Discover the best Instagram tips for beginners with this easy to follow step by step guide to using Instagram and getting more comments, likes and followers.
Are you on Instagram Yet? I bet most of your friends are!
Did you know that “Instagram” is the fastest growing major social network, Has over 400 million users, Which is more than Twitter by the way and was acquired by facebook for $1 Billion USD? That’s this much $1,000,000,000!
What is Instagram?
Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing app and social network which also allows you to alter photos by adding filtered layers on your smartphone and post them to your account, some of which can make an amateur photographer actually look pretty good!
Why is Instagram so popular?
I believe there are a number of reasons why this trendy social network is so popular, however, I think the main reason is “engagement” Instagram currently has a much higher level of engagement than facebook, which is what is so appealing to most.
Another huge reason why Instagram is so Popular is that a lot of people just prefer to communicate with images instead of words, and for good reason, did you know that the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text?
A picture Really is a thousand words!
Would you like to discover how to create an ideally optimised Instagram account, learn some cool Instagram tips and start getting lots more Likes, followers and engagement?
Cool, here’s a breakdown of what’s covered:
- 1 personal vs business?
- 2 best practices for Bio section
- 3 optimising your account
- 4 hashtag tips
- 5 Instagram replies
- 6 Instagram post frequency
- 7 viral Instagram tips
- 8 how to post to Instagram from your computer
Ready to become an “Instagram rockstar”?
Sweet, let’s get into it…
#1 Personal Vs Business?
Keep them Separate Don’t Combine your accounts, keep your personal profile personal such as Pictures of family, friends, pets, selfies (what you had for lunch) etc whatever your into.
The same goes for your business profile Keep it strictly business and about your brand, let’s say your in the Crossfit niche, then make it all about workouts, health & fitness, bodybuilding etc.
Unless you are your business and you are “branding yourself” such as an Entrepreneur, MLM / Network Marketer, Online SEO coach or similar.
#2 Best Practices For Your Instagram Bio Section
Your bio section allows 150 characters to describe who you are or what your business is about and it’s also the spot where you would put your link to your website or whatever other “Call To Action” you might have in mind.
Hashtags in your bio are not effective so only have one in there if you want people to know about it for future branding.
Bio’s are not currently searchable so no need to try to use it for optimisation, instead make it fun and or interesting about you or your business add some symbols of emojis to break it up a little and don’t forget your (CTA) call to action.
Check other Instagram pages and see what they are doing for some ideas.
Here’s an example of the things I’ve mentioned on one of my accounts, this is displayed as a desktop layout, not a mobile layout, more on how i do this later.
Do you notice how I add the cool emojis, some star symbols, and the “CHECK US OUT” call to action with the arrow pointing to my website link, you may also notice that I spelt “emoji” wrong in my screen shot example haha.
#3 Optimising Your Account
When it comes to optimising your Instagram account for search results, the 2 main things to focus on are your name and your username.
If we use my account example “awesomestuff365” you will notice that if you type in the keywords “awesome stuff” in the Instagram search bar you will see that I am currently ranking #1 for this term.
So this will all depend on your brand or personal profile, obviously, it’s not terribly important if you are just creating your personal profile, but if you are creating your business brand profile then think carefully about what keywords you can use in your profile name.
Try to use a nice brandable username that you can use for all the social media platforms and please don’t use underscores or offensive words, you will regret it later.
As mentioned earlier, your bio section currently has no impact on the search results.
Disclaimer – Instagram is always changing, so things can change from day to day, however, I try my best to keep everyone updated with any new developments.
#4 Instagram HashTag Tips
Instagram is all about #Hashtags, more so than any other social media platform, hashtags are how you get your engagement and your target audience.
I use This Amazing tool called Instamate which not only allows me to post directly to my Instagram profile from my computer but also has many more features such as all the most popular hashtags for any niche, it is a paid tool but has been worth every penny and I couldn’t live without it!
As you can see from the screenshot above, you simply click the category tab that is relevant to your niche and that will give you several sub-categories full of popular hashtags ready for you to copy paste into your post.
How many hashtags should you use?
Which are the best?
and why?
I won’t get too detailed here, but the limit to hashtags are currently 30 which is more than enough to cover many good hashtags, in fact, I advise to keep it around 15-20 at the most.
Now this is the deal, you have hashtags with low, medium, high and super high volumes of use, so you would think the best option is to simply plug each post with all the most “super high” hashtags right?
Wrong! The best thing to do is add a variety of these hashtags to your posts for ideal engagement and longevity of post, the reason for this is that although the popular ones might get you more exposure, it is much more competitive therefore your post will have a much shorter “lifespan” so to speak.
Example: #healthy – #healthylife – #healthylifediets
The less popular hashtags will give you a longer exposure period which will result in better engagement and more over time so mix it up!
#5 Instagram Replies
Use the @mention to send replies to other profiles who have engaged on your posts, and they will receive a notification – social media is “Fueled” on notifications!
How eager are you to check your social media account when you receive a notification?
I have a notification addiction, and can’t wait to see what that little notification symbol is trying to tell me!
Most social media platforms Eventually have to use algorithms just like google, and the most common element for these algorithms appears to be “engagement” so using the @ symbol to mention and send notifications to users will help this engagement.
Continue the discussions with the @username mentions and be sure to reply to comments, ask questions, like posts and follow others if appropriate and this is one of the Instagram secrets to getting followers.
Have a practice with The @ symbol tagging people (@username) and start setting off those notifications, remember most of us have a “notification addiction” just don’t go overboard!
#6 Instagram Post Frequency
Consistency is the key!
Don’t go and pump out a bunch of posts all at the same time, rather do a few post’s throughout the day and try to keep them at the same times also.
Example: your 1st post at 9am – 2nd at 12pm – and 3rd at 9pm.
Disclaimer: if you are using any automated software for your posts, then please don’t do more than 2 – 3 posts per day for the first few weeks, and then you can gradually build up.
We don’t want your account getting banned for throwing up red flags and risk breaking Instagrams TOS.
If you are not using software then slightly more is fine, but like I said the key is consistency and combined with everything else we cover here, you will get Better results.
#7 Viral Instagram Tips
Branded images work well, check out Kim Garst‘s Instagram profile, she is mainly using branded picture quotes and she has over 50k followers!
Notice how she is watermarking all her images with her brand also, this is very clever as its cross promoting her business’s, you can add you brand name, website domain or even just your Instagram username as a watermark.
So Branded image quotes work great but mix it up with nice images that are relative to your niche and short videos, (currently only 15 seconds is allowed) and continue with the consistency.
#8 How To Post To Instagram From Your Computer
Well in my experience I have seen a few software tools that could help with this in the past, but none of them were very reliable and often caused more trouble than solutions!
This tool was just released in march 2016 and it has been a HUGE HIT with marketers all over the world!
It’s called Instamate and it’s the only software that can help you find, edit, upload schedule, engage, and monetize the most viral content with your Instagram accounts on autopilot.
The tool is a paid software that i use, and it’s the only tool that i can personally recommend for building an Awesome Instagram Profile.
That’s a screenshot of my account and as you can see its pretty straight forward to use, it has a drag-and-drop image feature, and you can simply fill out your caption, add your hashtags then schedule or post, it’s that easy.
To the left, you will notice a whole bunch of other very handy features such as the “popular hashtags” feature i mentioned earlier.
So that’s an awesome tool that i use for my Instagram profiles, here’s a link to it if you want to chek it out!
Conclusion:
Instagram is only going to get more and more popular in time to come, so whether you are just a beginner wanting to get some tips for your personal Instagram profile or someone wanting to take a brand to the next level, then I’m sure you will get some value from applying these “Instagram tips for beginners”
Feel free to leave a question or comment and share this post with your friends!
