Organic growth is the process of marketing a brand with its own resources and not paying for external advertisements to draw people to the business. It involves things like producing relatable and interesting content, using social media platforms and optimising content to drive the most traffic. When It comes to platforms such as Instagram, the algorithm shows you content first which ranks the highest. This is all dependent on things like your views, comments, likes and shares. Therefore, the more interaction your posts receive, the more likely your posts will appear first on others feeds.
With all of this in mind, this article will show you some tips for Instagram organic growth that do not require you to pay for ads.
Use Your Bio to Reflect the Brand Personality/Your Goals
One great way to boost your organic growth is to make use of your Instagram bio. It may not be long, but it is a great indicator for visitors for whether or not they want to follow you. If you post in your bio something entirely different to the posts you offer, it will be confusing and could reduce your following. After all, those who continue to engage with your page will boost your growth.
If a new person visits your page, you want to ensure that they stick around, and that is done by a catchy bio. You want to show how you will benefit them if they follow you.
Post Consistently
It is important that you set a schedule for when you will post. If you leave large gaps between posting and come back posting all at once, you will hugely affect your organic growth by ranking lower down in individuals’ feeds. Those who follow you are less likely to be drawn to your post if you are inconsistent and when your interactions decrease, so does your page.
A great way to ensure that you do not stray too long from your posting is to plan in a day and a time that you will post. It would also be advantageous to see when the best hours to post are to reach the most people globally and increase the chance of them liking or commenting.
Use Hashtags Strategically
Hashtags are some of the best ways to reach more users. However, it is not going to be beneficial for your organic growth to use heavily used generic hashtags. They are so popular that you are unlikely to be seen. The best ways to use hashtags are to use ones that are specific to your page, what your page is for and those that are related keywords. It would also be useful to research new keywords that those who are similar pages to you post. You can use up to 30 hashtags but consider using the most relevant ones and not ones unrelated to your content as it could look like spam.
Use Instagram Analytics
Firstly, find out where you can access Instagram insights here. Insights are free and they can be used by those who have a creator or business account. They are useful to see the trends of your posts and determine what kind of day you get most interactions, what those posts are and so on. There are a few different elements that you can find on the insights tool. One of which is the recent highlights which shows if your performance has gone up in the last 7 days. Further, there is the overview section, and this shows the number of accounts reached, content interactions and total followers. All of these tools can help you tailor your posts to reach the most consistent results. For example, if you see that a recent post has manged to reach a high number of people in comparison to your previous posts, take a look at what factors may have influenced that so that you can continue to see similar trends.
Post According to Target Audience Preference
The Instagram algorithm always shows you posts from those who you have most interaction with. That is why you may see your friends and families posts first. Therefore, one great way for boosting your organic growth is to research what your intended audience is interested in. These interests may change over time so a great way to do this is to research what other accounts they follow and those that are similar to yours. If you post things that you audience is not interested in, you will likely find that the majority of your following do not interact with your posts and perhaps even unfollow you.
Post High Quality Content
There is something to be said about high quality, perfectly edited photos. The accounts which produce the best visually pleasing posts usually grow a bigger following than those who repost poor quality photos without any originality. It is especially important not to base your Instagram account around posting images you found on google and lack any authentic content. Perhaps you could invest in a camera if your phone camera is poor quality and take some time planning out how your content fits with a theme for your page. Your page could look messy if each of your posts do not follow some sort of consistent theme in terms of colour and subject matter.
Conclusion
Growth of your Instagram can absolutely be done organically without having to pay for Instagram Ads. Although ads can be useful for finding new users and grabbing those directly via stories, feed ads and more, many accounts have grown organically. One great thing about organic growth is that your following is authentic. Those that have found your page have done so slowly but you may have committed followers.
One thing that organic growth can’t do however, is direct your posts to specific groups of people in a particular demographic. This method of advertisement is very effective. For example, if you own a café in New York, you probably want to target those in New York and not in the UK because they will not be able to come and buy your products. Therefore, there is some great things that ads can do for your account.
In conclusion, hopefully these tips have been useful for your success and allow you to make big changes without breaking your bank. Not everyone can afford to by lots of ads, especially if you are just starting out on the Instagram platform.
About the author
Daisy Dart is a recent law graduate who now works full time as a content writer for The College of Contract Management. She loves to write on a variety of topics especially law, business and lifestyle. Daisy obtained her experience from her three years at University in which she wrote a 10,000 dissertation on a legal related topic.
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