5 Instagram Hacks to Grow Your Business

Even though it's hardly a "new" social network in the grand scheme of things, Instagram continues to bring incredible results to businesses in every industry in terms of social media marketing. You're probably having a great deal of success with it yourself.

But that doesn't mean that you couldn't be doing better.

Indeed, if you're currently focused on growing your business and want to generate results as fast as you can, Instagram is absolutely a great way to do exactly that. To that end, there are a few key Instagram hacks that you can use to accelerate that growth that you'll definitely want to keep in mind.

It All Begins With a Plan

Yes, Instagram is naturally one of the most powerful techniques that you have available to grow your business using the power of social media. Sure, "create a strategy before you start" may seem a little obvious... but it's a step that so many people (shockingly) skip that it absolutely warrants further discussion.

If you really want to use Instagram to grow your business, you need to sit down and think about what that means within the context of your specific organization. What does "growth" mean to you, exactly? How long are you giving yourself to achieve this goal?

How many experiments are you willing to try? How many times will you allow yourself to fail?

Answer these questions BEFORE you start and then let what you've decided inform every single decision you make thereafter.

Target Those Influencers

Regardless of the industry that you're operating in or even the type of business you're running, the chances are high that there is already an established audience on Instagram waiting for a message like yours. There are probably already influencers in your arena, speaking to your audience right now... and you're about to use them to your advantage.

Search for industry-related hashtags and other terms using the Instagram search bar and locate the influencers with the highest number of followers. Find the ones that are the best fit for your brand and reach out to them to strike some type of agreement. Maybe they'll promote your products or services, maybe you can write guest posts for your blog, it doesn't matter. By piggy backing on the existing followers of influencers in your area, you'll hit the ground running in terms of building your own audience, too.

Tag as Much as You Can

This may seem like a small Instagram hack, but that doesn't make it any less important. A lot of people don't realize that you can add up to ten hashtags AND a location to your Instagram story at any given moment. If you use up all of them, and then minimize the size so that nobody really sees them, you won't be getting in the way of your audience's experience - but Instagram counts them just the same.

This one simple technique can bring you up to 1,000 new viewers for each one of your stories if you play your cards properly, which is why it is an avenue that is absolutely worth exploring.

Never, Ever Skip Out on the Text

Growth success on Instagram often requires you to remember not only who your audience is, but where they are likely to be at the moment. Case in point: a lot of your followers are going to be viewing your content on smartphones, which is why you always want to include text (or subtitles, essentially) on every video that you post.

A lot of these people are going to be browsing Instagram without sound on in public locations and this little trick will help guarantee that they're still able to follow along.

Turn Instagram Into a 24/7/365 Affair

Let's face it: not every marketer can be on Instagram 24 hours a day but now, thanks to modern technology, you don't have to. Tools like HootSuite, Buffer, Social Sprout and more can be a great way to create your content now and schedule it for automatic distribution later. If there's a particular time of the day or week that your audience is very active, you can take full advantage of it without actually waiting for that time to come. Bots like Instagress and SocialGrow can also be a perfect way to automate likes, comments, follows and everything in between as well.

These are just a few of the top Instagram hacks that you can use to grow your business - rest assured that there are many, many more. But provided that you look for new opportunities like these ones every single day, you'll find that success is much more inevitable than you may have originally thought.