We all know how Instagram influences millions of people all over the world. But what we don’t ponder over is that the people themselves affect other people, and Instagram is just a media. Of course, we are not trying to demean this platform anyway; we are just stating a fact. Did you know that over 500 million daily active users follow at least one business account? These 500 million people make up 80 percent of the total accounts on Instagram.

Thus, it is no surprise that marketers pay crucial attention to Instagram in their social media marketing strategies. What is essential to have if you are using Instagram for your brand or influencing? Can’t think of anything?

Well, it is your profile! Everything starts with the Instagram profile. You must have come across such accounts that you have to follow. The account may not even be fascinating to you. Yet, there’s just something about those profiles that capture your attention and draw you in. You feel like they would brighten up your feed every day.

If you are reading this article, you must be someone who wants to create such a profile that enraptures the masses. Well, you have come to the right place! You can turn your desires into reality by following these few pointers that we have curated carefully. If you follow these, you will have one of those profiles that everyone wants to follow. We don’t want to mislead you by saying these are instant tips and tricks. Everything requires time and patience, and so this would too. But if you keep going, you will surely reach your goal.

How to be a success on Instagram?

In the list given below, we have included tips and tricks that you can apply right away, like profile optimization and some advanced pointers like advertising. You should go through all of the information so that you have a good idea about everything before you get right into making your account awesome!

  • Optimize Your Profile Choose the best possible profile picture:

    Your profile picture is one of the first things that people will notice about your account. That is why you must have a profile picture that reflects you just as you are. Even when you comment on anyone’s post or appear in a notification, your profile is the first thing that any person would notice.

    So, what do you think you should put on your profile- a picture of your cat or a nice picture of yourself? It would help if you had an image on your profile that shows off you or your brand, depending on whether you are an influencer or have your brand.

    Not only must your profile be fun, but it should also come off as serious and trustworthy. As we have mentioned, your personality or brand ideals need to be encapsulated in that little circle. Take the example of your favorite movie star or pop singer. You must have noticed how alluring their profile picture is one of the very reasons they have such a massive amount of followers.

    If you have a brand, you need to have an appealing logo which you should then use as your profile picture. Not only does your profile picture make people follow you, but it also assures people that they have found the correct account.

  • Have a fitting username:

    Next, we come to why you must have an excellent and identifiable username for your account. It would be best if you were particularly mindful when you are selecting a username for your account. Your username is the one-word “handle,” which is in lower case. It serves as the Instagram URL to your account.

    For example, for a pop star, it would be their full name in lower case. You will be allowed 30 characters for your username. You generally can’t add any symbols like percentage or dollar signs or even spaces in your username. But you are free to use underscores and periods if you wish.

    If you have a brand, it is simple to choose your username; you have to name it as your brand only in lowercase. But if you don’t have a brand, you need to have a username that you won’t change often. It would be best if you never change your username. If your account is an established one, think quite a lot before changing your username. That is because you will also need to change your username in the places where you might have given your previous one-such as in business cards, posts, guest blogs, etc.

  • Have the right name for your account:

    We have talked quite a bit about the username but now, let’s talk about the next important thing- your display name. Your account’s display name may be similar to your username, but it is not the same. Firstly, you have a lot more flexibility when you are writing your display name. It can have uppercase letters and spaces as well. Thus, you can add more information about your brand or yourself.

    For example, suppose you have an embroidery store named ‘Kalakriti.’ In that case, your display name could be “Kalakriti- Embroidery store” or “Kalakriti || Embroidery.” The latter, according to us, is more aesthetic and trendy. You are, of course, free to implement your ideas too. You can get creative with your display name but make sure it is understandable and identifiable. Unless your display name is both, the whole purpose of it gets destroyed.

    Did you know that having a good display name can also drive visibility to your account? That is another reason you should have the best possible username.

  • Have the perfect Bio:

    What you need is a sizzling is an Instagram bio. It would be best to put a lot of thought and creativity while curating the best Instagram bio. You know how a healthy beginning is half the job done. Consider your Instagram bio as the beginning, and the job here is to have the best Instagram bio. Thus, it would be best if you had a great bio, and this pretty much gets you halfway at having an excellent Instagram account. You have a limit of 150 characters on your bio, so make sure that they are the best 150 characters you have ever written. Your bio should convey who you are, what you do, and what people can expect from your account. It would be best if you also conveyed to people why they should follow you. We all know that people are generally driven to things or places that they can gain something.

    We, of course, don’t mean that you should start selling products if you don’t have a brand. Content is also a great thing to offer to people, and the number of content creators and influencers is at an all-time high right now. If you face a difficulty writing in the bio, ask a trusted friend or close one, and they would surely make you realize all the things you do well. Here are a few tips on how to format your Instagram bio-

    • It would be best to use an online tool to count the characters to keep your bio within 150 characters. You should also make use of an emoji dictionary only to use universal emoticons.
    • Break lines wherever required.
    • You have to select and copy-paste your Instagram bio to your profile. If you feel nervous, you could paste it to your Notepad first and then on your Instagram profile.
  • Ensure your account is not private:

    If you want to have an Instagram profile that everyone likes and follows, the first thing you should do is make your account public. Unless you make it public, you won’t have visibility, and people would not even bother to follow you. It’s one thing to tap the follow button and another thing to send a follow request and wait for it to be accepted.

    Moreover, you can’t be blind to what your audience thinks when trying to grow your account. If you don’t have a public /business profile, you will not get the analytics on your stories and posts. That translates to not seeing how your content is doing, and no, you can gauge a lot by likes or comments. Here are the steps to creating a business profile-

    • Go to your account and tap on the icon in the top right corner.
    • You will find “Settings” below. There you will find an option called “Privacy.” If your account is private, switch off the option which says “Private account.”
    • Lastly, on your public profile, select a business category. It may not seem necessary, but it will help people know more about you or your brand. You can choose from a wide range of types- from “writer” to “influencer” to “restaurant.”
  • Give contact information on your profile:

    The next tip on making your Instagram account fully functional is to have contact information. Your Instagram account should be at its highest potential, and allowing people to contact and connect with you is pretty essential. Since you will have a business profile, you can easily add your email address which would then show “click to email.” If you have a brand and want people to call you, you can add a phone number as well. It would show on your profile as “click to call.”

    Suppose you have a brand or company that operates offline and direct people to your office. In that case, you can add in a physical location as well. That will help people get the driving directions to your company office. Adding in contact information may not be an essential step, yet it would make your account more attractive.

    Besides, your brand/ company would be easily accessible to your audience and customers. Here is a pro tip for you- If you are an influencer and don’t feel comfortable giving out your home address, you could mention your city and state. People would love to know where you are from, and your profile would also get the attention you want!

  • Ensure you have the correct link in your bio:

    Instagram allows only one link to add to your bio, so you must make sure that it counts. A link is like an asset. Besides, making your profile look professional but also drives traffic to your page/ website. Whether you are trying to get customers for your brand, direct people to your blog post, or simply trying to get people to check out your site, the link is vital. You can take the help of online tools to create an advanced link that would also make an excellent landing page for your website. Whatever you wish to do, you should ensure having a good link in your bio.

  • Ensure that your feed is beautiful and eye-catching:

    Now, we have one of the most vital things again for your Instagram profile. Yes, the content. The best way you can understand this is by looking through the influencers’ accounts or celebrities you follow. They may not have a particular theme for their feed, but each of their posts is cohesive and looks beautiful.

    Remember that is the standard you need to have. We’ll let you in on a bit of secret, that is, the last nine posts on your feed can make or break the deal for you. These nine posts are the ones that attract people to your account and make them follow it.

    Thus, make sure everything you post is beautiful and is related to the previous post, even if the connection is very subtle. You can make your posts more discoverable, too, by adding in location tagging or user tagging. You should also make use of analytics (we will be speaking on it soon).

  • Schedule and post the right content:

    By now, you must have sorted out your Instagram profile and all related to it. You have your username, display name, profile picture, and also your bio spot-on. Still, unless you post content, you don’t have a profile. You have to start thinking and make a plan for your content. It is a no-brainer but avoids making boring content of low quality because this won’t fetch you, followers. Your caption should be short, crisp, and relevant. Use too many words, and your audience would think you are giving a lecture. You certainly won’t want that. So here are a few pointers-

    1. Since Instagram is all about the content one share, you have to make sure it’s beautiful, relevant, and of high quality. You have to keep an eye on the latest trends and work hard not to deviate off-brand.
    2. Make use of editing tools when you are posting. If you are a seasoned editor, you could use Photoshop, but there is a lot of editing software out there if you can’t. Some of these are Adobe Spark Post, Canva, Typorama, etc., that you can find on the Internet.
    3. Another important thing is to start scheduling your posts in advance. If you are erratic with your posting, you won’t get the engagement or reach you want, and in turn, you will not have a growth in the follower count. Start with whatever plan suits you. If you have planned to post twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you should have your posts ready on Monday. It will take some discipline, but it is not impossible. We know that you certainly will be able to do it!
    4. When you have been posting for quite a while and have acquired the discipline, start posting more often. That will help you in increasing your reach and engagement. It would be best to think of the Instagram algorithm as a friend and not a foe. You will show up in people’s feeds when you post good quality content often.
  • Make use of your analytics tool:

    After you have started posting on your profile regularly, you will need to check which of your posts are performing best. We mean this in terms of engagement and reach. You may think it is as easy as checking the likes and comments of posts. While this could work sometimes, that method is not feasible. If you are trying to get an overall idea of how accounts in your niche are performing, you will need to keep an on the analytics.

    Moreover, you might not believe it, but some people buy Instagram likes and comments from online services or companies. The number of likes on such profiles would not give you the idea of the engagement they are getting on their posts which would, of course, be less. You could make use of Google Analytics or any other analytics tool that you like.

    The main factor here is to have an idea of what content is performing the best. You could also understand the timings when posts perform the best and thus, start posting accordingly.

  • Keep an eye on the insights:

    We mentioned earlier that you wouldn’t have access to Instagram Insights unless your profile is a business profile. After you have made your profile public/ business, you will notice a graph in your profile. This graph would show all the demographic details that you need. You will see what percentage of your followers are of either gender, which age group mostly follows you, and where they live.

    Besides, you can now see the engagement and reach of each of your posts. That is another way of seeing which posts of yours perform the best, other than using the Analytics tool. Insights also pack in some more metrics such as:

    1. Follower activity – You will be able to see how many people checked out your profile on a daily and weekly basis. You can even see how often your followers log in to Instagram each day.
    2. Website cLicks – You would see the number of people who clicked on your website link given in your bio. Insights help you see if any person clicked on it more than once too.
    3. Reach – Reach is one part of Instagram Insights that is not clear to many people. The ‘Reach’ metric refers to the number of people who have viewed your story or post in their feed.
    4. Impressions – Another part of Insights that is a bit under a cloud of ambiguity is Impressions. Impressions can be referred to as the aggregate number of times people have viewed your post or story.
    5. Saves – Saves will tell you the number of profiles or people that have saved your posts.
  • Create a strategy for your Instagram:

    Several years ago, Facebook first introduced their algorithm called “EdgeRank.” This algorithm aimed to filter out and then decide which content was worthy enough to be shown on people’s feeds. It would also determine what content had to be restricted. Their algorithm used several factors to filter out the content, for example, how recent and relevant a post is, how many people genuinely like it, etc.

    Ultimately, the better a post performed, the more it was exposed to people. The algorithm used for both Facebook and Instagram is the same. If you want to make the algorithm your friend, you need to have a good Instagram strategy.

    1. It would be best if you propagated to people ‘why’ they should follow your account. You could join a cause and work for it. It would inspire people, and they would naturally follow you on your journey.
    2. There are loads of content creators and influencers on Instagram, so you need to stand out. You must have seen brands not only posting updates for their products but also churning out relevant content. At present, it could be as simple as fighting for Black rights, fighting for LGBTQ rights, or working for a feminist cause.

Conclusion

Now, you must be familiar with what to have in your Instagram profile; you could incorporate a few advanced pointers in your Instagram plan. Firstly, you should always use relevant hashtags in your posts and keep your eye on trending ones. Secondly, when you have established your Instagram profile and have a decent amount of following, you could start investing in advertising. Spending a few bucks to help your profile reach more people will do your great. Also, do not forget to cross-promote your friends and other accounts in your niche. That would also help in your engagement and reach.