#1: Do cross-promotion

If you are currently managing accounts over a variety of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat, you need to get your followers on board with your Instagram account. Do this by sharing the details of your Instagram account across all feeds.

One good way of doing this is by taking a screenshot of your Instagram account and share this wherever you can on friends and followers accounts. Support this with a simple link back to your Instagram account and an invitation to become your latest follower.

#2: Use Emojis to boost discoverability

The popularity of Emoji’s is rising higher and higher and can carry your follower count to new heights as well. According to recent research, over 50% of all comments and captions on Instagram include this language of icons.

But Instagram takes things a step further with the capacity to search for emojis, along with names and hashtags. This is a good idea for attracting attention to what you are doing. Photographers can identify themselves with a camera next to their names or chefs can use any of the numerous kitchen and food related icons.

#3: Include appropriate hashtags

The hashtags you use are very important as they have the capacity of increasing the number of people viewing your posts exponentially. You can even add as many as 30 hashtags to your post. But, you will probably find that sticking to a maximum hashtag count of 10 -15 will be the most beneficial in the long run.

You can also use a tool like Hashtagify to identify the tags that are most closely related to your business. All you have to do is enter the primary hashtag from a post that as especially popular and you will be presented with a list of all the ideal hashtags that could be added to this post for more traffic.

You can also perform similar searches on Instagram itself to find which tags others like you are also using on their post. But don’t just copy paste these from another post, try to only select the ones that look best and match the content you are posting.

#4: USe a Consistent Theme to Build a Familiar Connection

When you are building a brand presence on Instagram it will help you in the long run if you consider your identity and use a consistent plan in all your content. This could be the way you use a special filter in all your images or maybe a special way you will play with your image. You might find that using a consistent theme in the graphic design in all of your posts might also be a good idea.

#5: Use “Like-for-Like” and “Share-for-Shares” opportunities to increase connections

This is one of the most useful non-paid for method of increasing your shares and likes in Instagram. This allows for entire groups of like minded followers to further disseminate content across the platform and carries the promise of many more likes and shares to come.

You can buy likes if you need to give your profile a boost. Autolikesig.com - read more about single likes.

#6: Identify user preferences to develop a content strategy

Take the time to review your posts so you can analyze what have been your biggest wins. By taking the time to identify where you went right you will be better able to see what your follower’s interests truly are. Armed with this information you will be able to lay out a fairly intelligent content strategy that will gain intelligence as its data is further processed and applied.