How to grow on INSTAGRAM in 2020

When it comes to Instagram, gaining followers is not hard. What's hard is to build up a real and engaging community, which gets inspired and influenced by you. Here are some tips that can help your Instagram growth in 2020.

1 Profile on point

This might seem elementary but If you are trying to grow your blog or  brand, this is the most important thing when it comes to monetizing on Instagram. You need to give people a reason why they should follow you. Your profile gives that first impression when someone goes on your feed.

Profile photo : Make sure you've put a clear, eye catching picture, which indicates who you are and what you're doing.

Bio :Instagram bio is the first thing someone sees even before they scroll down to your feed. There are few things that you shouldn't forget to include in your bio.

•  First, your name. It's smart if your name has a keyword that would make it searchable. As given in first example below, when someone search the keyword "Life Coach", account of Kathleen Nower comes up with the results. It's so beneficial because this way, you are exposed to individuals who are searching for your exact niche.
• Second, niche statement. A niche statement within your bio is important because it gives a clear message and help people understand what exactly you do. 
• Third, extra details . Be intentional not to put something random. Use that space to showcase something you've achieved. As in the second example, whether you have your own hashtag, or content you provide , or something indicated who you are and what you do. 
• Fourth, links. To make your bio pop even more, you can use the space given for a link, to drive traffic to your other external links. So if you have a youtube, or a website or a blog, use that opportunity.

Feed :So if you are trying to build up a community with a goal of potentially creating a business, a niche oriented feed can take you a long way. A niche gives a reason on why exactly anyone should follow you. Whether it's travelling, food blogging, fashion, tech whatever you like. In the beginning, make sure you stick to the niche so that you have a low chance of confusing your followers and eventually making them unfollow. A great way to indicate a niche is to find out your own content pillars. 

Example :

• Think you are a lifestyle blogger. And you choose Travel, Food and Fashion as your pillars. So then you have a clear vision what your content should be, and how you can balance your blog around those pillars.
• Fitness blog : fitnesss,nutrition, meditation

If you are starting from the scratch, or if you are profile is brand new, one smart move you can take is to plan your feed. There are so many apps like Later, UNUM, preview, planoly. You can use these to aesthetically plan your feed before you get into the posting game. Before you think about getting followers, it's better if you have posted at least 9- 12 photos. 

2) Consistency 

Keep a consistent way of posting. It doesn't mean that you have to post every day. Few days a week will do the job. And stories are also a great way to create a bond with your community.

3) Hashtags and locations

Hashtags and locations are so important because they expose you to whole new Audiences, which are interested in the same niche as yours. Instagram gives you the opportunity to use maximum 30 Hashtags. My hashtag strategy is to use a combination of most popular (more than 500k posts) , popular (between 50k-10k posts) and least popular (under 10k posts) hashtags related to your post.  Most popular hashtags are way more saturated, which makes your post disappear within other posts. Use more hashtags from the "popular" category. That way you can optimise your hashtag reach.

Locations are also important because people often visit those location feeds and if someone finds your picture there, there's a high chance of them to come visit your profile. And if your profile is on point as I mentioned above, they would not be able to resist following you.

4) Engagement

Now this is another useful tip. Engaging with random accounts would not help that much but if you put a little more effort on finding your targeted audience, trust me it will pay off.
How to find your targeted audience:

• Find some popular pages which are similar to your niche. Checkout their latest post and you'll find a lot of people who've liked and commented on that post. They are most likely the audience you are going for.
• Go to the hashtags feeds you often use and engage with the recent posts. Those people are not only in the same interests as yours, you can guarantee that they are active at the moment.

But don't leave spam comments asking them to follow or visit your page. Try to give some value to their content and actually complement instead. This will help you to get the attention of new people. As I kept repeating the most important thing is your feed is on point. If it's not everything else you do will be useless.

5)Shareable content.

If you've been looking closely, you might have noticed that engagements have kinda gone down since the beginning of 2020. Which makes us suspect that a huge difference has happened with the algorithm. According to the experts, Instagram is being favorable for shareable content. 

What does that mean? 

As an example, think about meme pages. When you see a relatable meme, what do you do. You share it! And sometimes you tag your friends because you think it's funny. Which boosts up the engagement of that post and gives it a high chance to end up in the explore feed.
Creating relatable content is a smart move you can take to grow on Instagram in 2020. It doesn't have to be funny all the time, be creative and find a unique way to make people share your piece of content.