No matter what you’re building, the foundation is the most important part of the plan. If you’re just starting out with your business account on Instagram, then nailing the growth hacks discussed in this section will ensure you’re off on the right foot. 

If you have an established account, it’s still important to work your way through this section to maximize your reach and grow even further. Once you’ve audited your account and have given yourself the best foundation to grow from, you can feel confident layering on more robust and intricate strategies and tools. 

Your bio on Instagram is very important. It’s the first thing newcomers will take a look at when they land on your page. Use this small space to capture your audience by immediately telling them what you’re all about using language that reflects your personality. Let them know how you can help them and why they should follow you. 

Use all 150 characters of bio space wisely. Break up text with emojis and throw in a couple of hashtags, especially a branded one, to help people find you. 

The link in your bio is premium space as it is the only place you can use to send people to your sales or business pages. Optimize this space by using a service such as Linktree or LinkinBio to offer multiple links to your followers or use it to send them to your most important page. 

Your content strategy will tie all posts on your Instagram page together to help you avoid posting random content just because you need to make a post. It will be important for you to develop a purpose and a goal behind why you’re posting on Instagram to help you stay on track.

There are several types of content you can create for Instagram, from educational to motivational to funny and more. If you’re posting several types of content on your page, make sure it all ties back to your content strategy and goals. 

Whatever you’re posting, it should be useful and actionable content that will grow your engagement and following on the platform. Use all the features that Instagram offers to stay on top of your followers feeds and win the IG algorithm. 

Currently, Instagram offers several types of content that you can post: 

• Images on the main feed
• Videos on the main feed, limited to one minute in length
• Carousel posts on the main feed, offering 10 spots in one post that you slide through to see all the content
• IGTV - longer videos that also show up on the main feed
• Stories - images and videos that last for 24 hours only
• Reels - a new type of content that mimics TikTok type videos

Having a good mix of all types of content on your IG page will help you to beat the Instagram algorithm so that your followers will always see your posts. 

When planning your content, you will want to stick to established brand colors for your templates and posts. This will help to grow your brand image and awareness in the mind of your followers. 

Using the same colors and templates for your posts makes your brand familiar to your followers. They’ll be able to see a post on their feed and immediately connect with you and your brand. They'll be more inclined to check out your post and engage. 

It’s so important to learn everything you can about your analytics on Instagram to help you know what’s working and what isn’t. The data will help you to tweak and develop your plans. 

IG’s analytics will tell you things like the best time of day to post, the best day to post, what type of content people like more, what type of content they save more and share more and what type of content gets the most comments. 

This information is super important to your growth on the social media platform. It will help you to build engagement and sales if that’s your goal. 

You'll find your analytics under Insights. Learn everything you can about your impressions, your audience, how people discover you, what hashtags are working for you and more. This updates everyday so you’ll want to keep track of it on a weekly basis so you can determine the trends and develop a strong plan for growth on the platform.

Deep-diving into your analytics will teach you the best time of day to post for you. Take advantage of this information to post your most important posts at the time when your audience is online. 

This can boost your comments, likes, shares and overall engagement and growth and this is what your business needs. Continue to post your most important updates at the best time of day for your audience while experimenting with other times for other content. 

Mixing it up, testing and retesting gives you more robust data to work with and more opportunities to connect with your audience. 

Collaboration over competition. Reach out to accounts that are similar to yours to put yourself in front of their audience. Start by following them, commenting on their work and reposting their content. 

This will get them to notice you and warm up the relationship. If they’re kindred spirits, they’ll be open to collaborate so you can grow each other’s audiences. 

If nothing else, being very vocal and active in the comment section of accounts similar to yours will help you to find more people in your niche to connect with. More allies, more customers and more friends. 

We spoke about engaging your “competitors” but it's even more important to engage your own audience. No one wants to talk to someone who isn’t responding back. If you get comments, respond to them. If you’re not getting comments then you’ll need to take a look at your content strategy. 

Are you creating strong calls to actions on your posts that make people want to engage and respond? Is the post helpful? Does it evoke emotion? Your audience will react to compelling content so make sure you’ve really nailed your content strategy and are paying attention to the insights. 

If you have a large audience, you might not be expected to answer every single comment but set expectations. Tell everyone you’ll be in the comments for 30 minutes or an hour after you make each post. Then really get in there and have meaningful discussion with your audience. 

It’s also important to comment on content that shows up in your main feed to engage with those you follow. 

Spend some time each day commenting meaningfully on posts in your main feed, posts your followers have posted, and posts in hashtags you follow. 

This will help you to stay on top of everyone's feed and blow your engagement through the roof because when you leave a comment, especially a meaningful one, it encourages click throughs to your page where you now have the opportunity to turn that person into a follower or if they already are, then perhaps they will be compelled to hop on your email list or make a purchase. 

Your captions will make or break your post. It should follow your content strategy and provide information that is helpful and entertaining. Long form captions are almost like mini blog posts, allowing you to really teach on the platform and help your audience to see you as an expert that they should listen to and buy from. 

Short captions that are fun and witty also have a place in your content plan but be sure that you’re not posting randomly and that the caption still ties into your main goal of engagement, sales and growth. 

Take advantage of all 2200 characters that IG gives you for your caption from time to time to really give your audience insightful, helpful, educational or inspirational information with a strong call to action to drive home the engagement you’re looking for. 

Plan your content ahead so you're never scrambling for content to post. Utilize a monthly content calendar so that you can take advantages of themes and holidays throughout your posts. 

This helps you to stay on top of your content strategy to help you reach your goals. If you’re caught without something to post, or if you stumble upon a holiday that you weren’t prepared for, you’ll be tempted to just throw something up for the sake of posting and that may do more harm than good. 

A content plan will help you to roll out a sales funnel, a set of posts that’s all related to each other or anything along those lines. Try to plan your content monthly instead of weekly to really give you the opportunity to maximise your message, make use of holidays and special days within the month so you can reach your goals. 

None of this matters if you aren’t consistent in posting. You’ll fade away in the Instagram algorithm and be replaced by the next expert in your field. 

Consistency is so important to growing a business on Instagram. You really want to be posting every day or at least multiple times per week. A whole week should not go by and you’re not posting on Instagram. 

This is why having a content plan is so important. Batch create your content and have it all ready to go so that there’s never a need to go a day without a post. 

Let’s dive deeper into the strategy behind your IG content. You may be overwhelmed right now thinking you have to do all the things. With a plan in hand, everything will fall into place and your IG growth will happen naturally and exponentially as the well-oiled machine behind your content is executed. 

Once you develop a detailed and repeatable system behind your IG growth, it will become easy to hand off parts of your operations to team members, freeing up your time to create even more amazing plans and content to support everyone. 

Your main Instagram feed is the front display for your business. This is where your content will live and it will tell the story of who you are and what you offer. You really want to carefully plan this content to match not only your personality but the personality of your audience. 

Don’t get caught in a trap trying to curate the perfect feed. Your content is more important than sticking to the perfectly color-blocked grid. 

Allow yourself some flexibility by focusing more on planning ahead of time and ensuring that each post builds on your goals for the month. 

Posting up to 10 images or videos in a single post is called a carousel. This type of post encourages engagement because your audience will need to actually interact with your post by swiping through to see all the images. 

Use these types of posts for how-tos, tutorials, product displays showing your product or services in different executions, reviews of your services or anything that you know your audience will find really useful. Draw them in with carousel type posts and encourage them to save the information for future use. 

Carousels are one way to encourage saves and they work really well for that. You want your audience to save your IG post because this is a strong indicator to Instagram that your content is valued so they should continue to push you to the top of your audience’s feed. 

Saves are so much more valuable than double taps and are probably right up there with shares. Encourage more saves by providing content that is simply outstanding. This is content that’s super helpful. So helpful that people will want to save it to refer back to when they need it. 

This can be anything from a tutorial to a business tip that provides a quick win to a video instructional post, a recipe, a workout, a life hack, a funny quote or a super powerful affirmation. 

Put your best foot forward and tell your audience to SAVE THIS POST in your caption to encourage them to do just that. 

Use IGTV for your longer videos. You'll want to maintain a healthy mix of content type on your feed so that IG takes you seriously so definitely don’t sleep on IGTV. 

Even if you have a Youtube channel, you’ll want to take some time to create content that is specific for IGTV that can’t be found elsewhere.

You can also save your IG lives on your IGTV so that they live for longer than 24 hours. 

Videos on your main feed are one minute long in length and a great way to make people stop scrolling and pay attention. The longer they watch your video, the more your content will show up in their feed so create amazing, engaging videos that your audience will want to watch til the end. 

Combine carousels and videos in your content strategy by using each slide to provide one step or one tip, encouraging your followers to swipe through to see the next steps. This works great for recipes, before and after, different ways to style a statement piece or a room, tutorials and tons of other content types. 

Reels is new which means Instagram is pushing it hard. That means if you’re using Reels, Instagram will push you hard. So what does that mean? You should be using Reels if you have access. It’s still in the rollout stage so not everyone will have access immediately. 

What is Reels? 

Well Instagram has a reputation for taking features from other social media platforms and incorporating it into their own. That’s how Stories was born. Now before you call the IG police, just hear me out. Do you recall life without IG Stories? Do you remember a day and time when Snapchat didn’t exist? IG took a concept and made it better. Now it's their most popular feature. 

Stories is a total copycat from Snapchat. Reels is a version of popular platform TikTok incorporated into the IG world. 

With many different types of content on offer through the IG platform, it can be difficult to narrow down your focus. Don’t stretch yourself too thin as a creator. Plan for one or two Reels each month, making sure that they make sense in your overall content strategy and will help you to meet your goals. 

Keep your focus on creating quality content for your main feed and your Stories while dabbling a little into all other types of IG content. It can sound like a lot but once you have your consistent plan, you will simply implement, rinse and repeat your content strategy.

That brings us to everybody’s favorite type of IG content, Stories. Stories are fun little videos or static images that only last for 24 hours which means it’s a great way to unveil your brand and give everyone a peek into the behind the scenes of who you are. 

There are a myriad of ways to use Stories to bring your brand to life and you’ll want to take advantage of them all. Create beautiful templates to share your message but also don’t be afraid to hop on live and unscripted and just share. 

Show everyone what it’s like to run your business, to serve your clients and to be you. This humanizes you in the eyes of your audience which can be very endearing, leading up to trust which translates to sales.

Taking your audience behind the scenes helps them to really connect to you and encourages engagement through all the fun options on Stories like polls, question boxes and so much more. If you need help with ideas, please click here. 

Going live on Instagram is something that you want to do regularly but not in an ad hoc manner. As with everything else, your strategy is very important for your IG lives. 

Each one should be scripted and to the point so you’re not rambling and wasting your audience's time. 

Each Live should have a purpose. Your audience must come away feeling like they got something from staying on live with you, even if that purpose was just to entertain or to inspire. 

Each one should tie into your overall theme for the month. What are you offering this month? How can you plan IG Lives to help you sell that offer and grow your audience at the same time? How can you use your lives to provide value to your audience?

Promote your IG lives ahead of time so that your followers know when you'll be on and what the topic will be. No one wants to hop on live and be the only one there.

Then save your Lives to IGTV and promote it after so people have a reason to go back and watch. 

Are you annoyed by seeing quotes in your timeline? You’re not. Every now and then one resonates enough to inspire your like and maybe even your share. Quotes are powerful. They are one of the most shared types of content on IG and that’s why we plan for them and incorporate them into a successful Instagram content strategy. 

Use a variety of quotes in your content. Look for or create quotes that are funny, relatable, relevant to something happening now in your industry or the world at large, inspirational or just really real. 

Be sure to use the captions of your quote images well to encourage comments and shares in a coy manner. 

Are you sending DMs to your followers? You should be. This is a great way to show them that you are of service to them and care about them being a part of your community. If you get DMs, of course you should respond to them or at least acknowledge them in some way. 

But you can and should also develop a DM strategy to push your growth forward. That could look like DMing every new follower to welcome them to the community. They’ll immediately feel part of something special. 

Or it could be to ask for DM responses to IG stories or certain posts. 

Having conversations in your DMs with your followers is another good indicator to IG that the relationship is a valued one and so you’ll show up more in the feeds of those you DM. So keep the convo going with a wide cross-section of your followers and those you want to welcome into your community. 

User-generated content or UGC means posts from other people about your product or service. Encourage your followers to share your products on their timeline and repost that content onto your stories or highlight a few on your main feed. 

This builds your social proof. UGC shows that there are people out there that really are customers of yours and not only have they spent money with you but they loved your offer so much they posted about it. 

You can also use this as an opportunity to share your appreciation for those who are members of your community. 

Paid ads can of course get you in front of a new audience but will only convert them to your audience with, of course, a solid strategy in place.

You may know what it takes to appeal to the audience you’ve already nurtured but you’ll have to really amp it up to convince someone new who wasn’t even looking for you to follow you. 

You might want to take a post that gained amazing traction when it was first posted, tweak the caption so it appeals both to existing followers and potential followers and use that to run an ad. You’ll want your ad to tightly target people who fit your customer profile almost exactly. 

It makes no sense to market your content widely to people who simply may not be interested in what you have to offer, so consider your targeting options well before placing an ad. 

You too can use Influencers as a growth strategy for your business, even if you're a small one-man show. Some pages with a large audience will allow you to straight up advertise your content and this can be very valuable if their audience closely aligns with yours.

Others will work with you for payment along with a product for an honest review. Find influencers and large accounts in your niche, follow them for a while and take note of their account. Look especially at their Stories to ensure their message aligns with yours then reach out to them for rates and services that they may provide. 

Using influencers and shoutouts from large accounts can send an influx of people your way immediately so make sure you’re ready and have something to offer these newcomers to grow your business and achieve your IG goals. 

Hashtags serve a very important purpose on Instagram. They group content together so that it can be discovered by users searching for that type of content. Whenever an IG user searches for content on the platform, they are offered accounts, places or hashtags among the options and types of content that is returned to them. 

If you want to reach a wide audience of people not yet following you on Instagram, you'll want to use hashtags in your posts. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags that can be used whether in your caption or in your comments. 

Use hashtags that are very relevant to the content that you’re posting. Irrelevant hashtags won’t get you any traction with your intended audience and can even lead to your account being suppressed in the algorithm if you do this often so as with everything else, develop a strategy for your hashtag use. 

Once your Instagram content strategy is solid, you’ll want to begin using some tools and resources to help make your Instagram growth easier and automatic. There’s a resource out there to help with every aspect of IG growth, some better than others, so always do your research into the strategies behind the selected tools and resources you’re using.

Some popular tools to help you create stunning visual content include: 

• Canva
• Facetune
• Photogrid
• PicsArt
• Lightroom
• Snapseed
• Retouch Me 
• InShot
• VSCO
• Photoshop 
• PS Express
• WordSwag
• Unfold

And more. This list is by no means exhaustive and new ones pop up every year. These tools will help you to do everything from creating beautiful text graphics, removing objects from your background, smooth fine lines and blemishes, color correct images, add a thousand filters and more. 

Once you have your content ready to go, it can be helpful to schedule your posts so that they automatically go out to your feed without your interference. Be sure to have notifications turned on so you can immediately engage with any comments or messages that come in once your content goes out. 

Some of the tools that allow you to plan your grid and schedule your content ahead of time include:

• Later
• Tailwind
• Loomly
• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SproutSocial
• Planoly
• Sendible
• Agora Pulse
  

Of course, you can always develop a plan for your Instagram then hand it off to a social media professional or agency to handle growth for you. This can be super helpful for you as you focus on other aspects of your business, like developing the products and services that your new followers will buy. 

Do your due diligence in selecting the right person or agency to handle your social media account because if the trust is lost or your account tanks, it can be a nightmare to build it back. 

Whether you choose to utilize all of what the platform has to offer or you pick and choose from this list of Instagram growth hacks, remember that nothing will work well if your growth strategy and content plan isn’t solid first. 

With the foundation in your place, these tips will help you to grow quickly on Instagram so you can build a business through this incredible social media platform.