How to grow your Instagram community organically with cutthroat competition?

Are you finding it hard to grow your Instagram community with all the hard core competition? Learn how to beat the competition and grow organically.

grow your instagram community

Cutthroat competition is right!

Instagram currently harbors 1 billion active users, but you’re worried because your account cannot even attract the mean looks of those people who were once your followers.

See, everyone is bustling with creativity today, and Instagram serves as a meet-cute platform where you can engage with content that appeals to you.

Does this mean that your content isn’t appealing, or you’re not trying hard enough?

Let’s dig in to some solid insight on how to grow your Instagram community.

The Failed Supremacy of Instagram Bots

Remember the ‘3 likes, 1 comment rule’ where engagement was boss?

Well, since there is a lot of competition today, you have to remind your followers that you exist in the competition. With the advent of Instagram bots, everyone thought that keeping dabs on their leads would be ten times easier than DMing others in the process previously. However, this made things worse and didn’t work for entrepreneurs who rely on personalization for growing their brand.

Earlier this year, Instagram started decreasing the visibility of accounts that had vast numbers of followers but apparently, no promising growth by shadow banning them. While this affected a lot of businesses on Instagram, it opened the eyes of relentless brands, allowing them to engage with their community for scaling.

For entrepreneurs and influencers alike, it is highly relevant to engage with leads in a more personalized and customized way. Not only does this help your brand grow, but it also enables you to acquire positive shoutouts from your leads and fellow brand collaborators.

All in all, it is more important to enjoy sequential growth instead of opting for bots or paid methods that contribute to inactive followers.

To shed some light on how you can grow your Instagram community organically despite being surrounded by cutthroat competition, read our 5 hallmarking points below.

1)   Establish your Target Audience

Social media is all about understanding your demographics and establishing buyer persons of your target audience. If you try selling your product or promoting your content before people who aren’t interested in it in the first place, you wouldn’t be able to acquire any loyalty in return.

  • For instance, if your content promotes handbags, then research about your target audience by conducting surveys or engaging in your community to find out whether they’d prefer styling tips or simply reviews of brands who carry them.
  • Hire a social media manager who can gauge your followers in-depth. Learn about their interests and introduce an algorithm that tells you when they’re online. If you post your content during the time when your followers invade Instagram, you will be able to engage with them and hence, get more reactions as well.
  • Always keep a lookout on your competition for more inspiration. Learn how the big shots are handling their business accounts and being responsive on the platform at the same time.
  • Make use of geo-location tagging so that people searching for content with their relevance can find yours and follow you if they’re seemingly impressed.

Always remember: the community adores being addressed. If you aren’t addressing your community with personalized messages or getting back to them with the help of your customer service, consider your growth-promoting efforts on Instagram of no use.

2)   Reinvent your Hashtags

Instagram practically invented hashtags as it was easier to look for similar posts by typing one in the search bar. For instance, if you’re an influencer who posts reviews of brands online, consider searching popular and pre-established hashtags on Instagram. Choose hashtags that have high search volumes and better engagement in correspondence to the content posted on Instagram.

For Instagram, let’s suppose you’re reviewing an online leather jacket store. Your hashtags might vary from ‘online leather jackets’ to anything that has the words ‘leather’ and ‘jackets’ in them. Some brands might add colors such as black or the type they want such as ‘biker,’ making the search of ‘black biker leather jacket’ much more relevant and helpful for their leads.

Also, make sure you don’t use hashtags that were compromised by spammers and, eventually, banned by Instagram too much irrelevant usage. Use hashtags that are relevant to your content so that your followers can instantly search you up and end up on your Instagram feed for proactive engagement.

Pro-Tip: Don’t use different hashtags whenever you post your content. Create a brand-worthy hashtag and include an assortment of 6 – 8 hashtags in every post.

3)   Indulge in Influencer-Marketing: 

Get Discovered by Big Accounts

Similarly, to get noticed by big-shot brands for collaboration, search the hashtags that they use for building a community, as most brands usually have a personal fan account with a pre-decided hashtag for account mentions.

Secondly, tag all of the brands in your post so that they can either repost your content on their Instagram stories or post your picture on their news feed for their followers to see. Once you’re in the game, you can repeatedly add those brands till the time someone from their PR agency finally hits you up for a paid collaboration!

Build up Your Community

Indulge in collaborations with other similar budding brands or influencers alike so that both of you can benefit from the follower-base of each other. If you collaborate with influencers who already have an established follower base on Instagram, you’d acquire more reactions and, henceforth, boost your engagement as well. 

Moreover, as an influencer, get into the habit of building up your community as a primary part of surviving amidst cutthroat competition on Instagram. See, Instagram works according to a subtle formula – you give me a shoutout, you earn a shoutout.

You can also look for brands that are just starting and can benefit from organic growth. Not only does this approach help you uplift your community, but it also helps you discover new brands within your niche, sector, and industry so that you can collaborate and build your consumer audience from their follower-base.

In addition to Influencer Marketing, Geo-Location Tagging, and the use of Demographics and Hashtags for developing engaging content, consider taking help from email marketing for building your follower base on Instagram as well.

Try not to DM your leads by the dozen. Reach out to your prospective leads and introduce a buy-one-get-one-free deal, an exclusive merch or eBook, or anything that rewards them for their constant loyalty. People adore rewards, and there is no way you aren’t getting an endorsement or lifelong loyalty after taking this step.