Our How to Tuesday articles are back by popular demand! In today's blog post we are going to talk about how to improve on your Instagram gains.

Instagram is always reaching new heights of daily users, with a whopping 1 billion active users it surely is a social platform your business should be on. With a dynamic industry such as the International Education industry it pays off to be active on such a visual social platform. Like all other platforms out there the competition is fierce and gaining followers is not an easy job, but with some hard work you will start seeing some gains. 

Here’s how to gain more followers:

Switch to a business profile

If you haven’t done so yet, switch your school or agency profile to a business one and update your profile with a full company name, description and add your logo to the profile picture. Update your bio with information on what your brand is about to give users a reason to follow you. Add a linktree to your bio to give users the chance to access your website and other platforms and make sure that your notifications are enabled so you can see who has liked or commented on your posts and you can engage with them.

Get a designated person to take care of the platform

As the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth. The same thing goes for social media. Get one person or organisation to monitor the platform and work on the content to be posted. If you are a bigger company and have enough human resources, you may also want to encourage your staff members to post suggestions on what type of content to post. Just make sure your staff know who the account manager is so they can reach out to them. The account manager, in turn, will vet the suggestion and decide if and when these should be posted. Alternatively, if you are too busy and don't have time to worry about posting the right things on the right platforms, why not consider outsourcing the service to someone who knows how to do the job well? In the long run, this is certainly going to be quicker and more cost-effective that hiring someone to do this in-house. 

Sharpen your graphic skills

Remember that Instagram is more visual than other social platforms, so you may want to focus more on the type of photos that you post. No you do not need a professional camera, photos from your phone are already good quality, but you may want to edit your photos to bring focus to a particular subject. You can also create your own artwork or do a mix of both, try to stick to your brand colour and stick to similar layouts to make your posts easily recognizable and associated with your brand.

Share your Instagram profile on all your other platforms.

Once you are all set up and your content game is going strong, it's time to share your instagram profile on all your other platforms. Websites, newsletters and all your other social media platforms should have a link to your Instagram account. If you are a school do not be afraid to print out posters, place them all around your school and encourage your students to give you a follow.

Keep these practices in mind and do not focus so much on the number of followers, with great content quality your followers will increase organically on their own. The more engaging your content is the bigger the chance to have your followers engage with you and recommend you to others.