How do you build a personal brand on Instagram?

Instagram turns out to be a remarkably useful platform for building a personal brand. If you're wondering whether you need so-called personal branding, you should stop… wondering. These days most employers and HR specialists check a candidate's activity on social media. Worth remembering: by publishing attractive, consistent, well-considered content that shows your passions, your interests and your personality, you'll certainly be read as a more interesting person than the rival candidate whose Instagram is full of identical selfies.

On top of that, if you focus on interesting content and the right kind of activity on this particular social medium, you can turn it into an extra source of income! Marketers are betting on micro-influencers more and more. That means you don't need a few hundred thousand followers to work with brands. Two to four thousand loyal followers is enough to start receiving products and reviewing them. So, one thing at a time — how do you get popular on Instagram? There are a few ways:

Get your communication strategy right

Consistent, attractive photos are the foundation. If you post photos in a rush, on impulse, you'll create an impression of chaos and randomness. Just as brands operate on social media according to a defined communication strategy, you should communicate your personal brand the same way. The most important thing is settling on a recurring theme. That doesn't mean you should post nothing but holiday shots, of course, or only portraits of your child. The photos can vary, but it's worth keeping them in a similar register — similar contrast, filter, color palette and mood. Photo quality matters most — take several, even a dozen or so similar shots, and publish the best one: the one with the best sharpness, contrast and brightness. Remember to be regular about it as well. Photos should appear often, but not to excess — you can't let it get to the point where somebody following you sees nothing but your photos; unfollow guaranteed! And keep the right posting times in mind — we scroll Instagram most often in the morning and in the evening.

Keep Instagram's terms in mind as well — don't post photos containing violence or nudity.

Use the right hashtags

Most people on Instagram use English-language hashtags, while enormous potential sits in Polish-language captions. If you use English hashtags only, your photo will drop off the first page of search results fast. Bear in mind that a billion people around the world already use the app! Use Polish keywords and you're more likely to gain new followers. Interestingly, the same doesn't hold for likes — here, popular hashtags in English still work better. So the best move is to use both languages when you caption a photo. Keep in mind that hashtags like L4L or F4F do nothing good for your image — they look like plain like-begging. There is also a list of banned hashtags, and it's worth knowing, because breaking the censorship rules risks a ban. It's also worth watching how many you add — 11 to 30 hashtags is the sweet spot. Add 31 and Instagram will automatically remove them all.

Be active

Follow – unfollow: does that trick still work? Yes. Do we recommend it? It depends. Following profiles really is worth doing — Instagram users still happily return the favor, and that's a way to build a large following. The downsides? A feed cluttered with photos from people we have nothing in common with, whose names we don't know and whose content doesn't interest us in the slightest. So it's worth “hunting” for people who aren't too popular (someone with thousands of followers won't notice one more person and won't even click through to your profile) but who post content you find interesting. Even if they don't follow you back right away, you'll keep getting noticed by liking and commenting on their posts.

The second form of activity is searching for other people and profiles by their captions. We can type keywords in by hand, but a while back Instagram also made it possible to follow specific hashtags, which makes discovering more people easier. Like, comment, follow and build relationships with people who like what you like! Just make sure the comments always relate to what was actually posted! “Great pic, nice profile, come check mine out” <- that's the worst comment you can leave. If you have nothing interesting to say, drop a heart and keep scrolling.

Use tags

It seems obvious, but people forget it all the time — add a location, tag the places and the people in the photo. You'll widen the reach of your photos and pick up extra likes as well — from the diner where you had lunch, say, or the organizer of the event you went to.

Use Instagram Stories

Research shows that users watch Instagram Stories even more often than the main feed. Short videos are worth posting there. Here too the idea matters most — you can go live with questions from viewers, do mini shopping hauls or cook something. What counts is that the content differs from what you publish on your profile and, here as well, that there isn't too much of it. Worth stressing: Stories won't bring you new followers, but they will help you build a bond with the ones you already have. Stories do disappear after 24 hours, it's true, but the ones you want to keep can be pinned to your profile and sorted by theme — Travel, Recipes, Makeup, for instance. It looks more professional still if you use graphically consistent overlays made in a free design tool such as Canva.

Run ads

Advertising on Instagram is a relatively cheap and effective way to increase the reach of your photos and the engagement under them. You can promote a specific photo or the whole profile. You can publish an ad like that straight from the app or through Facebook's advertising tools. Pick the best photo you've published on your profile for the ad. Remember to choose the target group carefully — it should be people with similar interests, so that the content you publish appeals to them.

Run a contest

A good way to drive traffic to your profile is to run a contest. If you have too few followers to land a brand partnership, fund the prize yourself. Instagram's terms, unlike Facebook's, allow users' own feeds to be used in contests, which gives these campaigns a far more viral character. Ask users to post photos on their own feeds on a set theme, with set hashtags and a set caption, then pick the best ones. Don't forget to make tagging your profile a condition!

Put your friends to work

Got friends who are popular on Instagram? Time to use your contacts! Ask them to post a photo of the two of you, tagging you and encouraging people to visit your profile. We guarantee that turning up in a few photos from a popular account will bring you a pile of new followers.