Replying to Posts on Instagram (And a Bonus Tip)
In our last tip we spoke about the five pages that people can see. Let’s first talk about the home page. The home page is where you can you see the posts of everyone you follow.
How do you choose who you want to follow?
Just like Twitter following someone will most likely lead to them following you back. So, just like Twitter there are three types of people that you want to follow:
- Influencers
- Competition
- Potential/Current Customers
There is one major difference between Instagram follows and Twitter follows, which is the reason behind following each of these people. On Twitter it is easy to track all posts and responses, but on Instagram it is hard, if not impossible to know if someone commented on anything. Therefore, no one will see you comment on an influencer and respond to you, especially if the influencer has 100s of thousands of followers with thousands of responses on each post. Therefore the reason to follow influencers is not to show off your knowledge like on Twitter, but rather to find others who do want to learn more from these influencers. Every week you should spend about an hour on Instagram on your computer. Find a few influencer posts and go through the people who responded. In that hour you can easily look at 200+ accounts. Look at the posts they are putting up, see if it is good content, heart things you like (don’t just like everything, at most 2-3 per account), and reply if you have anything to add. For example, maybe they posted a picture of a book you just read or really liked, comment on it saying “Great read, if you liked 7 Habits, you may also like How to make friends and influence people” or “I was really disappointed by JJJRH but what did you think of it?” These should be honest and real replies.
The reason to follow competitors on Instagram is also for a different reason than Twitter. On Twitter you should make your competitors friends, possibly respond to their tweets with helpful information. But on Instagram you want to watch what they are doing, look at the hashtags they are using while posting, see what times they post, and what kind of things they post. If your competitors are taking Instagram seriously you will likely learn a thing or two about your audience, so pay attention, unless your competitors are all stupid, then just destroy them on Instagram.
The reasons to follow potential customers on Twitter and Instagram is basically the same. For one, as I said above, they are likely to follow you back. Secondly, you can learn about them, and try to help them out. Reach out when they get engaged with a “Mazal Tov” or favorite their picture of them doing Crossfit if it is natural. You know what they say, “if someone does Crossfit, but no one likes it on Instagram, does it count as a workout?”
Don’t go overboard and follow hundreds of people everyday. It is better take things slowly. Follow 20-30 people and give a good look through the last 2-3 weeks of their posts and see if you have anything to comment on or favorite, look to find patterns of what people in your audience are posting and take notice of the hashtags. Then, repeat the process tomorrow. No one said social media was an easy job…
Comments
Related posts
