INSTAGRAM 101 - PART 18/18

How to Build Your Following With Instagram Guides

By using Instagram Guides, you can create a community that trusts and respects your recommendations. Gaining new followers is a main goal of Instagram, and Instagram Guides is a new avenue with which to do so

Utilizing the Explore Page and the algorithm, as discussed in the last chapter, is a method, not only to promote your content but also to grow your following. You need to aim to build long-lasting, engaged follower relationships—not just people who follow to try and win a contest, and then unfollow immediately after.

Branding

In order to be successful on social media, you will need to build a brand. It is no use just having an account, you need to have a brand. Effectively, your brand is how your audience perceives you; it needs to be consistent, creative, and attractive to your target audience.

Your Guides need to fit in with the brand that you are trying to portray. There is no use just doing random Guides for attention-- this is a waste of your time and audiences. Make sure that your Guides align with your values and will also interest your audience.

The audience should be at the forefront of any decisions that you make to make sure that you are using language that is appropriate for them and speaking to them in a way they wanted to be spoken to

Guides are a way to provide your audience with information. So do not come across as condescending or rude, be approachable, informative, and kind; depending on your audience, you want to come across as a helpful friend giving heartfelt recommendations, not an evil Instagram dictator!

Creating Instagram Guides is one of the most relevant ways to build your brand authority.

Business accounts

It may also be beneficial to check what kind of profile you are running. For example, is your Instagram switched to a business profile or is it still a personal one? There are numerous kinds of business profiles that you can run and this word appears in your Instagram Bio.

You can turn your personal account into a business one at any time and you are also not bound to the business label that you choose.

Having a business account is just one way of creating your brand; it is a simple and easy step to take that makes it clear to your audience exactly what you are trying to achieve

Business accounts have access to features that personal accounts do not; this includes analytics, the ability to boost posts, being able to add links to your stories (once you have reached 10,000 followers), and being able to add products to Instagram shop. So, if you do plan on using Instagram’s inbuilt shop system and selling on Instagram you will need to have a business account.

Follower tracking

In essence, you just need to be aware. This means checking your analytics. Keeping track of what you do to promote each post and how well they impact on your metrics is the best way to know if you can replicate that again. Keeping track of your following count and creating follower goals is a great way to ensure that your content is being received in the way that you want. However, having the maximum number of followers is not necessarily always a good thing. What you want is instead engaged followers. These are followers that are actively liking commenting and sharing your posts. The ratio of your followers to your engagement is central to business success and is something that other brands will care about if you are trying to gain partnerships.

Analytics

Success is obviously relative and could depend on the content of your Guide.

Your account is such a business account you can use the in-built analytics function in order to test how your Guides are performing.

At present, you can only view insights into your profile as a whole and specific feed posts, but you can correlate that data with your other types of posts, and analyze the difference.

It is better to have engaged followers, than a high number of followers who do not interact with your content. Check your post insights (before posting a Guide, and after) on posts that were, and were not included in your Guide. You just need to see what your statistics are!

The “success” of content

The “success” of content is often based on the number of shares that it gets; Guides are no exception to this rule. Shares are a huge part of how the algorithm works, meaning that in order to get the higher exposure is going to be the more likely to you to succeed against the algorithm.

Getting a feed post shared in other people’s Guides is a great way to know if your business overall is successful. If someone does show your work in their Guide it would also be good etiquette to share their Guide in your stories and thank them for the promotion of your work—after all, it is what you would want them to do for you. Having a post shared means that other creators believe you to be trustworthy and a reputable source of information, and therefore their followers will as well.

Check the insights on your posts (that you have included in Guides) and see what the interaction level is and how it differs from posts that were not included in Guides or have not been shared as widely.

If your Guide is highlighting a product, for example, it would be successful if sales or interest increased. This is an obvious and easily translatable metric.

If you have created a place Guide recommending your small business getting an increase in customer or traffic would be an obvious way to know if your kind has worked. You could always include a discount code or a “mention this for 10% off” in order to incentivize people to interact

Conclusion

To conclude, users come to Instagram with a dream of being inspired. In amongst the blurry photos from their family accounts, and memes shared by older relatives, from throwback pictures of people they went to high school with to random people they followed for some reason but cannot quite remember why (but also do not want to unfollow in case it was important), people down to Instagram to watch people living the dream.

They go to Instagram for the latest product recommendations, places to visit (including shops, cafes, and photography locations), and to learn about the world.

Internal Guides make it easier to facilitate a reputable transfer of information. By sharing expertise with your audience, as well as their audience, here cementing himself as an authority and a brand of trust. Creating relevant and exciting Guides is a great way to improve your own business as well as those businesses you support. It is a fantastic way to benefit your business relations.