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Are you struggling to build your brand’s visibility on Instagram? Even if you’re making steady progress, it can be frustrating to put in a lot of effort and barely see a bump in your follower count or engagement on your posts. Fortunately, there are several possible explanations for a poorly-performing Instagram marketing strategy. Are you guilty of any of these?

No Hashtags

How is your target audience supposed to find you if you’re not using hashtags on your posts? While you could certainly direct your followers from other social media platforms to your Instagram handle, it’s much easier to bring in new followers organically through search. This means you should have at least 5-6 hashtags per post (you can include up to 30 hashtags total, but you don’t want to clutter your posts with them, either).

Also be sure to include relevant and specific hashtags. If you’re selling pet products, then #dog and #cat are not going to help much because there are hundreds of posts with these hashtags published every minute! Instead, research more specific hashtags that are less popular – such as #dogtreats or #cattoys – so your posts will remain in a higher position in the search results for a longer period of time.

Low Quality Content

You don’t need a professional camera to post high quality photos on Instagram, but you do need an eye for quality imagery. Rather than posting any old photo you have of your product or service, take time to build up a portfolio of quality photos that you can post to your account on a regular basis. Take time to experiment with the different filters and editing settings for optimal lighting and color effects, and focus less on the quantity of images you post and more on the quality of posts you’re publishing on your brand’s account.

Irregular Updates

We live in a world where almost everyone online has a short attention span (especially when it comes to anything remotely related to advertising). However, publishing high quality, intriguing posts on a regular basis can help you grow your audience. Rather than posting whenever you feel like it, set up an Instagram content schedule and dedicate a couple hours per week to taking more photos, editing those photos, and researching different caption and hashtag options for your posts. Sporadic updates will drive away followers, but consistent updates with meaningful imagery/messages will likely bring in new followers on a weekly basis.

Minimal Engagement with Your Fans

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make on Instagram is pursuing new followers while completely ignoring their existing fanbase. If you have followers who regularly like or comment on your posts, then be sure to engage with them! Give them a shout-out in your Instagram story, respond to every comment, and go like their photos as well to show that you appreciate their dedication to your brand.

Staying within Your Bubble

Don’t limit your outreach to your existing base of followers. When you have relevant hashtags attached to your posts, click on those hashtags to see what other people are posting. By liking and commenting on other users’ posts, you’ll pique their interest and indirectly encourage them to go check out your account. If you have high-quality images and good messaging in your posts, then they might even follow you! This is truly an organic (free!) way to attract new followers, so don’t miss this opportunity to grow your fanbase by going outside of your bubble on Instagram.

Hosting an event can be an immensely stressful but rewarding experience. Whether you’re hosting a free online webinar or a paid event at a local convention center, there are many ways you can promote the event without going over budget. Here are just some of the many efficient and cost-effective ways you should use to boost ticket sales and measure expected attendance.

Promote the event on Facebook

Did you know you can sell tickets from a Facebook Event page? This option is typically more effective when combined with a tracking pixel for Facebook from your events site (such as EventBrite), so you can keep track of your marketing efforts and analyze data more accurately during and after your event promotion.

Once you set up your tracking pixel and Facebook Event page, you can easily promote it by paying to boost your page, inviting people to your event, and sharing the event details on your brand or business’ usual page so your followers can sign up before it sells out!

Host a contest

Everyone loves free stuff, especially if that involves free admission to an event they would’ve paid to attend anyway. You can host a contest on virtually any social platform, though Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are the most ideal for events due to their wide reach and localized targeting options. If your event is more geared towards the professional crowd, then LinkedIn might be a better option.

Free admission or branded swag generally make for the best prizes, but you don’t have to limit yourself to one grand prize or boring text entries, either. To generate maximum hype for your upcoming event, encourage users to share content (photos or text-based stories) using a branded hashtag as their entry to your contest and pick winners on a weekly basis to keep social users interested in coming back for additional chances to win.

Hire a micro-influencer

Whether your event is a small, local gig or a massive bonanza that will attract people from all over the country, hiring someone from your industry – who has their own dedicated bunch of followers – to promote your event could work wonders when it comes to boosting your attendance figures.

By hiring a micro-influencer, you’ll get the word out in an organic way (social users are most likely to follow the recommendations of a friend or family member, after all) and you’ll get access to a base of followers that might have otherwise ignored your sponsored ads.