going. If you find that you are not getting a lot of engagement, you may want to adjust your automation to target different hashtags.

9. Take time to answer all comments.

To boost your engagement and to show your audience you care, take time to reply to any and all comments on your posts. Even if you notice generic ones that you believe were automated, taking the time to respond to them shows the rest of your audience that you were paying attention and you appreciate the time they took to comment.

10. Automate to save time – not to completely avoid work.

If you set up an automation bot one time, walk away and never look at the bot or your Instagram account again, you’re doing it wrong. Not only are you doing it wrong, but you’re obviously doing it for the wrong reasons. Chances are, you’re looking for a quick and easy way to monetize your Instagram following and a while this is a respectable desire, it won’t get you very far.

You will still need to spend a certain amount of time engaging on Instagram and creating content for your followers manually. Nothing on the internet that is of the good quality you need to develop stable customer relationships is done with 100% automation.

Yes, there’s plenty of stuff out there that is completely automated, but it’s not the kind of stuff your audience will enjoy or respond to the way you hope.

11. Don’t push your automation tool to the max.

Unless you use an automation tool from the very beginning of your Instagram account, chances are you were only able to like and follow a certain number of users every day.

You want to avoid maxing the automation tool out because Instagram will notice if you go from following 50 users a day to 1,000 users a day. The key is to make the activity look as natural as possible which often means using the automation tool much less than what it is capable of actually doing.

12. Do not use more than one Instagram automation bot.

It may be tempting to double down on your efforts by using more than one automation bots. However, is best if you only use one at a time. You can use one for a certain amount of time before testing on another one to see which one you like better, but using more than one at the same time creates unnatural activity and could possibly cross some wires and create potential flags on your Instagram account.

Everything you do on Instagram from content creation to following accounts and engaging with them should be done with your followers in mind. Without a dedicated group of loyal followers, you won’t be able to reap sales benefits from your social media presence.

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