Today, Instagram is rightfully considered a breakout among other social networks. It received special development in 2015, and in a few years, it has become a powerful platform for communication and also for profit. The main audience is people from 18 to 29 years. And the statistics figures are stunning:

• Instagram has 1 billion people users every month
• 500 million people watch Stories daily
• Over 75% of the US businesses will use it in 2020
• US Instagram audience will reach 112.5 million people.

These are serious numbers. So it does not matter what services or goods you offer, it is obvious that you will find your audience here. This is why it is essential for the business to take advantage of Instagram. It is not enough to start an account. It is important to stand out from the crowd among millions. Keep reading to learn how to achieve success and recognition in this social network.

1. Use Content Planning Tools

Creating a content plan for Instagram is not an easy task since the popular application does not give third-party tools access to its API. But there are applications that collect in one place all future updates for an account on Instagram, and also notify marketers at a set time that it is time to publish new photos and videos. 

• Sprout Social. A great instrument for monitoring social media activity. With this tool, you can work with Facebook, Linkedin, Facebook Messenger, Google+, Twitter. Here you can draw up a content plan, get notification of the need for publication, receive the performance result of an account.
• Onlypult. It simplifies managing your account on Instagram as well as content planning. Using this platform, you can immediately upload multiple images to publish them immediately or to schedule the best time to post on Instagram. It allows you to upload photos from your computer. This tool has filters for editing images, it is also integrated with Canva (a service for creating collages, banners, etc.).

2. Activate account promotion services

Another way to increase popularity is to connect special services to work. Instagram offers tools that are inevitable for those who are trying to monetize their presence on this social network.

• The business profile is an opportunity to turn your account into an attractive mini-landing. The contact button allows the user to contact you directly from the social network. It speeds up interaction with the audience and increases its loyalty. Customers appreciate your care about the ease of feedback with them.
• Insights. It is an analytics tool from Instagram that is available to business profile owners. With its help you can track the number of likes of your post, the number of those who followed the link, the average time your followers spend on this network.

Despite the fact that other platforms can offer more detailed information about the effectiveness of your Instagram profile, launching your own analytics system for a social network is a huge step. 

• Promote. This tool is the easiest way to turn an Instagram post into an ad. To do this, you need to decide what action you want to receive from your subscribers and add the corresponding button. Then you have to specify the target audience and determine the duration of your add.

3. Use account performance tools

There are plenty of efficient ways to check the results of your Instagram activity. 

• Iconosquare e is one of the most popular tools for evaluating the effectiveness of content in your Instagram account. This analytical and marketing tool collects data on the activity of the most popular accounts among your subscribers. It analyzes the growth rate of your account and collects statistics on the most commonly used hashtags.
• Ink361. This instrument enables a marketer to get not only interesting statistics on subscribers but also recommendations that will help accelerate Instagram account growth. To prepare tips, this application uses data about location, time of user activity, hashtags, filters, comments. Besides, Ink361 can monitor the activity of competitors, which will help you expand your content strategy in time and stay ahead of the rest.

4. Add effective hashtags

Adding the right hashtags to a post can promote or fail it. It is a hashtag that is responsible for your content to attract potential customers. There are several different strategies for choosing hashtags. If you want the hashtag to work, use local ones (the name of the city or location) or those that directly relate to the message. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, and studies show that posts with at least one hashtag get 12% more activity.

Services for selecting hashtags and their statistics:

• web.stagram.com
• www.talkwalker.com
• hashtagify.me
• ritetag.com

5. Make live broadcasts and stories

Instagram Live remains a powerful marketing instrument. It is the most sincere format of content, and transparency and naturalness are the trends of the future. It is a perfect approach to interact with followers. Today, this is one of the best ways to stand out on a site oversaturated with content.

If you want to demonstrate your product range and services, but don’t want to waste time editing photos and videos, do a review in Stories. So you exclude spam in the feed and show activity, without spoiling the profile style. Using Stories, you can create photos and 15-second videos with text overlay, emojis, geolocation, polls, event announcements.

6. Partner with influencers

The role of influential marketing is huge on Instagram. If you are an avid user, you constantly see advertising posts from influencers with a large number of subscribers. However, small businesses rarely use this type of marketing to attract followers. To engage influential marketing, you need to search for large figures in the industry. Contact them to create an affiliate post, they know what to do. This is a very powerful marketing secret of Instagram because it allows you to attract those parts of the target market that you otherwise could not have achieved. Adding a coupon code will make the deal more attractive and increase business profits even more.

The above-described steps will help promote the brand on the network. Using these tools and hints, you can substantially increase the audience on Instagram. The correct strategy will make subscribers come to your page themselves.