The Importance of Instagram Followers for Personal Branding and Business Success

By Christy Bella

Instagram has quickly become one of the most important social media platforms for developing a personal brand and developing a business. It has over 2 billion monthly active users, which means there’s an opportunity to connect with potential customers and show products, services or professional skills.

Your credibility on the site directly depends on the count of followers you own. Whether your business is public profile, freelancer, artist, or entrepreneur having an active following can allow you to reach your objectives.

Why Instagram Followers Matter?

More Instagram followers equals more reach and exposure. When you share content, it shows up on your followers’ feeds giving you immediate access to their attention. This allows you to:

Create Awareness and Acknowledgment: More people following you will mean more people seeing your brand and familiar with what you have to offer. This name recognition and brand awareness is invaluable for converting new customers.
Social Proof and Trust: A large and engaged following acts as social proof that you are a trusted and credible source. New visitors who see your high follower count are more likely to follow you and check out your content.
Market Products and Services: You can directly promote products, services and offers to your followers through Instagram posts and stories. More eyes on your products means greater sales opportunities.
Establish Thought Leadership: Becoming an industry leader and influencer depends entirely on reach. More followers means more people listen to your thought leadership and expertise.
Network and Collaborate: Instagram opens opportunities to connect and collaborate with complementary brands, relevant influencers and potential business partners through cross-promotion.

Growing Your Instagram Following

Attracting engaged followers takes time and a thoughtful strategy. Here are some of the most effective tactics brands use:

Post Valuable and Engaging Content: Post content that educates, entertains, inspires or helps your target audience. Use compelling captions and vibrant visuals tailored to your niche. Respond to comments and engage with your community to build connections.
Optimize Your Profile: Craft an interesting bio that communicates what you offer. Use relevant hashtags so you appear in keyword searches. Add a link to your website and other contact info to drive traffic. Display your best content.
Follow and Interact With Others: Be an active member of the Instagram community by following and engaging with complementary brands, potential customers and industry influencers. Like and comment on their posts to get noticed.
Use Relevant Hashtags: Include branded and niche hashtags in your posts so they appear in targeted feeds when users search those tags. Mix popular hashtags with specific ones for the best discovery.
Run Contests and Giveaways: Encourage users to like, share or follow to enter contests with fun prizes that appeal to your audience. This can help quickly gain new followers.
Use Geotags and Locations: When posting, always add a precise location tag so your content surfaces in that geographic area. This helps you get discovered locally.
Leverage Instagram Ads. Instagram ads allow you to target very specific demographics with content focused on conversions like getting views, website traffic or new followers.
Partner With Micro-Influencers: Micro-influencers are Instagram personalities with smaller (under 100k) but highly engaged niche followings. Partner with ones that align with your brand to tap into their audience.
Promote Cross-Channel: Encourage visitors from other channels like your blog, email list or other social platforms to check out and follow your Instagram profile to merge audiences.

Maximizing the Value of Your Following

Simply having a lot of followers doesn’t guarantee success if they aren’t engaged. To maximize the value, focus on the following:

Post Consistently: Post high-quality content at least once per day so users are incentivized to stay updated on your posts. Consistency keeps you top of mind.
Analyze Performance Data: To know when your followers are the most active and what type of content gets the most engagement, check Instagram analytics. It’s time to tailor your strategy.
Engage With Your Community: Interact one on one with people as much as possible, ask questions and respond to comments to build rapport with followers and keep them interested in your brand.
Collaborate With Followers: Feature user generated content and do collaborations with followers to make them feel valued and involved with your brand for deeper connections.
Convert Followers Into Customers: Use special offers, discounts or lead magnets to incentivize current followers to become paying customers and brand advocates. Offer them exclusive perks.
Survey Your Audience: Run quick occasional polls or surveys with tools like Instagram or SurveyMonkey to gather follower feedback so you can improve their experience.

With the right mix of organic community building and strategic influencer marketing, any brand or personal brand can use Instagram to accomplish business goals and build credibility. However, authentic engagement will always be the key to long term sustainable growth.

Benefits of Instagram Followers for Personal Branding

Before social media personal branding was reserved mostly for celebrities and public influencers. Now, anyone can establish themselves as an authority in their niche using Instagram.

Share Your Skills and Expertise: Provide value by posting “how to” style content, behind-the-scenes of your work and insights from your experiences to establish expertise.
Showcase Your Personality: Let your brand’s personality shine through in captions and stories. Give followers a peek at your life to become relatable. Use Instagram Live or IGTV for real-time engagement.
Build Your Network: Follow and engage with industry peers, potential mentors, brands you admire and rising stars to build beneficial connections and grow together.
Increase Paid Partnerships: Brands looking to collaborate with nano or micro-influencers in their niche are attracted to large, engaged Instagram followings.
Get Discovered By Recruiters: Talent recruiters often scout Instagram for creators with promising personal brands and engaged audiences that align with client needs.
Direct Access To Your Audience: Instagram provides a direct channel for instantly updating fans, making announcements and notifying followers of new developments.
Launch Your Products: Launch your own eBooks, online courses, merch or other side hustles and sell them directly to fans who want to support your personal brand’s success.
Build Credibility and Trust: An established Instagram presence shows you have “social proof” and helps attract new website visitors who will convert to email subscribers.
Reach New Followers Fast: Instagram’s algorithm and hashtags allow you to exponentially grow your audience much faster than other platforms.

Using Instagram strategically over time allows anyone to go from unknown to becoming an influencer, leader and money maker in their field.

Maximizing Business Success on Instagram

For brands, Instagram presents a goldmine of marketing, sales and customer service opportunities.

Increase Website Traffic: Add links to your Instagram bio and posts to drive followers to targeted pages on your site to capture leads and conversions.
Generate Sales Directly: Instagram’s shop features allow you to tag products in posts and then sell them directly through checkout on the app itself without leaving Instagram.
Showcase Products Visually: Instagram was built for visually focused content, such as photos and videos, that perfectly showcased product features, styling, and use cases.
Collect Valuable Market Research: See which products and posts perform best through analytics. Ask followers questions to gain first-hand insight into buyer preferences.
Provide Customer Service: Respond quickly to comments, complaints and questions. Communicate directly via Instagram DM if customers experience issues with purchases.
Recruit Brand Ambassadors: Reward loyal customers and brand advocates with affiliate codes or free products in exchange for creating user-generated content and reviews.
Start Conversations: Instagram’s interactive format encourages followers to ask questions, make suggestions and engage in an ongoing dialogue about your brand.
Share Announcements of New Features and Products: Teasing fresh ideas to engaged followers initially will help to create demand and excitement for launches before their public announcement in a buildup.
Work with Experts: Engage pertinent influencers to access their specialty markets and obtain professional ratings and sponsorships for social proof.
Run Targeted Ads: Instagram advertising allows unbelievable granularity for targeting specific demographics of potential customers tailored to your niche.
Build Local Followings: By geotagging locations and places, Instagram helps brands establish a loyal follower base and visibility that supports local partnerships and brick-and-mortar.

For direct-to-consumer brands especially, leveraging Instagram is necessary to achieve mainstream success and scale ecommerce sales in today’s visual-first market.

Conclusion

Instagram has evolved quickly into one of the most powerful marketing tools available. Now, success depends on mastering the best techniques for attracting followers, interaction, and conversion.

Companies and personal brands may use Instagram’s special qualities to create revenues, credibility, and recognition. For any modern brand, investing time to increase its presence pays off rather handsomely.

Author Profile

Christy Bella: Blogger by Passion | Contributor to many Business and Marketing Blogs in the United Kingdom | Fascinated with SEO and digital marketing and latest tech innovations |