5 Ways to Leverage InstagramEngagement into New FollowersBy Lucy Hitz – November 6, 2014

If your brand has a soaring engagement rate on Instagram and receives awesome feedback onits content, but struggles to expand its audience on the booming social network, this post isfor you.

Read on to learn five strategies for making your Instagram follower count go up, up, up, bybuilding upon the solid foundation of hype you’ve already built with viral-prone contentand getting to know your current audience better.

Ask and Reward

Congratulations to our First Place Grand Prize Winner of a $250 gift card to Walgreens is@goobersmax35 #HHSummerSweeps

walgreens • 4 months ago Follow

303 likes 22 comments

Put together a friendship-, family-, or team-themed campaign, asking your already-dedicated Instagram audience to tag afriend for a chance to win a reward.

Using this tactic, your existing audience members are organically vetting people and spreading brand awareness to Instagramusers who are likely ideal followers for your brand.

For instance, if a brand I follow runs an Instagram campaign asking me to tag my best girlfriend for a chance to win a two-person, margarita-fueled beach getaway, I’m probably not going to tag a fifty-year-old man or twelve-year-old girl — I’m goingto tag my twenty-something best girlfriend, which would fit into this smart brand’s target audience the same way I do.

Deeply Know Your Current Audience

Source: Simply Measured Report. Try it for free here

The only way you’ll come up with effective strategies for leveraging loyal followers into new followers is by knowing who yourcurrent followers are and how they behave.

Figure out who your most active commenters are. They’re the ones having the richest interactions with your brand. Then drilldeeper into their profiles and posts to find out what makes them tick and what makes them double-tap.

This is a clever and relatively simple way to build your Instagram social personas — and also to find followers of yourfollowers that might be interested in what you have to offer.

Follow Back Once you know who is really lovin’ on your brand on Instagram, follow back.

Don’t underestimate how flattered people feel when they’re followed back by a brand they love and engage with regularly.

This tactic hits two birds with one stone: you strengthen your bond with current followers and gain access to new prospects(AKA your followers’ followers).

Direct Your Audience to Your Blog According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. Byusing Instagram posts to shine the spotlight on your blog, you give your followers another way to be engaged by your brand.

Want all the goss from last night's epic VIP party? Head to insideout.topshop.com for our top moments.(including our amazing Twitter Mirror selfies featuring @HaileeSteinfeld!) #topshop #UNLOCK5TH#grandcentral #topshopny #haileesteinfeld #topshoploves

topshop • 1 month ago Follow

34.6k likes 147 comments

The more followers that head to your blog, the more people are likely to engage in WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing)around your brand, both verbally and by sending your blog links to non-followers using other social (Facebook, Twitter) andnon-social (GChat, email) methods.

RegramMine the talents of your followers and #regram their photos, making sure to tag them.

Sheer nude nails and faux fur at yesterday's shoot. (Repost from @kaitmosh)

laurenconrad • 1 month ago Follow

118k likes 1.3k comments

Much like following your influential and most active followers, this tactic gets current followers excited and more likely tospread the word on your brand’s Instagram presence.

Download Our Q3 2014 Instagram Study Our Q3 2014 Instagram Study analyzes the activity behind thousands of posts and hundreds of millions of likes andcomments to find the most successful brands, tactics, and content types.

This study uncovers findings around:

Hashtags

@Mentions

Photos vs. videos

Location tagging

Posting frequency

Here’s a teaser. The full study is available to download for free by clicking the button in the graphic below. See how yourbrand stacks up to the best in the world!

Lucy HitzHoller! I’m the Social Media Content Writer here at Simply Measured, which means I get to research the latest andgreatest in social media and shed additional light on what I find with our brilliant reports. I’m from the Upper West Side inNYC (reppin’ it!). I love yoga, prosciutto, peaty scotch, poetry, and Taylor Swift. If I were a social media channel, I’d want tobe Instagram, but I think I’m Twitter.