Are you looking to grow your Instagram using organic marketing but need help figuring out how? Organic Instagram growth can be tricky, but we’re here to break it down for you so you can increase your reach, grow your followers and turn followers into loyal customers.
Before we delve into organic marketing and how you can use this in your business, we need to know what it actually means. In simple terms, organic marketing refers to non-paid strategies and tactics to attract customers and promote your business.
Keep reading to learn more about organic marketing, specifically on Instagram, and find out our top tips, such as what times you should post on Instagram maximise your reach.
Organic Marketing
Why Choose Organic Marketing?
Let’s firstly discuss why you might choose organic marketing over a paid alternative. The way we see it is that organic marketing is great for growing your business because it allows you to build community and relationships with your audience. If you are consistently genuine in your posts and advertising, people will feel like they are getting to know your brand’s true message and will be more likely to continue following your journey.
You can use organic growth to build trust, which will help you convert more customers down the line. If someone trusts you as a person or brand, they are much more likely to buy from you than if they don’t know who you are.
Organic growth also lets you create a brand image for yourself and/or your business that people can recognise and relate to. This helps establish credibility in the eyes of potential customers, which leads them all the way through the buying process until they are ready to purchase something from you!
What Are Different Forms of Organic Growth?
As we have previously discussed, organic growth aims to increase the number of customers who are attracted to your business because they want to engage with your brand rather than because they’ve been sold to. But what can you provide to your customers?
There are several different forms of content which can help you grow your brand on and off Instagram, such as:
- Email newsletters – If you send out regular emails, you can use these as an opportunity to promote new products and services and encourage people to sign up for updates from your business. You can also ask customers for feedback or questions, which can help you improve your work. To get the most out of each piece of content you provide, you should repurpose your newsletter into social posts for Instagram. This can be either talking about a specific section, giving a newsletter roundup, or asking people to subscribe.
- Unpaid social media posts – If you create posts on Instagram that have no monetary value attached to them but that still help convey your brand identity and values, then these will contribute towards increasing awareness about your business among potential customers (the sole of organic marketing).
- Instagram Guides – If you’re currently writing a blog post and want another way to reach your Instagram audience, repurposing this into an Instagram guide is a great way to get more traction to your account. You can find out more about Instagram Guides here.
5 Ways to Achieve Organic Instagram Growth
1. Calculate Your Engagement Rate
The first thing to do before you start implementing an organic growth strategy is to analyse your current engagement rate.
Engagement rate is the percentage of your followers that interact with your content. The higher the figure, the more likely it is for your posts to be seen by others and for you to grow your following.
To calculate your engagement rate:
- Divide your total number of likes by your total number of followers (or views)
- Multiply this result by 100
This gives you a basic engagement rate, which can be used in other calculations (like comparing multiple posts).
2. Use Your Instagram Story
Instagram Stories are a great way to share your content as these are watched by more of your audience than a post is seen. 70% of Gen Zers and 59% of millennials watch stories on Instagram, so you should take advantage of this feature.
Get the most out of your story by including these:
- Run a poll – Did you know the polling sticker increased video views in nine out of ten beta campaigns?
- Repost your regular content on your story – When you post on Instagram, consider reposting it onto your story with some additional context or commentary. This will allow others who missed the original post to see it and help boost engagement/views/clicks.
- Include links and hashtags – For people not following you to find your content, you should include relevant hashtags. They’re used not only for your main feed post but also to increase your stories’ reach. Due to users not being able to include a clickable link in Instagram, if you have a product or feature to promote, you can add the link to your story, where it is directly accessible to your audience.
3. Reply to All Comments and Direct Messages
If you are not replying to all comments and direct messages, then you are missing out on a HUGE opportunity. This is one of the fastest-growing organic channels on Instagram. In addition, if you respond to your audiences’ questions or comments within 24 hours, then your engagement rate tends to be higher as Instagram pushes your post back out onto the feed.
Remember: The more active an Instagram account seems (i.e., responses from multiple users), the more attractive it is for new followers who want to follow your account.
4. Research (and Use) Relevant Hashtags
If you want to organically increase your engagement rate, find new followers and attract potential customers, use relevant hashtags that your target audience searches for.
Using just one hashtag on your posts can boost your interactions by 29%, and if you use more than 11 hashtags, you could boost your interactions by up to 79%. That’s why we’re emphasising the importance of doing actual hashtag research and not chancing it.
We recommend you look at what hashtags other brands like yours use; this will help you determine if it’s relevant to your content and shed some light on what your audience is looking at and searching for.
When you click on a hashtag, it comes up with information about how many other people are using it, so note this down and take it into consideration, too. If you use hashtags with millions of posts, your content is less likely to get seen by your audience. And if you choose obscure hashtags that nobody is searching for, you won’t get seen by your target audience; the key is to strike a balance between popular and unpopular hashtags.
5. Post at Peak Times, Viewership & Analytics
The best time to post on Instagram is during peak times when your audience is most active on the platform and will most likely see your content and engage with it.
You can find out what time of day/week your followers are most active by checking out your analytics under “Total Followers” on the Insights tab. You’ll see how many likes each post gets and how many people viewed each post during that time. From there, you can use this information to figure out which posts were the highest-performing ones during those hours, so you know what kind of content gets more attention from your audience at certain times throughout the week!
Try Our Organic Instagram Growth Tips Now
There you have it, our tips on how to grow your Instagram organically. If you’re looking for help with organic Instagram growth, 10X Marketing can help. We can provide you with social media, blog posts, newsletters and much more. Whether you need help creating content from the start or you would like one of our experts to have an in-depth look at your strategy, contact us today.
Take a look at more of our tips and tricks available on our FREE resources page. No matter what part of social media or online presence you’re working on, we’ve got something for everything!
