As an Instagram creator, if you’re working on expanding your reach, you need to establish your credibility. How does a creator become trustworthy? By avoiding the following mistakes:
Don’t buy followers.
Or for that matter likes.
Fake followers and likes don’t give you long-term engagement. They do more harm than help.
It is why Instagram takes drastic steps in removing inauthentic followers, likes and comments.
What to do:
If you want to increase your followers, do it organically. Some tricks you could follow:
- Up your content game.
- Use relevant hashtags.
- Write great captions.
- Make use of IGTV, Stories, Lives, and Reels!
- Reply to comments.
Don’t disregard your audience.
Someone, somewhere rightly said, an influencer is only as good as their audience.
Your community is critical. They make or break you. So, any content you create must be targeted towards your audience.
The trick is to know your audience. If you don’t, then you’re blindly blundering on Instagram, and no amount of effort will expand your reach.
What to do:
- Find out what your audience needs.
- Get to know what they listen to.
- Ask for feedback on your content.
- When you have that goal, build all your content towards it.
Also, don’t ignore them.
Creating what your audience needs is all well and good, but if you ignore them, you won’t see those follower numbers climbing.
You have to actively engage with them and do it consistently to establish credibility on Instagram.
When you show your community that you notice them, they will reward you with more likes and comments.
What to do:
- Ask them for advice.
- Use Stories to thank them.
- Reply to all questions and comments.
- Use your content to talk about issues and concerns.
- If you repost their content (more on this later), tag them.
- Lastly, don’t be negative or rude to your followers. Instead block, and report all trolls!
Don’t be inconsistent with posts.
The first rule for posting on Instagram is to be authentic.
The second rule is to be consistent.
Posting randomly will not get you more engagement or followers. You have to build a proper posting schedule and then stick to it, just like you stick to your brand tone and voice.
The trick here is not to post too little or too much. Your followers will lose interest in a second in both cases. Too many posts spam your community’s handle, and they will skip right past it. Too less = out of sight and out of mind.
What to do:
- To find the right number of posts in a week or month, start experimenting.
- Then use Analytics to find out when you got the most activity.
- Use that number consistently.
- Utilise different types of content (think: image, video, story, live, etc.) to keep it lively.
Don’t stick to just your content.
Creating original content every day is great (and hard). But if you really want to expand your reach and establish credibility, post content from other accounts.
Curate content that you feel is relevant to your niche or inspirational. It will help fill up your content scheduling calendar and generate more interest in your community!
What to do:
- Repost user-generated content. Your audience will love and appreciate it!
- Curate content from well-known accounts.
Don’t use Twitter’s content on Instagram.
Or for that matter, LinkedIn’s.
By that, we mean, don’t copy and paste the content you made for another social media platform on Instagram. It doesn’t work that way.
Each platform has its own audience with its own expectation.
So, if you want to reuse the content, you posted on LinkedIn on Instagram, go ahead, and do it. But customize it.
The key is to tailor the content for Instagram.
What to do:
- If you’re reusing content from Facebook, change the images or video into the square and vertical format.
- If you’re reusing LinkedIn content, turn the formal voice into a casual tone.
Don’t skip spell-check.
It may seem like a little thing.
After all, there are worse things than wrong spelling and sloppy grammar. That said, they truly do make a bad impression.
You don’t want all your effort spent in building kicka$$ content go down the drain because of grammar mistakes in the caption or text.
What to do:
- Proofread. Yes, it is not fun. But do it, you must.
- Triple check spellings.
Don’t be a party pooper!
Instagram is all about having fun (while also helping your community).
So, enjoy creating content and posting it for your audience. Keep the tone casual and entertaining. Be bold and light.
As long as you stick to your authentic self, anything works on the ‘Gram!
What to do:
- Take risks with entertaining content.
- Use all features of the app, from weird filters to Reels.
Most important of all, when it comes to expanding your reach and establishing credibility on Instagram, is to be yourself!
