Alana Harrington
Undoubtedly, Instagram is an ideal platform for marketers, content creators, and businesses to grow. Boasting over a billion users around the globe, you can reach the heights of success if you use this social media platform the right way.
In today’s digital era, you can also leverage Instagram-TOS-compliant organic growth tools, like SimplyGram, to quickly grow your followers. Check out their reviews, so you can remain on the safe side before starting to use it to its full potential.
However, to truly take advantage of this social media site, you must avoid several common pitfalls among Instagram users. In this article, we’ll share 10 things not to do on Instagram to help you be successful.
1. Don’t Set Your Profile to Private
It’s totally okay if you want to set your account to private for personal reasons or if you merely use it for personal purposes and want to stay private. However, it’s not relevant to have a private account if you want to grow the number of followers on your account and want people to know about you. Hashtags don’t even work on a private account since only your followers can see your posts. In addition, with a private account, you won’t be able to reach a larger audience and increase your followers.
In the realm of social media, where connectivity and visibility reign supreme, the effective use of hashtags has become a vital strategy to expand one’s reach and attract a larger audience. However, the power of hashtags is rendered moot when employed on a private account. A private account, by its very nature, restricts access to your posts solely to your approved followers. As a result, the potential benefits of utilizing hashtags to reach a wider audience and increase your followers are severely diminished.
Hashtags serve as digital signposts, directing users towards specific topics, trends, or communities. They enable your content to be discovered by individuals who may not be part of your existing network but share similar interests or are actively searching for related content. By utilizing relevant hashtags, you open the doors to engagement and visibility beyond your immediate followers, allowing your posts to appear in search results and explore pages, ultimately attracting new individuals to your profile.
In contrast, a private account functions as a digital fortress, effectively shielding your content from the eyes of those who have not been granted access. While this setting can provide a sense of privacy and control over who can view your posts, it also creates a barrier that inhibits the organic growth of your social media presence. Without the ability to reach a wider audience through the strategic use of hashtags, the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals, gain exposure, and amass a larger following becomes significantly limited.
If you’re a business or an individual keen on growing followers, you must create a public account. In case you already have a private account, you can switch it to public by going into your “Privacy and Security” settings.
2. Don’t Be “Salesy” All the Time
Some brands running an Instagram account can sometimes be too “salesy”. This can be a huge turn-off for their audience since all they do is talk about themselves and promote their brand. It gives the impression that brands only have a social media presence to push sales, and they don’t even care about their audience.
Hence, when using Instagram as a brand, you must maintain a fine balance between promotional and organic content. Of course, you can and should post about your brand on Instagram from time to time, but you must also keep your audience engaged and make them feel valued. For example, you can post something informative or funny and relevant to your brand to keep your audience interested.
3. Don’t Ignore Your Audience
If all you do on your Instagram account is publish posts and never or rarely interact with your audience, you’re not doing anyone any favors. Without socializing on Instagram, how do you expect to bring your audience closer to you, boost the engagement rate, and reach a wider audience?
Hence, whenever you receive comments, DMs, or replies on your Stories, you must reply to at least most of them. This way, they will feel appreciated and be encouraged to leave comments on your future posts, which is ideal for organically boosting a post.
4. Don’t Bombard Your Audience with a Plethora of Stories
With so much content available on social media, social media users want to make sure that they are updated on almost everything of their interest. Stories get the most engagement from Instagram users, but posting so many of them that they seem like tiny dots can hinder your followers from watching all of them.
Ensure you don’t bombard them with unlimited Stories, which won’t do any good to you. Sticking to 7 to 10 stories per day will be your best bet to keep your audience connected.
5. Don’t Go Overboard with Hashtags
We all have seen accounts fitting as many hashtags as they can in their Instagram posts to reach a wider audience. This practice won’t help you; your captions may seem too spammy to your audience.
Although Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags in a post, it doesn’t mean you should. It’s better to stick to around 5 hashtags per post relevant to the content you’re posting. Furthermore, using irrelevant trending hashtags in your content just to reach a new, wider audience will leave a negative impression on them. It will already be irrelevant to them, so you won’t still gain any new followers.
6. Don’t Only Use Instagram Posts
Instagram Stories are ideal for interacting with your audience, staying in touch with them, and keeping them closer to you. Most Instagram accounts only use posts on their feed, and they don’t really use Instagram Stories.
Only using Instagram posts won’t help you grow your account. You must also start leveraging the power of Instagram Stories and share the behind-the-scenes of your brand or share informative/hilarious content. You can use Instagram Stories to know your customers better and boost brand loyalty through features like polls, quizzes, heart emoji sliders, Q&A sessions, and even a countdown.
7. Don’t Post Without Captions
Posting on your feed without any caption won’t help you engage your audience or interact with them. This way, you obviously can’t grow your account.
Whenever you post something on your feed, make sure you add a relevant caption. For instance, you can share the background or description of the content, add CTA, or even ask a relevant question to make sure people leave comments or likes and organically push your content.
8. Don’t Tag Famous People on Your Posts
Most people tag famous people like influencers or celebrities and even well-known brands in order to get noticed. If you do the same, this practice won’t make you successful on this platform in the long run and instead will leave a negative impression. You should only tag relevant people, brands, and even restaurants in your posts, and they may even repost your content, which will help you with reach and exposure.
9. Don’t Implement the Follow-Unfollow Technique
Following plenty of accounts at once and unfollowing those later who don’t follow you back isn’t the right strategy to grow your Instagram account. Doing so will make you seem like an annoying brand that’s only looking for followers. Instead of implementing this technique, you should implement organic growth strategies to increase the number of followers.
10. Don’t Include Links in Captions
Whether you want to drive traffic to your website, a newly launched product collection, or affiliate links, adding links to your captions may seem reasonable. However, adding links in the captions of your posts won’t help as they are not clickable. Instead, you can add several links in one link using Linktree, add that link in your bio, and ask your audience in the caption to click on the link in your bio.
Conclusion
There are plenty of things you shouldn’t do on Instagram, as we have discussed in the article. They can not only harm your reputation and turn your audience off but can also restrict your growth on this social media platform. It’s essential to be aware of them and use the right strategies to help you engage and expand your followers.
