Some very popular niches are travel, food, health and fitness, beauty, parenting, etc. but you can narrow down your topics even more. For example, traveling with kids, lactose-free recipes, workouts for people in wheelchairs, locally-produced skincare, raising twins, etc.
Once you’ve defined your niche you’ll be able to learn more about your audience. Check out similar Instagram accounts, read the comments, and see what type of content is most engaging or what people are talking about. Pay attention to which hashtags others are using and search for more inspiration. Pretty soon you’ll be able cater to your target audience like a pro.
2. Focus on engagement—not just number of followers
Instagram engagement measures the number of times users interact with your content (by liking, commenting, sharing, or saving it) versus the number of followers you have.
For example, an account with 5K followers with an average of 400 likes per post and several comments is much more valuable than one with 20K followers and fewer than 100 likes per post. Instagram users can easily spot if an account has a lot of fake followers and that instantly breaks their trust.
This metric provides 3 important benefits:
- It tells the Instagram algorithm how interesting your content is. The greater the engagement, the more Instagram will show the post to other people.
- It gives you useful info to share with brands that you’d like to collaborate with. High engagement can help you negotiate better deals.
- It gives you insight into what your followers like and dislike. It’s a good idea to repeat content ideas that got high engagement and tweak the ones that didn’t.
Engagement also fosters community and gives a reason for your followers to return to your Instagram page, so communication should be reciprocal. It’s important to not only encourage your followers to be active, but also to keep up the conversation in the comments section and through DMs. Whether you’re answering a question, giving a compliment, or responding to negative feedback, always acknowledge your followers and show you care.
3. Be authentic and honest
Long gone are the days when people only expected picture-perfect content. Today, Instagram users want to see realness. Post unedited photos from your camera roll, or if you’re struggling with something, share your story. That way, your audience can relate to you and will trust you more.
Constanza Concha is an advocate for skin positivity. She’s been living with acne since she was 7 years old, and uses her IG account to share her challenges and successes as well as to promote products and brands she likes. When followers see that there’s a real person just like them behind Instagram posts, it creates trust, intimacy, and connection. These are crucial components of successfully promoting brands or selling products online.
Hashtags are a way for Instagram to categorize user content and an opportunity for you to be discovered by people who aren’t following you yet.
You can search for hashtags using Instagram search, and see how many mentions each has. With over 2B mentions, #love is the most popular hashtag. Although it might sound tempting to use it on all your posts, think about what value it’d actually bring to your brand. The chances of your post making it to the top of the list or staying at the beginning of the recent posts list for more than a few hours are very low.
Of course you should include some of the really popular hashtags, but think of some that are more specific to your niche or location. If you’re trying to promote your dog grooming services in London, for example, a relevant hashtag might be #doggroominglondon (1K+ posts). This will likely attract more potential customers than simply #dog (348M posts).
To reach and engage with your target audience, the hashtags you use should be relevant to what you’re doing. But there’s no definitive answer to how many hashtags you should use per post. While Instagram suggests keeping it between 3–5 per post, marketing platform Later analyzed over 18M Instagram feed posts and concluded that 20 hashtags secure the highest average reach. More than that, 30 hashtags provide the highest average engagement rate.
Just remember though, too many irrelevant hashtags can have the opposite effect: your posts might appear scammy both to the Instagram algorithm and to users.
5. Post quality content regularly
The rule of thumb is to post at least once a day. That way, you have more opportunity for engagement.
The Instagram algorithm likes to show posts from accounts that regularly interact with their followers, so you need to make sure you offer plenty of possibilities for your followers to like, comment, share, and save. Some Instagram users still prefer to scroll the feed page, while others only watch stories or are hooked on reels. If you post different types of content, you’ll be able to engage with more people.
For lovers and trees grew their brand in only a year, just through posting regularly and social media marketing. They are active in repeating their brand message, which resonates with followers.
Start earning money on Instagram
We’ve explored 5 effective ways you can make money on the gram, discussed how to sell products on the platform, and gone over the ways you can build an engaged audience of potential customers. Now is the time to take the first steps!
If you want to learn more about how to set up your Instagram for success, take a look at other Printful blog posts where we talk about ecommerce, marketing, trends, and much more. Good luck and let us know how it goes in the comments.
