With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram has become far more than a platform for posting selfies, holidays, or brekkie snaps of avocado on toast. If you’re a blogger trying to get on Instagram, then you probably know the rush when you post a picture and watch the notifications roll in as users send you hearts and faves in real-time.
Likes (and followers) are one of the main forms of currencies on Instagram and have been the biggest motivators for people putting out great content for a long time.
In this ultimate guide, you’ll learn how to maximize your time and effort and get the most value out of every piece of content you create. Without further ado, here’s our guide with tips and tricks you need to know to increase your likes on Instagram.
How to Get More Likes on Instagram
1. Take & Post High-Quality Photos
Since Instagram is a visual-based platform, having high-quality photos is a must. While some bloggers often overlook how important posting high-quality photos is, those who do their best on Instagram rake in a huge number of likes.
Take the best photos you can so that your target audience can enjoy them. Avoid blurry, pixilated, or too dark photos that could potentially have come out of anyone’s profile. If you want to get more likes on a photo on Instagram, don’t try to squeeze a ton of text or use too many different fonts in a single photo.
You may be scratching your head and trying to figure out what content receives the most likes on Instagram. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. While high-quality content is very important it should be relevant to your audience and bring them value. If you want to be successful on Instagram, here are some guidelines to follow:
2. Establish a Consistent Instagram Theme
Choose schemes and feed aesthetics that are popular because they make your posts more memorable to users, and your profile cohesive.
3. Create an Instagram Style
Make users become intrigued with your Instagram business profile by developing your own very personal style that is easy for your audience to recognize. A unique type of content as well as a way you deliver it will increase likes on Instagram as your posts stand out from the crowd.
4. Invest in High-Quality Equipment
You don’t have to be a professional photographer or graphic designer to start getting more likes, but it could be difficult to beat a high-quality camera! Professional-looking content stands out and is more likely to attract new followers as well as bring more free likes.
5. Like and Comment On the Posts of Others
If you want to be successful on Instagram, make sure you’re liking and commenting on the posts of others when you aren’t working on your own content. Remember, content that other bloggers create is just as important as your own. Showing genuine interest in someone’s content by liking and commenting on their posts also prevents you from appearing self-centered in the eyes of your followers and increases the enjoyment of using the platform.
6. Create Engaging Captions
While creating visually appealing content is important, it’s not entirely enough – make sure you also write interesting, and engaging captions. If your goal is to collect as many likes as possible, try to inspire and evoke a feeling through humor, nostalgia or inspiration by telling a story, writing a vulnerable statement or providing actionable tips. Remember that being relatable will eventually result in more likes and comments on your posts.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to how long should your captions be but a good caption always adds context to an image and evokes emotions. To start with, you may want to test out a few different captions on your feed and see which ones work for you. When you find which ones your audience responds to, keep doing that!
7. Use a Call to Action
To easily increase the number of likes under your posts, use a simple call to action that encourages your followers to leave comments, share content or like more of your posts. People can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell them what it is! To do that include a line at the end of your caption asking for what you need.
8. Know Your Target Audience
You’ve probably heard all this before, but you need to get comfortable with who your target audience is. When you know exactly whom you create content for, engaging with your audience becomes so easy and, as a result, will increase your likes, comments and follows. Pick a niche, research your target audience and give them what they want. As simple as that!
9. Use The Right Hashtags
To get more likes on a photo on Instagram you must use the right hashtags. It’s important to put relevant hashtags on most or all of your posts and in your stories and bio. These are the most valuable tools that will help you increase your engagement and earn more likes. Instagram has a limit of 30 targeted hashtags per post that you can use.
Also, be sure to use high-quality hashtags but avoid popular ones (1million+ posts) because your post will likely get buried in a matter of minutes. When you’ve selected the right hashtags you can spread your content and get it in front of eyes that matter or keep you relevant among other influencers or brands.
10. Run a Contest
Another great way to get more likes on Instagram posts is to run a contest. Contests allow you to involve your target audience in your content while offering them attractive and specific prizes. Avoid offering something general a contest prize because it will attract too many freeloaders that might spoil the contest. A good prize drives more engagement and likes while a bad one leads to poor results.
What Makes A Great Prize:
- It solves a problem;
- It’s relevant;
- Exclusiveness;
- Immediately usable;
- Proper format.
How to run an Instagram contest:
Running an Instagram contest is not only fun for your followers, it can also significantly increase your likes and followers! First things first, you need to narrow down the list of possible prize options, and you should make this decision based on the niche of your account and the interests of your audience.
For example, if you’re an influencer you may want to collaborate with brands to give away one of their products as a prize, or tickets to an event, or some kind of a discount.
The possibilities of prizes are endless, but it’s important to choose something that your audience likes. There are fundamentally 4 steps to creating an Instagram contest and these are as follows:
- Come up with a creative theme;
- Choose an appropriate prize;
- Create an entry method;
- Promote your contest or giveaway.
11. Tag Relevant Accounts in Your Posts
Wondering how to get more followers and likes on Instagram? Tag people and brands that are from the same niche. When you tag them in your posts they receive a notification of the mention and it effectively grabs the attention of the brand and their audience! Oftentimes you can expect a few likes in return for the mention but you’ll also show up in the ‘tagged posts’ section of their feed which is viewable by anyone. This will bring more visitors to your page since they will definitely want to check out the tagged section.
Keep in mind, only tag accounts that are in the same niche and relevant to your audience. Tagging people and brands that aren’t connected to your post in some way is considered spam and can have the opposite effect of what we’re going for!
12. Cross-Promote on Other Platforms
When it comes to getting more likes on Instagram for free nothing can beat cross-promoting your content on other platforms. Your Instagram followers won’t necessarily see all your posts, so you want to make sure that the content you create for Instagram is accessible to the audience on other social platforms you use!
For example, you can promote your Instagram page in a Facebook post, Snapchat story, YouTube video, Pinterest page – wherever you are on social media! Encourage people to follow you there too by repurposing content and offering full versions of content they already saw. If you write about a healthy lifestyle, you could say “want more exercises that will rock your body? Follow me on Instagram!” and add a link to a specific, relevant post.
Sometimes fellow influencers can help one another through cross-promotion. If you are both from the same niche you can stop leeching likes from one another by compiling a great post that complements ones with a similar topic. Cross-promotion benefits everyone involved and helps followers connect with one another. Not to mention, you get additional likes!
13. Test Different Types of Content
Since Instagram is a visually driven social platform users prefer posts with images and videos that correlate with their captions. You may want to test different types of content on your own audience for the best results. The testing possibilities are endless, as you can try posts with videos versus black-and-white photos or photos with filters, etc.
The key here is to balance informative captions out with visual content and use an appealing format. By doing this, you can keep the audience’s interest and calibrate accordingly.
14. Post Consistently
You can’t get more likes if you can’t keep up a consistent posting schedule. Being consistent in your post frequency puts you in good standing with the Instagram algorithm and can significantly increase your likes from post to post.
Naturally, this doesn’t mean that you have to post multiple times a day but it’s advisable that you post at least once per day, with a maximum of two posts per day. If you have a business account, check your account insights to see exactly when your audience is online. Posting at this time will greatly increase your chances of getting more likes.
15. Use Instagram Stories Regularly
Instagram Stories are a quick and easy way to engage not only with your audience but also with other users and followers. Additionally, using stories broadcasts your content to the younger generation with shorter attention spans since you can only post videos up to 15 seconds at a time.
The format of this feature gives you the freedom to post a variety of content. You can literally post anything, without having to worry about messing up your own Instagram aesthetic.
Are you promoting a new product or service? Do you want to give your followers exclusive discounts and coupons? Announcing the winner of your recent Instagram contest? From promotional photos and videos to more fun, consistently posting a wide variety of original content will help keep your Instagram Story fresh. Create content that appeals to your audience and makes them come back for more!
Getting Free Likes on Instagram
To kickstart your profile and get more likes on Instagram there are far more ways than we mentioned above. However, all of these 15 different ways can be implemented daily and you can include them in your recurring Instagram strategy. Remember that to get more likes on Instagram you need to engage and interact with people, as well as be consistent when posting new stuff.
Which of these tips work the best for you? Do you have any other tips to share? Let us know in the comments below!
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