Tips to Flawlessly Manage Your Instagram Followers

Successfully managing your Instagram followers allows you to build a community of loyal users. These followers help you more often than you think. In fact, a Nielsen report discovered the No. 1 source of trustworthy advertising was friends and family recommendations.

An effective Instagram community not only engages with its followers but encourages users to share or tag others in their content. If you look at Bleacher Report’s Instagram following, hundreds of comments exist on nearly every piece of content.

Building a community is important, but it’s also necessary to know who you’re bringing together. Do research into your Instagram users to see things like gender, age, income, education, interests, location, and relationship status. These demographics provide massive insights into who follows you and who you should target for the future.

With demographic analysis from Sprout, it’s simple to monitor your Instagram’s top engaged influencers. This gives clarity to some of your most significant followers.

Once you know your target demographic, it’s time to see what content resonates with them. Do your followers like videos? How well do they engage with product shots or stock photography? No two audiences are identical.

The best way to find out what your audience likes is to do some content analysis. It’ll give you some great insights into your most engaging posts, as well as help you build a better Instagram content strategy for the future. Trying to please all your Instagram followers is nearly impossible. The goal is to share content that resonates with as many as possible.

After you’ve unraveled some details about the content your audience enjoys, you should have a better understanding of what to post. Some of the new features on Instagram could help you engage with your followers even more.

For example, Instagram Live was recently released to more countries outside the US to gain exposure. This live broadcasting feature allows you to connect with followers on an intimate and behind-the-scenes level.

Some brands might be nervous to do live broadcasting, but that’s alright. Instagram Stories provides another avenue for brands to post content for 24 hours.

Your Instagram content needs to be easily searchable, shareable, and in the correct spaces. Now with more than 600 million active users, you want to make sure you’re getting as much exposure as possible.

This will help bring in users and provide current followers with your whereabouts. Maybe a user found your profile through the explore feature and liked your content without following you.

It’s best practice to optimize your Instagram profile to gain exposure and be searchable for anyone looking for your brand.

A great way to centralize or even expand your brand is through hashtags. On one hand, hashtags create exposure when you use generic terms like #winter or #staywarm

This will boost your brand awareness among new users and your followers will be constantly coming on your profile .

One of the most important parts of managing your Instagram followers is being active in your comments. When a follower takes the time to leave a comment, the worst thing you can do is let it go ignored. Dig in and start replying.

As your Instagram following grows and you receive more comments, it’s difficult to manage it all within the Instagram app. It’s even more difficult for agencies or brands that handle multiple profiles. If you notice a certain follower tends to reply to all of your posts, you may want to get in touch with them to offer a special promotion or send them some company swag.

If you have hundreds or thousands of followers, it’s difficult to recall who everyone is. Having some additional context about your users and your brand’s relationship with them can be extremely helpful for customer service or even lead generation.

Having contact information makes it easier to address customer service issues, and follow up with potential leads. This is particularly helpful for any users you frequently interact with, or potential sales leads. It all goes back to building strong relationships with your followers.

It all starts with that single person who follows your brand. Building, managing, and maintaining a good follower base has obvious benefits. When you increase the trust of followers in your brand, you’re more likely to see these users turn into customers.

Always remember to engage and build a real following through great content and customer interactions.