With the mass rise and monetization of social media in recent years, Instagram has become a cornerstone market for “influencers” to operate on, sometimes making insanely lucrative amounts of money. From makeup tutorials that produce income by promoting certain products, to bands, artists, or independent businesses, the ways to make money on Instagram are almost endless.
However, there’s one requirement to making sure your feed is successful and popular – gaining real Instagram followers. While there are many ways to go about this, it will be an uphill battle without a few key elements: content, creativity, and communication.
Content
It’s important to make sure your content is curated appropriately and optimized for success. Try to make sure nothing is confusing, your bio links to your personal or business site, and visitors to your page will immediately see the content you want them to see. Keep your content searchable by using consistent keywords that will turn up in search results, and make sure your name is unique enough to find easily and not be buried under too many other Instagram feeds.
In addition, it’s critical to post content regularly. Many “professional” Instagram and other social media sites for celebrities and businesses are outsourced to someone who can focus on producing dedicated content regularly. Try to post on a consistent schedule so your fans and followers know when to expect new content from you, and try to keep it relevant to your overall goals.
Creativity
Trying to stand out on social media can make you feel like a drop in the ocean sometimes. With the vast sea of unnoticed faces and the seemingly impenetrable layer of major players with hundreds of thousands of followers, it might seem like almost no one is noticing your content. The trick to breaking through is to find your niche, in which you can thrive and excel.
There is an online community for almost anything you could imagine, so your best bet is to find an underserved niche and try to fill it. For example, there are thousands of guitar players on Instagram, but what if you took a page from Wes Anderson’s playbook and became the guitar player who only covers David Bowie songs in a Spanish finger-picking flamenco guitar style?
Communication
Without engaging your followers, it will be difficult to see your page grow or be able to monetize it. Social media, at its core, is a new and enhanced form of communication, which can be visualized on a spectrum from writing and printed mediums, to technology that enables us to communicate around the world at light speed.
If you want to grow your followers to the point where you can make a million dollars a post like Kylie Jenner, you’re going to have to treat communicating with people engaging with your site as an almost full-time job and be extremely responsive to messages.
Do it for the ‘Gram
If you have a creative and original idea for content that will excite people and encourage them to engage with you, then you’re already done with the hardest part. Figuring out what you can do that others can’t is the key to a successful Instagram page that will bring you thousands of followers.
