Winning on IG: How To Create a Successful Instagram Account

What does success look like on Instagram? For some brands, it means racking up profits to exceed their monthly sales targets. For influencers, it might be having tons of fans give you love and admiration through thousands of likes and comments. But none of that happens overnight. 

So, how does a striving social media star get there? Today, we’ll show you how to create a successful Instagram account, whether you’re a business or an aspiring influencer.

How To Create a Successful Instagram Business Account: 6 Tips for Brands

Businesses might consider their Instagram page successful if they can boost brand awareness and make sales online. That means you must work extra hard to reach your target audience and engage them to convert them into buyers.

Want your business to shine and be successful on the social media platform? Here are six tips for how to be successful on Instagram and cement your brand’s place in your industry.

1. Diversify the Type of Content You Post

Don’t stick to boring old photos and video posts on the feed. Get more creative with your content strategy by including trendier content, like Instagram Reels. According to Socialinsider, these bite-sized videos have the highest impression rates and number of saves out of any Instagram format. If you really want to catch your target market’s attention, it’s through these videos.

Try your best to think outside the box when coming up with content buckets for your posts, too. For example, let’s say you run the Instagram business page of a marketing agency. Don’t limit yourself to cliché business content, like posts about your services and case studies from clients. Stand out more by incorporating funny office content and thought-provoking industry news.

2. Run Ads To Reach Your Specific Target Audience Fast

Running ad campaigns on Instagram will let you reach your specific target market fast. Just upload new creative materials (or boost an existing post), set your budget, choose your audience, and you’re done. Then, just sit back, relax, and wait as Instagram pushes out your ads to the people meant to see them. It’s one of the best Instagram marketing tools for boosting brand awareness on the platform!

What’s awesome about Instagram’s ad system is that you can be as precise as you want when targeting audiences. You choose not just their demographics (like gender, location, and age) but also their online behaviors and interests. That way, you can be as pointed and purposeful as possible when you run your creative ads.

3. Set Up an Instagram Shop To Sell Your Products

Another way to sell more of your brand’s products is by setting up an Instagram Shop. This digital storefront allows you to showcase your products and collections right on your business profile. Potential customers can then buy these products without ever leaving the Instagram app. Awesome, right?

Just note that Instagram Shopping is only available in select markets and countries. Double-check to see if it’s available for your business account before including this in your Instagram marketing strategy.

4. Encourage Previous Customers to Post User-Generated Content

When customers are happy with a business’s goods and services, they might make content showcasing the brand. These posts can be anything from unboxing content, product demos, or selfies and get-ready-with-me videos featuring the product. These types of posts are called user-generated content, or UGC.

People tend to trust UGC more than posts made by brands because they’re made by real customers. That automatically makes them more authentic and believable. They also serve as social proof that the brand lives up to its promises.

If you want satisfied customers to put in a good word for your brand, encourage them to post UGC. Incentivize their efforts to make these posts with freebies, discount codes, access to exclusive sales, and more. The more UGC is out there that can reach potential new customers, the more you can boost your business’s sales!

5. Add a Link to Your E-Commerce Page in Your Bio

Does your business have an e-commerce website where you’d like people to shop? Make sure to add a link to that site in your bio. Remember, Instagram doesn’t let people add a clickable link to their post’s caption. So, if you want to drive conversions and traffic to your website, your bio is the place to do it.

Got more than one website? Use link-in-bio tools like Linktree and Milkshake to aggregate all your links into one web page. Then, add that main link to your bio for easy access for your followers!

6. Use Data From Instagram Insights To Inform Your Next Moves

One of the best tools on Instagram that is exclusively for business accounts is Instagram Insights. This is the app’s built-in analytics platform. It shows you all sorts of neat metrics about your page and content, from your reach, engagement, views, and more.

These bits of information help you assess your Instagram page’s overall performance. They tell you your strengths and weaknesses and what type of content resonates the most with your fans.

With these insights, tweak your Instagram marketing strategy to improve it. Produce more of the content your audience loves and less of what they hate. That way, you can be sure that you only come out with posts you know will be a hit.

How To Be a Successful Influencer on Instagram: 5 Tips To Get Famous on IG

Of course, it’s not just brands and businesses that want to succeed on Instagram. Influencers and digital creators are just as hungry for fame and recognition on the platform, too.

To get there, creators must cook up a unique, appealing content strategy and build a solid connection with their fanbase. Do that, and you’ll start seeing fans engage with your content, followers showering you with love, and income opportunities left and right.

Becoming an Instagram influencer is one thing. But it’s a completely different ball game to succeed and win the hearts of loyal fans who support your content. Here’s how to start a successful Instagram account as an influencer in five different ways.

1. Choose a Lifestyle Niche and Stick With It

One way to be popular on Instagram is to specialize in an ultra-specific niche. Instead of making content for broad categories and competing with thousands of influencers, choose a unique specialty. Ideally, it’s something that not a lot of creators make content about. That way, you can be your target market’s primary source of that specific kind of content.

For example, let’s say you want to be a food influencer. Instead of focusing on food in general, try to hone in on a specific food category. Explore ideas like baked desserts, vegan cuisine, or healthy meal prep. The more specific, the better. Then, build your reputation as the number one authority in that micro-niche to become as popular and trustworthy as possible!

Pro tip: Optimize your profile to showcase your micro-niche. That way, people know exactly what you specialize in as soon as they visit your page.

Take the vegan food influencer example. If you go that route, you might consider including hashtags like #plantbased and #veganlife in your bio. Upload a profile picture of you holding up your favorite ingredients for vegan cooking, too. Pin posts that show off your best, most visually appealing vegan recipes, too, so people see it right away. At a glance, visitors will know right away that you’ve niched down on vegan food.

2. Create Content That Is Helpful to Your Audience

There’s nothing that will attract fans to your page like bees to honey than high-quality, impactful content. That’s why it’s super important to come up with posts that resonate with your target audience and their daily struggles.

Think of your audience’s pain points and needs specific to your niche. Then, come up with content that offers solutions. These posts range from product recommendations for specific skin problems to tips and tricks for starting a business. Not only will these posts improve your audience’s lives, but they’ll help you foster a deeper connection with them, too.

3. Post Consistently To Keep Your Fans’ Attention on You

Going weeks without posting anything on your Instagram page is a huge no-no. Your followers can misconstrue this as you quitting the platform and becoming inactive for the time being. That might push them to unfollow your page. Yikes!

Consistency is key to keeping your audience’s attention on you. By regularly giving them fresh content to look forward to, you’ll keep them invested in your page. Try to post at least three to five times a week to keep that momentum going.

4. Engage With Your Followers Through Comments and Messages

Some influencers define success as having a fanbase that genuinely loves you. If you’re one of them, this tip is for you. To build a strong, solid connection with your audience, it’s important to interact and engage with them. And we don’t mean just liking their comments. We mean responding to them and having interesting conversations.

Communication is a two-way street. It’s not supposed to be just your fans reaching out and you basking in the fame and attention. Reply to their comments and DMs showing you admiration. Ask them questions to spark meaningful conversations. And of course, always thank them for their support.

5. Connect With Your Audience Deeper Using Instagram Stories

Another way to build rapport and deepen that connection with your audience is by letting them into your life. Show them what your day-to-day looks like outside the glitz and glam of influencer-dom. This humanizes your personal brand, making you more relatable and likable, which boosts fan loyalty.

The best way to do that is by sharing snippets of your daily life on Instagram Stories. Use these fleeting photos and videos to give people a more intimate glimpse at your life. Share pictures of your meals or videos of you at work. You can even host Q&A sessions and polls with interactive Story stickers. All in all, they’re perfect for sharing casual, candid moments with your fans!

How To Create a Successful Instagram Account: Use Path Social for an Extra Boost

Need a leg up to get you started on making the most successful page on Instagram? Path Social’s got you. We promote your page and target only 100% real and engaged users. That way, more people discover your page, follow it, and interact with your content whenever you post. No bots here—just authentic users that you can convert into loyal fans.

Knowing how to create a successful Instagram account is just half the equation. You also implement a solid marketing strategy and stay consistent to see actual growth on your page. Path Social should be a part of that.

With our strategies, we’ve helped many struggling creators find sparkling success on the platform. Margene Beaver, for example, got 11,000 followers and 363% more engagement in just half a year with our help. Want incredible results for your page, too? Build a strong community of fans and find Insta-fame fast with Path Social!

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