No successful brand or influencer exists without a community behind it. That’s why you want to build a community on Instagram; you need a loyal following to help you grow. But it’s not just about the number of followers you have—it’s about their passion.
Don’t believe us?
According to Statista, in 2023, nano influencers (100 to 10,000 followers) saw the highest popularity out of all influencer tiers, with an engagement rate of 2.19% compared to the average of 1.85%.
Learn how to build a community on Instagram that’s both big and passionate so you can reap the rewards of a robust and engaged audience.
To build a community, you need an audience—and not just any audience. You need people who want to be part of your community.
How do you find those people? Do you just start posting and hope for the best?
No.
You need to target the right people based on their likes and interests.
This starts with building a buyer persona—which you can do without even having an audience. A buyer persona is a made-up person based on the characteristics you want your audience to have.
Let’s say you want to be a fitness influencer. In this case, an interest in fitness will be a vital component of the buyer persona.
A persona can be built from:
Depending on your goals, you may have to build more than one persona. Let’s say you want to expand your horizons to be a pet and fitness influencer. Then you should build three personas: one for the fitness side, one for the pet side, and one that loves both topics.
If you already have some audience information, don’t be afraid to use it to build your persona. You can think of it as a shortcut! (You can find audience demographics under “Insights” on Instagram.)
Now you need to get your persona interested in your brand—which you do by consistently providing valuable content. What this content is will depend on your audience’s needs. At a minimum, your content should entertain them, teach them something, or engage them.
Just remember that all content needs to be audience-oriented. You’re talking to your community, and your content should reflect that. It should also reflect your humanity—social media is so successful is because it makes people feel connected to other people.
What role does consistency play in building a community on Instagram? Well, you need to stay on your community’s mind, and posting consistently is one way to do that. Not only do you appear in their feed more often, but if you schedule at certain times, you also create expectations and excitement when it gets time for you to post.
In short, value and consistency are integral to building a loyal following.
Hashtags are one of the best tools to find your audience and define your brand. They act as a sorting tool to organize content by different categories and help people find what they’re looking for.
While Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags, you probably don’t want to do that because it can look spammy. A good range is one to 10, with the average being five.
Ways to use hashtags include:
Building your brand: You can use specific hashtags like the name of your business (if you have one), a catchphrase, or anything else that will make you easily identifiable.
Jumping on trends: There’s nothing wrong with jumping on a trend—especially if it relates to your brand. This provides an opportunity for more eyes to see your account.
Showcasing interests: You can use hashtags to show what your account is about and attract people interested in content like yours.
Highlighting your community: If you have a nickname or a common phrase used within your community, show it off in a hashtag.
Community is a two-way relationship, and you need people to engage with your account. If you need help getting the ball rolling, buying comments or likes could give you the engagement boost you need. Here are some other ways you can encourage audience engagement.
You can use many tactics to foster engagement, but talking back to the community is the simplest. If someone leaves a comment or a question, respond to them! Responsiveness encourages people to comment more.
Another way to increase engagement is to have a strong CTA (call to action) in every post. A CTA is a phrase that encourages people to take action. It can be as simple as, “Comment your favorite color below!”
Instagram stickers have been rising in popularity as a form of engagement, allowing users to post questions and polls as part of their photos and Stories. This is eye-catching and can make people stop scrolling to look and comment.
Finally, there’s user-generated content, which is not only a good way to engage fans—it’s also a great way to get material for posting. User-generated content is a post another user makes about you, like if they bought something from you and wanted to show it off. It could also be a comment on one of your posts that got really popular.
User-generated content fosters engagement, because people love being acknowledged by their favorite creator, and your followers, will continue to post in hopes of being chosen. It also shows that you pay attention to what’s happening in your community—creating a stronger connection.
Going Live lets you interact with your community in real time. You can answer questions in an AMA (ask me anything), tell them about your day, or do a live tutorial. It’s important to make your Live feel like a conversation and not just a video to build that intimate connection.
It also gives you a chance to showcase your personality a bit more than you can in posts. Lives are unfiltered and unplanned—you’re reacting to things in real-time. This humanizes you more, and that builds a deeper relationship with your audience.
Building a community on Instagram isn’t just about posting and engaging with individuals in your community. It’s also about doing things for your community as a whole. This can mean creating opportunities for members to interact with one another, pulling your community together for a goal, or offering community-only exclusives.
One example of this is hosting a charity event. Pick a charity that means a lot to you and create a campaign that community members can be a part of, whether through donations or spreading the word through their posts and fanart.
Other community initiatives include:
Exclusive behind-the-scenes content
Creating a space where members can talk to each other
Hosting an art show showcasing your community’s fanart
Creating special hashtags with members of the community
Creating a competition for the community
Hosting community-exclusive giveaways
Don’t be afraid to collaborate with brands and influencers while trying to build your own community—especially those that share a similar space. This provides an opportunity for more views for both sides of the partnership and the chance for an interconnected community.
Depending on who you partner with, you can be creative with your content and get people excited about following both you and the brand/influencer you partner with.
If you aren’t sure where to start, Instagram has a creator marketplace that can help you find brands to partner with. You can create a profile and indicate the brands you’re interested in working with so those brands can find and reach out to you.
Finally, you need to pay attention to your analytics to grow a community on Instagram. Analytics are made up of data (likes, comments, etc.) that can tell you how well your posts perform.
There are many different metrics to look at, but for community building, the most important are:
Reach
Impressions
Content interactions
Saves
Shares
Plays
Engagement
Accounts engaged
Accounts reached
Live interactions
Most engaged hashtags
Audience growth over time
You can use these metrics to adjust your strategy—like changing the time you post or focusing more on videos instead of images. Your analytics can also help you curate the best hashtags to use in posts to get the most views and engagement.
But it’s so worth it!
Once you have a strong community, you have a loyal following that will support you as you grow your brand.
If you’re just getting started and need some assistance, Superviral can help get you more likes, followers, views, and comments. Contact us today to see how we can help build up your community!