Social media is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to market your business. Unfortunately, you have to have followers before you can market to them. Getting those followers takes a bit of work, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. If you take the time to plan your strategy, you can attract quality followers who have an interest in what your company does. Today we’ll look at three strategies you can use to get more —and better— followers so that you can effectively market and sell to them on Instagram.

Engaging Content Attracts Quality Followers

Posting content that your current followers want to share is one of the best ways to grow your Instagram following. So, what makes content share worthy?

Starbucks

Let’s look at Starbucks’ Instagram account to get a better idea. As you can see, every photo Starbucks posts is high quality and gives off a positive vibe. They know that positivity is important to their core customers. Every one of their posts is light-hearted, warm, brand relevant and gives off a sense of community. Those things get their customers excited and make them want to share their content. And it works.

Take the time to figure out what makes your fans tick. Then give it to them in spades. Post high-quality images that capture the essence of your brand. Not every image has to feature your product, but all of your posts should align with your brand’s message. In other words, if you make rugged outdoor gear, you’re probably better off posting images of mountain peaks than you are posting the latest cuddly kitty meme.

Follow Similar Brands and Niche Influencers

Seeking out brands and people posting content that’s relevant to your business is a great way to start attracting quality followers. Getting started is a simple as searching for hashtags that are niche relevant.

Head over to Webstagram and search for keywords related to your industry. For example, let’s assume your sell high heel shoes. Start your search by entering “highheels” in the Webstagram search engine.  You’ll end up with a list of the most popular hashtags containing your search term and a list of users with your search term in their username.

Now search through the lists and find brands and users who use those hashtags regularly. Follow them, like their posts and comment on their photos. In other words, engage with them. Doing so does two things: piques their interest making them want to check out your profile, and puts you in front of all their users. In the best-case scenario, those brands and influencers start following you and sharing your content with their massive followings. Worst-case scenario, your brand gets to engage with an industry authority in front of all of their followers. Social media is all about exposing yourself to the right people. As long as you don’t make a fool of yourself, even if the industry “stars” you follow don’t follow you back, some of their followers almost certainly will.

Offers Exclusively for Instagram Followers

Offering Instagram followers an exclusive offer is another great way to attract more quality followers to your account. You can offer discounts, free products or even invites to special events. Offers like these are a sure-fire way to get your content shared and build a larger following.

Take fashion retailer TopShop for instance.  When they reached 3 million Instagram followers, they celebrated by offering an Instagram exclusive code that allowed followers to get a free lipstick with every order. Not only are they rewarding and building a better relationship with current followers, they created a campaign that was sure to be shared.

TopShop celebrates 3 million followers with an offering to its Instagram followers

Topshop also did something that every company running an exclusive offer should do; they created an offer that rewards paying customers instead of freebie chasers. Users had to make a purchase in order to get the free lipstick. While there is a place for loss-leader freebies used to attract new customers, most of the time freebies result a one-time interaction and no future purchases. In other words, you’re just throwing money away and getting little in return. TopShop’s offer incentivized purchases, which not only gained them more followers, but made them more immediate sales as well.

There are an infinite number of ways for businesses to get more quality followers on Instagram, but these three are a good place to start.

There are over 400 million active users on Instagram. Learn how using Soldsie makes selling directly to your Instagram followers possible (not to mention fun and easy)