How to Get Free Instagram Followers for Business in 2022
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media channels, benefiting companies as well as celebrities. Instagram users spend hours each day engaging in recreational activities, and there are surely many individuals who desire to be influencers. It is an incredible digital platform that allows users to cash out their accounts if they have a huge following and fan interaction. Instagram has grown from a basic photo-sharing application to a giant marketing and networking platform for companies and people. Stay with us to get tips for increasing Insta followers at free of cost.
Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram at Free of Cost
Having said that, boosting your Instagram following may help you improve traffic to your website, increase revenue, and even transform anybody into a trendsetting influencer. Here are some tried-and-true methods for increasing your Instagram followers — without using spam accounts or bots.
Tapping into Instagram Reels
If you are not currently posting Instagram Reels, you are potentially losing out on a significant chance to expand your follower base.
Read Kylie Jenner becomes first woman with 300 million Instagram followers
Instagram Reels, the app's short-form, looping video feature, is still one of the most successful methods to reach new audiences. Unlike most of the Instagram experience, viewers in the Reels feed are presented high-quality material from both followers and non-followers.
This implies that the Reels have the potential to go far beyond a business’s follower list.
Optimizing Post Captions for Inbound and Outbound Search
Optimizing Instagram photos for search is a significant Instagram growth tip. Instagram recently updated to enable English-speaking users in six countries to search the platform using keywords.
Read How To Be A Popular Instagram Influencer
According to an Instagram spokesman, the team examines a variety of criteria when surfacing relevant results, including the "kind of material, captions, and when it was uploaded."
Additionally, it employs machine learning to "identify the highest-quality material that is personally relevant to you." For the time being, only grid postings will be shown.
Curate Attractive Profile for Robust First Impression
Having an Instagram feed that is well-planned and clearly highlights your specialization is critical for converting profile visits to followers. When someone visits a business profile, the business wants them to immediately grasp its purpose.
Read Facebook launches Instagram Lite in Bangladesh
Utilize a visual planner tool to organize your Instagram grid before posting to ensure a consistent style that suits your business.
Collaborating with Influencers and Brands
Collaborating with like-minded influencers and companies is a significant win-win situation. You can make profit from brand association and get access to a new audience.
Collaborations do not have to be prohibitively expensive. Some of the most successful collaborations are straightforward and mutually beneficial.
Read Facebook working on Instagram for kids under 13
Similarly, you do not need to collaborate with mega-influencers to have an effect. Nano and micro-influencers often have greater engagement rates and a cheaper rate card for sponsored articles than macro-influencers.
However, you will need to work with more Nano or Micro-influencers to achieve the same audience size as a Macro influencer - the optimal technique will depend on your available bandwidth and money.
Making Shoppable Instagram Feeds
Nowadays, purchasing things from Instagram pages is a popular method of shopping online. Additionally, as previously said, many individuals utilize Instagram to locate the right buy.
Read Best Rooftop Restaurants in Dhanmondi with Instagrammable Views
It makes sense for businesses to establish shoppable Instagram feeds. Shoppable feeds send visitors to your product page, allowing them to explore, click, and purchase instantaneously.
As a consequence of their direct purchasing experience, these consumers are likely to follow you for more product suggestions and to promote your brand to others.
Creating Highly-shareable Content
In terms of reaching new audiences organically, providing shareable content is an excellent place to start. Inspirational quotations, instructional carousel articles, and trending memes are all effective forms of content. Even a single viral post may reach thousands of people.
Read How to Earn Money from Instagram
Memes, in particular, are very effective at establishing viral reach – particularly when they capitalize on a current trend in popular culture. This type contents are often amusing or creative, and they frequently use both text and pictures. To develop an incredibly effective meme, strike a balance among several factors, such as, the graphics tool, the mood of target audience, and the speciality of your business.
Creating a Strong Value Proposition
Whether it is fashion suggestions, inspiring quotations, or lifestyle material, having a clear value proposition is critical for turning visitors to your profile into followers.
Read How Do Social Media Influencers Make Money?
This does not signify that all of your material must be identical. Expert content developers advocate concentrating on 3-5 content pillars linked to the area. Thus, you may diversify a content strategy without diminishing your primary startegies.
Creating Instagram Challenges
Instagram challenges have long been popular, and they are now making an appearance on Instagram Reels more regularly.
Successfully launching an Instagram challenge may propel your account into the zeitgeist, exposing it to hundreds, if not millions, of new followers.
Read Monetizing Your Blog: How to Make Money from Blogging
To get huge responses and the greatest results, make the participation process as simple as possible. For instance, you can establish a branded hashtag to connect the challenge to your business, and consider what activities participants would love.
Using Industry Hashtags
Instagram hashtags are wonderful tools for directing users to material that piques their interest. And if prospective followers discover you via a highly targeted hashtag, they are likely to follow you after seeing your most popular posts.
With this in mind, you should include hashtags related to your sector in each Instagram post. For example, a photographic brand may use.
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The most effective method of discovering relevant hashtags is to open the Instagram app and touch the explore button. From there, you may see popular hashtags that are being used by a large number of individuals.
Analyzing Results
One strategy for determining how to increase your Instagram followers is to examine what the present fans react to. Several Instagram metrics may be tracked directly inside the app or through third-party analytics solutions.
Bottom Line
If you want to expand your business steadily on Instagram, you must consistently provide high-quality material to attract the target audience. While fragmented social media works for personal accounts, corporations need a more deliberate approach. All of the strategies discussed of enhancing the number of free instagram followers will assist a company in increasing its followers as well as potential clintes. However, these ways are not one-time checkboxes. You need to keep an eye on the social media content strategies to stay updated.
Read Want to start freelancing from Bangladesh? These are the best platforms for you
Instagram head faces senators amid anger over possible harms
The head of Instagram on Wednesday met with deep skepticism on Capitol Hill over new measures the social media platform is adopting to protect young users.
Adam Mosseri appeared before a Senate panel and faced off with lawmakers angry over revelations of how the photo-sharing platform can harm some young users. Senators are also demanding the company commit to making changes and increase its transparancy.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who heads the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, dismissed as “a public relations tactic” some safety measures announced by the popular photo-sharing platform.
“I believe that the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over,” Blumenthal said. “Self-policing depends on trust. Trust is over.”
Under sharp questioning by senators of both parties, Mosseri defended the company’s conduct and the efficacy of its new safety measures. He challenged the assertion that Instagram has been shown by research to be addictive for young people. Instagram, which along with Facebook is part of Meta Platforms Inc., has an estimated 1 billion users of all ages.
Read: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outage
On Tuesday, Instagram introduced a previously announced feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the platform. The company also announced other tools, including parental controls due to come out early next year, that it says are aimed at protecting young users from harmful content.
Senators of both parties were united in condemnation of the social network giant and Instagram, the photo-sharing juggernaut valued at some $100 billion that Facebook acquired for $1 billion in 2012.
The hearing grew more confrontational and emotionally charged as it went on.
“Sir, I have to tell you, you did sound callous,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the panel’s senior Republican, told Mosseri near the end of the hearing.
Senators repeatedly tried to win commitments from Mosseri for Instagram to provide full results of its internal research and its computer formulas for ranking content to independent monitors and Congress. They also tried to enlist his support for legislation that would curb the ways in which Big Tech deploys social media geared toward young people.
Mosseri responded mostly with general endorsements of openness and accountability, insisting that Instagram is an industry leader in transparency.
The issue is becoming increasingly urgent. An alarming advisory issued Tuesday by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned about a mental health crisis among children and young adults that has been worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. He said tech companies must design social media platforms that strengthen, rather than harm, young people’s mental health.
Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has been roiled by public and political outrage over the disclosures by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. She has made the case before lawmakers in the U.S., Britain and Europe that that the company's systems amplify online hate and extremism and that the company elevates profits over the safety of users.
Haugen, a data scientist who had worked in Facebook’s civic integrity unit, buttressed her assertions with a trove of internal company documents she secretly copied and provided to federal securities regulators and Congress.
The Senate panel has examined Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, while it publicly downplayed the negative impacts. For some Instagram-devoted teens, peer pressure generated by the visually focused app led to mental-health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research detailed in the Facebook documents showed.
Read: Facebook working on Instagram for kids under 13
The revelations in a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on the documents leaked by Haugen, set off a wave of recriminations from lawmakers, critics of Big Tech, child-development experts and parents.
“As head of Instagram, I am especially focused on the safety of the youngest people who use our services,” Mosseri testified. “This work includes keeping underage users off our platform, designing age-appropriate experiences for people ages 13 to 18, and building parental controls. Instagram is built for people 13 and older. If a child is under the age of 13, they are not permitted on Instagram.”
Mosseri outlined the suite of measures he said Instagram has taken to protect young people on the platform. They include keeping kids under 13 off it, restricting direct messaging between kids and adults, and prohibiting posts that encourage suicide and self-harm.
But, as researchers both internal and external to Meta have documented, the reality is different. Kids under 13 often sign up for Instagram with or without their parents’ knowledge by lying about their age. And posts about suicide and self-harm still reach children and teens, sometimes with disastrous effects.
Facebook unveils new controls for kids using its platforms
Facebook, in the aftermath of damning testimony that its platforms harm children, will be introducing several features including prompting teens to take a break using its photo sharing app Instagram, and “nudging" teens if they are repeatedly looking at the same content that's not conducive to their well-being.
The Menlo Park, California-based Facebook is also planning to introduce new controls for adults of teens on an optional basis so that parents or guardians can supervise what their teens are doing online. These initiatives come after Facebook announced late last month that it was pausing work on its Instagram for Kids project. But critics say the plan lacks details and they are skeptical that the new features would be effective.
The new controls were outlined on Sunday by Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president for global affairs, who made the rounds on various Sunday news shows including CNN's “State of the Union" and ABC's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos" where he was grilled about Facebook's use of algorithms as well as its role in spreading harmful misinformation ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Read:Could Facebook sue whistleblower Frances Haugen?
“We are constantly iterating in order to improve our products,” Clegg told Dana Bash on “State of the Union" Sunday. “We cannot, with a wave of the wand, make everyone’s life perfect. What we can do is improve our products, so that our products are as safe and as enjoyable to use."
Clegg said that Facebook has invested $13 billion over the past few years in making sure to keep the platform safe and that the company has 40,000 people working on these issues. And while Clegg said that Facebook has done its best to keep harmful content out of its platforms, he says he was open for more regulation and oversight.
“We need greater transparency,” he told CNN’s Bash. He noted that the systems that Facebook has in place should be held to account, if necessary, by regulation so that “people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens.”
The flurry of interviews came after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former data scientist with Facebook, went before Congress last week to accuse the social media platform of failing to make changes to Instagram after internal research showed apparent harm to some teens and of being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation. Haugen’s accusations were supported by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit.
Read:Ex-Facebook manager criticizes company, urges more oversight
Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a watchdog for the children and media marketing industry, said that he doesn't think introducing controls to help parents supervise teens would be effective since many teens set up secret accounts any way. He was also dubious about how effective nudging teens to take a break or move away from harmful content would be. He noted Facebook needs to show exactly how they would implement it and offer research that shows these tools are effective.
“There is tremendous reason to be skeptical," he said. He added that regulators need to restrict what Facebook does with its algorithms.
He said he also believes that Facebook should cancel its Instagram project for kids.
When Clegg was grilled by both Bash and Stephanopoulos in separate interviews about the use of algorithms in amplifying misinformation ahead of Jan. 6 riots, he responded that if Facebook removed the algorithms people would see more, not less hate speech, and more, not less, misinformation.
Read:Whistleblower: Facebook chose profit over public safety
Clegg told both hosts that the algorithms serve as “giant spam filters."
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, told Bash in a separate interview Sunday that it's time to update children's privacy laws and offer more transparency in the use of algorithms.
“I appreciate that he is willing to talk about things, but I believe the time for conversation is done," said Klobuchar, referring to Clegg's plan. “The time for action is now.”
Outage highlights how vital Facebook has become worldwide
The six-hour outage at Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, fellow parents, teachers or neighbors.
When all three services went dark Monday, it was a stark reminder of the power and reach of Facebook, which owns the photo-sharing and messaging apps.
Around the world, the breakdown at WhatsApp left many at a loss. In Brazil, the messaging service is by far the most widely used app in the country, installed on 99% of smartphones, according to tech pollster Mobile Time.
WhatsApp has become essential in Brazil to communicate with friends and family, as well as for a variety of other tasks, such as ordering food. Offices, various services and even the courts had trouble making appointments, and phone lines became overwhelmed.
Read: Facebook services restored after worldwide outage
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in their homeland and abroad fretted over the WhatsApp outage.
Many of the country’s more than 11 million people depend it to alert one another about gang violence in particular neighborhoods or to talk to relatives in the U.S. about money transfers and other important matters. Haitian migrants traveling to the U.S. rely on it to find each other or share key information such as safe places to sleep.
Nelzy Mireille, a 35-year-old unemployed woman who depends on money sent from relatives abroad, said she stopped at a repair shop in the capital of Port-au-Prince because she thought her phone was malfunctioning.
“I was waiting on confirmation on a money transfer from my cousin,” she said. “I was so frustrated.”
“I was not able to hear from my love,” complained 28-year-old Wilkens Bourgogne, referring to his partner, who was in the neighboring Dominican Republic, buying goods to bring back to Haiti. He said he was concerned about her safety because of the violence in their homeland.
“Insecurity makes everyone worry,” he said.
In rebel-held Syria, where the telecommunication infrastructure has been disrupted by war, residents and emergency workers rely mostly on internet communication.
Naser AlMuhawish, a Turkey-based Syrian doctor who monitors coronavirus cases in rebel-held territory in Syria, said WhatsApp is the main communication method used with over 500 workers in the field.
They switched to Skype, but WhatsApp works better when internet service is shaky, he said. If there had been an emergency such as shelling that he needed to warn field workers about, there could have been major problems, he said.
"Luckily this didn’t happen yesterday during the outage,” he said.
But hospitals treating COVID-19 patients in the region were thrown into panic. They lost contact with oxygen suppliers who have no fixed location and are normally reached via WhatsApp. One hospital sent staff member searching for oxygen at nearly two dozen facilities, said Dr. Fadi Hakim of the Syrian American Medical Society.
In Lima, Peru, the breakdown complicated dental technician Mary Mejia’s job. Like most Peruvian medical workers, she uses WhatsApp for a multitude of tasks, including scheduling appointments and ordering crowns.
“Sometimes the doctor will be working on a patient and I need to contact a technician for job,” she said. “To have to step away and make a phone call? It trips us up. We’ve become so accustomed to this tool.”
Millions of Africans use WhatsApp for all their voice calls, so “people felt they were cut off from the world,” said Mark Tinka, a Ugandan who heads engineering at SEACOM, a South Africa-based internet infrastructure company.
Read:Whistleblower: Facebook chose profit over public safety
Many Africans also use WhatsApp to connect with relatives in other countries. Tinka’s stepdaughter lives in Caldwell, Idaho, and lost her father on Sunday, but could not speak with her family back in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, to arrange travel for the funeral.
“It’s amazing just how little folks understand the impact of three or four content companies on the utility of the Internet,” Tinka said.
Facebook said the outage was due to an internal error related to a “configuration change” but gave no details.
The outage came amid a crisis at Facebook, accused by a whistleblower on “60 Minutes” and on Capitol Hill of profiting from hate and division and suppressing research showing that Instagram contributes to body-image problems, eating disorders and thoughts of suicide in young women.
For small businesses, the outages meant hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Andrawos Bassous is a Palestinian photographer in the Israeli-occupied West Bank whose Facebook page has more than 1 million followers. He has worked with companies including Samsung and Turkish Airlines to create social media content. He said the social media blackout meant he was unable to book appointments or share videos online for companies that employ him.
“Imagine if you promised one of the companies you work for to share their product at a specific time and there is a blackout,” Bassous said.
Sarah Murdoch runs a small Seattle-based travel company called Adventures with Sarah and relies on Facebook Live videos to promote her tours. She estimated the breakdown cost her thousands of dollars in bookings.
“I’ve tried other platforms because I am wary of Facebook, but none of them are as powerful for the type of content I create,” Murdoch said. As for her losses, “it may only be a few people, but we are small enough that it hurts.”
Heather Rader runs How Charming Photography in Linton, Indiana. She takes photographs for schools and sports teams and makes yard signs with the photos. She has her own website but said parents and other customers mostly try to reach her through social media.
She said she might have lost three or four bookings for photo sessions at $200 a client.
“A lot of people only have a specific window when they can do ordering and booking and things like that,” she said. “If they can’t get a direct answer, they go to someone else.”
Read: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outage
Tarita Carnduff of Alberta, Canada, said she connects with other parents on Facebook just about every day, and the outage drove home for her how crucial that support is.
“As a parent with special needs kids, it is the only space I found others in similar positions,” she said. “There’s a lot of us that would be lost without it.”
But for others, the breakdown led them to conclude they need less Facebook in their lives.
Anne Vydra said she realized she was spending too much free time scrolling and commenting on posts she disagreed with. She deleted the Facebook app on Tuesday.
“I didn’t want it to come back,” said Vydra, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and does voiceover work. She added: “I realized how much of my time was wasted.”
Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer worldwide outage
Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were down in parts of the world on Monday.
The company said it was “aware that some people are having trouble accessing Facebook app” and it was working on restoring access.
The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:45 ET. It is normal for websites and apps to suffer outages, though one on a global scale is rare. Users reported being unable to access Facebook in California, New York and Europe.
How To Be A Popular Instagram Influencer
Despite being a social platform for the common man, Instagram has doubled as a multi-billion dollar industry that has turned the heads of advertisers, sponsors, e-commerce platforms and other businesses. There are so many variables that are in play to become a viral hit, and there is no perfect strategy to attain that kind of success - but there are clear guidelines that will expand your reach and presence: here is how to be a popular Instagram influencer.
Tips and Tricks To Be Famous in Instagram
Choosing Your Niche
The ideal kind of audiences are the ones who will come back to your content, i.e followers. The best way to do this is to find a niche that will have others looking forward to your next post, and being generic will make it difficult to incentivise commitment. Because of this, finding a niche is crucial to arrow in the kind of audiences you want to view your content. Finding a niche could vary from food, fashion, gaming, movie, cosmetics and so much more.
The most important thing to remember when thinking about this is identifying something you are passionate about. This is important for a few reasons: one, being that a passion-driven page will give you the motivation to post content regularly. This is synonymous with having a good understanding of your niche. With knowledge, your post will have substantiated preferences, informative bios and the trust of future investors or partners.
Read How to Earn Money from Instagram
Creating A Memorable Bio
At the end of the day, Instagram, like other social media platforms are meant to be more personal than formal. Because of this, fans who are emotionally invested would appreciate knowing the background behind the creator of their favourite content. When they can establish a common ground with you, their motivation to support your content will naturally become stronger. Since Instagram is accessed primarily for leisure, showing a bit of your personality through your bio would genuinely matter to them.
Generic quotes aren’t the way to go if you want to establish originality in your bio. Being genuine with your story and what makes you passionate about the content you are posting is grounded enough for audiences to appreciate. With more authenticity, audiences will feel that they are interacting with your page at the angle of a relationship, rather than being a consumer of your content. The bio sets the introductory tone to your content and should be perfected before moving forward.
Read Quarantine Income Opportunities: How to Earn Money during lockdown period
Insta-stories Are A Must
There’s more to Instagram than just photos: Insta-stories are a great way to deliver concise video content that give people a “live” update of what you’re up to. It keeps audiences involved in your life and can appear to be way more authentic than a carefully edited photo if done right. Showing off your expensive car or expensive items that you have just bought is not the way to go, because showing off can often be interpreted as the content creator actively trying to one-up his or her audiences- which is not very tactful.
Instead, making a quick reaction of news within your niche or something within your niche that currently has your attention are simple, but effective ways to set the tone of your page in that period of time. Overall, it isn’t rocket science to post something genuine, and it can easily be done with the niche you are passionate about, or even something even more personal when your fanbase has properly been cultivated.
Read How to Earn Money from YouTube Channel
Consistency In Your Grid
Presentation at a glance holds an immense amount of power that decides whether people are going to bother even exploring your page or scroll right through. There’s no shame to edit your pictures to be aesthetically pleasing, but the filters, editing style and overall tone should be consistent so that your collage of photos are coherent and can give audiences a sense of understanding of what they can expect from your future uploads.
Applications like Visco or Lightroom can do wonders to up your editing game, but over-editing may pose a risk of robbing authenticity off your images. Audiences appreciate truth in their content and having images that are edited too much may hamper the audience’s perception of the truth behind each uploaded photo. Ultimately, the best way to approach this is to edit just enough for aesthetic appeal and consistency, but not to cast any doubt on its authenticity.
Read How to Earn Money from Facebook
Knowing Your Hashtags
Now we’re entering a slightly more business approach to your Instagram profile. Keywords are a critical component to ensuring that your page gets the right kind of exposure in its field. This is where finding a niche will save you; when having a niche, your keywords become much more specific and that allows your page to land on the “recommended” feed for potential audiences.
On a reach perspective, this is possibly one the key components to allow more exposure. Naturally, you’ll want to scout other specialists in the same niche to see what hashtags are used. Do keep in mind that if the hashtag is too common, it might get lost in the crowd, but going for something too niche may also make it hard to reach audiences, as the algorithm needs to know where your page should land.
Read Monetising Your Blog
Consistency Is Key
Posting frequently is the other component that affects your reach as a content creator. Ensuring that your posts are uploaded at high-traffic times will be the way to go so that you can cast your net wide to attract as many eyes as possible during the day. Posting twice a day is good as it tackles the two time slots with peak user activity while avoiding bombardment of content.
Ultimately, finding the perfect balance of hashtags, a relatable bio, perfect edits and other factors is a daunting task and is extremely difficult to get right. Instead of setting your eyes on getting viral and tracking your numbers constantly, the best way is to post frequently about things you enjoy with the aforementioned tips in mind - if done so, there’s a good chance people will start to see the authenticity behind each post.
Read Tips and Tricks to Increase YouTube Subscribers organically
Social media conundrum – from reckless scrolling to responsible use
There is no denying that social media are having a moment as more and more people are opening accounts to be a social butterfly with every passing day. Nowadays, you will hardly find a man or woman who doesn’t have an account on any of the popular social networking sites. The trend is so popular now that even when people go out of their places to have an outing, say for in a restaurant, they remain glued to the screens. It seems, in contrast to the usual reality, social media are controlling the users’ thanks to the irresponsible use of social media by the netizens.
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