How to Promote a Post on Instagram

And get eyes on your account.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing with promoting a post on Instagram. This isn’t something new, I do this for a living but I’ve never done it on my personal account. Most say being an ‘influencer’ is not a numbers games. And whilst I do agree with this, there is argument that your following count does matter. I mean, it’s not lost on us that those with higher numbers get more opportunities.

Personally, I have my foot in both camps. I have a personal goal of hitting 10K this year. This goal exists for a number of reasons. I like a challenge, I would love to see how far I can push this blog into being something. I also see this blog as a mini business and like any business, you want to open business seen by a new audience.

How to promote a post on Instagram.

We all know how hard it is to get eyes on your account these days (thanks algorithm). And promoting a post on Instagram is a great way of helping gain more attention. Word of warning, this does not guarantee followers. But that’s not what you’re trying to achieve when you promote a post on Instagram. If you want followers that help inflate your following count, then just buy them. But if you want an audience that is genuinely interested in your content, will interact with it, possibly check out your feed and then maybe follow you if you see something they like- then this is for you. Getting followers is a by-product, a happy coincident.

For me, when I promote a post, I gain a few extra followers, but I’m guaranteed almost double the likes on a post. My engagement on these posts can be double, sometimes triple than what I would get on a normal post. This is not by accident, I follow some key things to ensure that when I promote a post on Instagram, I get my money’s worth…

 

USE FACEBOOK TO PROMOTE YOUR POSTS.

Never promote your Instagram posts straight from the app. To me, that’s like setting your money on fire. You have no control over where the ad is going and who sees it. Always use Facebook to promote your post. It’s so easy to do also, simply go to your Facebook business page, click on Ad Centre at the top of left on the menu. From there, click on +Create Ad and select Boost Instagram Post. From there, it’s time to select your post and get targeting…

SELECT YOUR TARGETING WISELY.

Be selective with the people you want to target with your post. The easiest way to get this information is to look at your insights. Once you have selected the post you would like to promote, choose People you choose through targeting as your option for Audience. You can edit the following things: gender, location, age and detail targeting. When I promoting my posts I choose setting selective to my followers. All genders and the age range that my followers belong to (18-44). For location, I choose the top four cities that my followers are in. Always ensure you choose the ranges that your followers belong to. This is how you’re guaranteed to get more engagement and the possibility of followers.

DETAIL TARGETING.

For detail targeting, I don’t tend to use this unless I’m promoting an ad post. Take for example the Gressingham post that I did a collaboration with for Valentine’s Day. For this post, I stuck to my usual audience targeting, but in detail targeting, I selected only people who were in a relationship, married or engaged. It made more sense, as anyone not in a relationship wouldn’t be interested in this type of post. So for when you want to make certain people see your post, this is when you need to take advantage of this section.

ONLY PROMOTE YOUR POST FOR 24 HOURS.

By all means, have a play around. But professionally and personally, I find that your ad looses momentum after this period. It would be better to throw everything at that post in a shorter period of time than try and flog a dead horse after everyone loses interest. Think about it, how often do your organic posts get likes and engagement the day after you post it?

DON’T SPEND A FORTUNE ON YOUR POST.

I truly believe that you do not need to spend a fortune to promote a post on Instagram. Personally, I’ve never spent more than £2.00 on an ad on my account. In the future, I may want to spend more, but I would never go over £5.00. Facebook will always push you to spend more, quite simply because they want your hard earn pennies. More money does not always guarantee better results.

PROMOTE THE POST AS SOON AS YOU POST.

I’ve tried a number of combos and by far, I get the best results when I promote a post as soon as I’ve posted the picture. It can take a while for Facebook to approve your ad so nip it in the bud and do it straight away. With this in mind, I would also never post your post late in the evening (past 8 pm), especially if you have a UK based audience. With you only posting your post for 24 hours, you’re wasting a lot of time when your audience is asleep. You’ll lose momentum and you won’t get the best results that you might see if you promoted the post earlier on.

HAVE A PLAY AROUND.

This may be odd to tell you my tips and then to tell you to have a play around. But my feed is completely different from your feed. My audience is not the same as your audience. These tips are a good baseline for getting started, but as you get more confident, I urge you all to have a play and find your groove. Study your results, tweak your audience and targeting. The more confident you get at how to promote a post on Instagram, the more you’ll find what works for your feed.