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How to get your instagram featured


4 Ways to Get Your Post Featured

Getting featured in the trending Instagram hashtags is a big deal. Like getting featured on the Explore Page, it can results in a huge network effect that essentially makes your post go viral on Instagram!

But how do you actually get featured in the trending Instagram hashtags? And what factors does Instagram care about when selecting which posts to feature? Fear not, in the following guide, we explain everything you need to know about trending Instagram hashtags and how to get featured as a “top post.” Let’s go:

What are Trending Instagram Hashtags?

If you’ve ever searched for a hashtag on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed the grid of nine “top posts” that appear at the top of the results page. According to Instagram, top posts appear on trending hashtags “to show you some of the most popular posts that were tagged with that hashtag.” Underneath the top posts, posts are arranged chronologically and are constantly being updated, so getting into the top posts can mean huge exposure for your brand!

Like the Explore Page, top posts are chosen algorithmically based on several factors. While the Explore Page is essentially an aggregation of posts that Instagram thinks you’ll like based on your behavior, when you browse a hashtag on Instagram, every Instagram user sees the exact same top posts!

It doesn’t matter if you’re in Maui or Madagascar, if you get into the top posts for an Instagram hashtag, anyone who searches for that hashtag will be able to see your post. So the opportunity to go viral is pretty huge!

What Makes a “Top Post” on Instagram?

The algorithm behind Instagram’s top posts takes a few things into consideration, including: how much engagement your post receives (likes and comments), the popularity of the hashtag, and how quickly your post receives its engagement.

1. Engagement

While no one knows exactly how the Instagram algorithm works, we do know that Instagram favors posts that get a lot of engagement, meaning that if your post receives a ton of likes and comments, it’s more likely to feature in the top posts of a trending hashtag.  

Check out the search results for the hashtag #stayandwander. Most, if not all, of the top posts have over 3,000 likes and 40 comments! The same is true for #throughthepines, which is significantly less popular.

Even #sweetdreamsdlf, which has just 65,600 posts (compared to the 2.3 million posts on #stayandwander), generates top posts in the range of 500 to 3,500 likes.

2. Hashtag Popularity

Here’s an experiment: Open Instagram on your desktop or mobile device and search for a popular hashtag (like #thehappynow). Look through the top posts until you find one that used other hashtags as well. Click on one of those hashtags and then look through the top posts on the hashtag’s page. Did the original post also make it into the top posts for that hashtag? Try again with a different hashtag. Same result?

What this shows is that if you use multiple hashtags in your posts, you can trend for some of them, all of them, or none of them—and all of this depends on how popular the hashtag is. Super-popular hashtags can be very competitive, so unless you can generate thousands of likes in just a couple of hours, your chances of getting into the top posts are pretty slim.

Also keep in mind that the larger the hashtag, the more quickly the top posts are refreshed. For a large hashtag like #finditliveit, it’s unlikely that you would stay in a trending spot for more than 24 hours. But for smaller hashtags, like #pinkobsessed, you may be able to remain trending for a day or two (or more)!

The takeaway: Use a mix of popular hashtags and less popular hashtags to increase your chances of being featured in the top posts!

3. Engagement “Growth Rate”

At the end of the day, top posts are all about what’s trending—not what’s most popular. So even though the amount of engagement you get is really important, it’s slightly less important than how quickly you get that engagement, or, in other words, the “growth rate” of your engagement.

For example, a post that gets 500 likes in 2 hours has a better chance of ranking in the top posts than a post that gets 5,000 likes over 24 hours.

This isn’t a perfect science—there are a ton of other factors to consider. But the bottom line is: If you want to get into the top posts for a hashtag, speed is of the essence. It doesn’t matter if your account has 5,000 or 50,000 followers, so long as your post’s engagement growth rate is higher than everyone else’s.

This is actually kind of a blessing in disguise. Why, you ask? Because for most accounts, it’s a lot easier to get 500 likes quickly than it is to get 5,000 slowly. If all Instagram cared about was the amount of likes a post gets, then only the biggest accounts with the most followers would have a chance of making it into the top posts for a hashtag. The growth rate component levels the playing field and gives an opportunity to smaller accounts to get featured in the top posts.

How to Get Featured in the Trending Instagram Hashtags?

1. Pick the right hashtags

The first step is picking the right hashtags to trend for. If you’re an account with 10,000 or less followers, you’re much more likely to get into the top posts for a smaller, highly-targeted hashtag like #fashiongoals than you are for a massive hashtag like #instafashion.

Remember that the relevance of your hashtag is much more important than how popular it is. Rather than just adding random hashtags (#sunset, #girl, #cali) to your photos, find what hashtags are killing it in your niche! This way, you can connect with other creatives in your industry and develop personal relationships.

2. Generate a ton of engagement

Once you’ve picked the right hashtag, you need to focus on getting as much engagement on your post as quickly as possible. And one of the best ways to do this is to schedule your Instagram posts for when your audience is most active on Instagram.

If you post when your audience is most active on Instagram, you’re more likely to drive engagement on that post. That engagement will translate into Instagram bumping your post higher up on users’ feeds, which, in turn, will result in even more engagement on your post. It’s a cyclical process: higher engagement leads to more visibility, which leads to higher engagement, which leads to more visibility… and it all starts with when you post on Instagram.

If you want to boost your chances of generating a ton of quick engagement on your posts, find out what your best times to post are, and then use a free tool like Later to schedule your Instagram posts in advance! 

start scheduling instagram posts

3. Use 3-5 “big” hashtags on your post

If you want a shot at getting into the trending Instagram hashtags, you also want to include 3-5 “big” hashtags that are less targeted but generate a lot of likes and comments. Some examples are #instagood, #photooftheday, and #vscocam. These “big” hashtags should still be relevant to you, but they should have a ton of posts and a high amount of engagement (lots of people searching for them).

For example, if you’re a fashion brand, you could use some big hashtags like #stylediaries, #whatiwore, and #lovethislook, and then some more niche hashtags that are relevant to your specific post.

4. Create a call-to-action (CTA) in your caption

It’s hard to say what the Instagram algorithm favors more: likes or comments. But in any case, generating a ton of comments on your posts is important if you want to get featured in the trending Instagram hashtags. That’s why we can’t stress enough the importance of including a call-to-action in your Instagram captions. It’s great way to inspire your followers to engage with your account in the comments section and spend more time viewing your post—which could also be a factor that Instagram takes into consideration when selecting the top posts for a hashtag!

To create a call-to-action on Instagram, you just need to ask your followers to do something after reading your caption! You can ask them a question about what they’re up to this weekend, or what they think of a new product, and tell them to leave their answer in the comments.

Getting featured in Instagram’s top posts is a great way to get your brand noticed by new viewers—and it’s a lot easier than it seems! You just need to focus on executing your Instagram hashtag strategy while boosting your engagement by posting great content when your followers are most active!

Ready to jump-start your Instagram engagement? Later makes it easy for you to plan, manage, and schedule your Instagram posts!

start scheduling instagram posts

How to get your Instagram photos featured on large accounts

This is a chapter from my Photographer’s Guide to Marketing.

Alright, getting featured on large Instagram accounts. This is one of my favorite Instagram Marketing tactics because it’s a free and an organic way to grow your followers on Instagram.

By the way, this will take a while to do properly. But it’s more or less a one-time thing. Once you know which Instagram Accounts you should target and you know how to tag them, you can keep using that – if your content has a consistent theme of course. If your content is changing a lot, then it’s a different story.

What does it mean to get featured on another account?

It’s basically when a large Instagram account reposts one of your photos and tags you in the photo.

This brings new followers and engagement to your accounts.

There are a lot of large feature-accounts on Instagram that promote other people’s work. Here are a couple of examples of my recent features on other people’s Instagram accounts, with a link back to my account. This has helped my account grow a lot – but there are some things you need to know before you start pitching your photos.

Three examples

Because my Instagram account is strictly street photography photos, I can keep tagging the same large street photography pages and it’s not crazy time-consuming. See the examples here: 1, 2 and 3.

So how do you make other large Instagram accounts feature you?

First, you need to find accounts that will feature your type of photos

If your Instagram is about photography, you are in luck, since there are a lot of crazy big accounts featuring photography. Click here to scroll down to see a list of feature-accounts.

To find feature accounts specific to your topic, do this search on Google and replace “travel” with your topic.

When you have found your feature accounts, you should ask yourself:

Why would they feature your photo? What is in it for them?

And this is tough because we sometimes think our content is great and then we look at the feature-account and see that our photos are not even near the quality of the average post.

And here it’s important to be real with yourself.

If an account has 100.000 followers, you will need some really good content. And if the profile you target has 1M+ then it’s very unlikely they will repost your photo, because of the competition (other people tagging them, wanting to get featured) and they therefore also have a crazy level of quality.

Find out how to get featured on each account

After that, you need to browse every single account that you have listed and find out how they pick which photos they repost. Every account tells you how to get featured in their bio or in their individual posts.

  • Some accounts want you to use their hashtag.
  • Some accounts want you to tag them in your photo.
  • Some might even ask you to follow them first (I don’t like this).

Another more sneaky tip is to see who manages the account you want to get featured on. You will either find this information in the bio or in the posts they upload. When you know who manages their account you can follow them and message them to build a relationship with the admins.

By the way, I just finished reading this e-book about Instagram Marketing. By now, I’ve spent about$1000 on Instagram Marketing Guides, and this was easily the guide that givesthe me most value. It’s only $37, which is way cheaper than it should be, and the author is a guy who manages a lot of Instagram accounts with +1M followers. Check it out here.

Feature Accounts on popular categories

To find feature accounts specific to your topic, do this search on Google and replace “travel” with your topic.

Black & White Photography.
@bnw_greatshots @bnw_planet @pocket_bnw @s0mbrebw @bnwsouls @bnw_rose.

Street photography
@storyofthestreets @streetphotographyinternational @streetfeat @urbanandstreet

Food photos
@foodprnshare @foodporn_xox @ohmygodfoodporn @the_daily_bite_

Travel photos
@stayandwander @worldplaces @earthfocus @fantastic_earth @theglobewanderer @discoverearth  @passionpassport @awesome_earthpix @awesome. earth @bestvacations @world_shotz @beautifuldestinations @ourplanetdaily @earthofficial

Fashion Photos
@wearethepeople.magazine @human.edge  @sticks_and_stones_agency @tcl_theclassylifestyle @waitingontheworld @hypebeast @fashiongoalsz

Photography Photos
@illgrammers @way2ill_ @heatercentral @theimaged @moodygrams @createcommune @thevisualcollective @livefolk @globalcapture @artofvisuals @ig_color @instagood @VSCO @mobilemag @fatal.frames @thecoolmagazine @weekly_feature @igpodium @igshotz @thebest_capture @gallery_legit @bravogreatphoto @visualambassadors @folkgood @feedbacknation

Geographic-based feature accounts
Every country has Instagram pages showing the city. Say, you live in Denmark and you have a great photo showing what Denmark is like, then it’s obvious for you to tag @visitdenmark and if you also live in Copenhagen @visitcopenhagen.

The less obvious one is the niche accounts. In Mexico for example, we have an Instagram account called “ChilangoMetro”. It’s metro shots from Mexico City.

If I lived in New York, I’d do a Google Search like this to find feature pages.

Managing expectations

If I were to take a guess, 5% of my photos are getting featured. It’s not something that happens a lot, but when it does it pays off. So when you have found your targets, keep tagging them and be patient. If your content is great, it will come.

If your photo gets featured on a page and gets, let’s say, 1500-2000 likes, you can expect to get around 40-80 followers. It’s not anything crazy, but it adds up if it happens regularly.

This post is from my Photographer’s Guide to Social Media & Marketing.

40 tips on how to promote your Instagram

1. Do not forget to put hashtags that will help increase the number of subscribers: #instafollow, #l4l (Like for like), #tagforlikes and #followback.

2. Like as much as possible. For every 100 likes you give to random photos, you will get an average of 6 new followers.

3. Run contest . The easiest way to do this is to post a themed picture and ask people to like it so they can participate. nine0005

4. Start promoting profile on your pages in other social networks. Write what your blog is about and why people should read it and invite them to join.

5. Be generous with likes and comments - this is the easiest way to attract new subscribers.

6. Use common hashtags to make your photos visible in the global search. Among the most popular are #love, #instagood, #fashion and #photooftheday.

@westwingde

7. Time matters. Research has shown that the best time to fast is between 2 pm and 5 pm.

8. Follow people who use popular hashtags (#followme, #likeforlike) because many of them will follow you back.

9. Remember, quality is important , not quantity. Monitor your profile and leave only beautiful and high-quality photos. Believe me, no one is interested in flipping through hundreds of photos of salads. nine0005

10. Love the Mayfair filter. Track Maven listed this filter on The Fortune 500 Instagram as the best choice for marketers.

11. Check that you have completed the biography section . Complete it with suitable words and hashtags, and also provide a link to your website. But remember: no spam! Otherwise, subscribers will lose interest in the profile.

12. Ask questions to subscribers. This is a great way to connect with your target audience. nine0005

13. Post on Sundays . It is on this day that people post photos a little, so your post will be seen by the maximum number of people.

@nastiapoberezhna

14. Be consistent with . Think about who and why you are doing this. The more clearly you answer these questions, the faster you will attract the right audience.

15. Call people to action. For example, ask them to write their opinion about your photo in the comments. nine0005

16. Don't be afraid to post often. It may seem that the more often the photos flash, the more indifferent the subscribers behave. But according to the Union Metrics program, there is no relationship between posting frequency and audience activity. At least negative.

17. Follow suggested users. Go to settings and select "Find and invite friends" and then "Recommended users".

18. Set geolocation . This will be especially useful if you run an Instagram company. So you will have the opportunity to attract new subscribers-neighbors.

19. Schedule publications with the Later program. Consistency never hurt anyone.

20. Agree with popular blogger to advertise your profile or product. So information about you will quickly scatter over the network.

21. Research has shown that blue images get 24% more likes than orange or red images. Post something blue and see for yourself! nine0005

22. Let fast on Wednesdays become your obligatory ritual. This is because posts get more attention and likes in the middle of the week.

23. Write the word "comment" more often in posts. This encourages your followers to share their opinions and be more willing to join the discussion.

24. Post photos showing 's face. According to research, such publications are 35% more popular than others.

25. Tag in photos of people. Your post will also be seen by friends of friends. nine0005

26. Remember the rule: the more light the better.

27. If you have a business account, create a branded hashtag . So users can specify it when purchasing a product. And it will increase your visibility on Instagram several times over.

28. Share live photos. Show that behind the beautiful picture there are living people .

29. Business trick: share photos of your followers mentioning your brand or product. This pleasant step shows that you value each client. In return, they will definitely share your photos in their feed. nine0005

30. Brand yourself : Use your nickname for more than just your profile. A notebook, a case or a branded sticker on a car will surely attract the attention of potential subscribers.

@romantimo3

31. Invite friends from Facebook to follow you. To do this, in the profile settings, select "Find friends on Facebook."

32. People love stories. Share your experiences and thoughts, so you will gain their trust and establish contact. Just remember that the post should be emotional and bright, not snot in sugar. nine0005

33. Tag people , even in stories, don't be lazy.

34. Do not be shy in your posts to ask for likes . As practice has shown, such publications receive 89% more likes.

35. In advance plan not only time, but also content. Prepare your materials and only then start filling out your feed. For example, write posts for a few days in advance, and then publish them gradually. The Instagram filling schedule will help you stay focused on the main topic of the blog. nine0005

36. Post a motivational or inspirational quote .

37. Synchronize phone book with your account. Go to settings and select "Contacts" in the "For Subscriptions" section.

38. Be active on profiles with similar topics. Especially if you run a business profile. Chat in the comments , ask questions and let influencers know about you.

39. Collaborate with other users. Find accounts with the same number of followers and invite their owners to arrange a joint promotion. This will help you and your partners to win an audience and attract the attention of new people. nine0005

40. Create a unique hashtag, by which you can organize a challenge for your subscribers.

Based on cosmo.com.ua

Tags: Instagram, blog, how to become famous, tips, social networks

How to advertise your Instagram: a paid, but simple and effective way

You can manage Instagram account advertising through a special section on the Facebook website. This method provides maximum settings, but requires special knowledge and experience, so it is more often chosen by professional marketers. nine0005

Another thing is setting up and launching ads directly in the Instagram app. This option is much simpler, which is why it is ideal for bloggers. The app doesn't allow you to create standalone ads like the Facebook site does, but it does give you the ability to promote posts you've already published.

You select a publication, specify the parameters of the target audience and the advertising budget, and the system starts automatically showing the post to potential subscribers.

Let's take a closer look at how to work with targeted ads in the Instagram app. The instructions in the article are written on the example of Instagram for iOS, but in the version for Android, all the steps are similar. nine0005

Switch to company profile

To access advertising settings, you will need to switch your account to company profile mode. This process is reversible: you can return everything to its place at any time.

The company profile, also known as the business profile, is different from a regular account. It allows you to manage ads on Instagram, as well as view statistics on user interaction with your content and add buttons to quickly contact you via phone and email. All this without leaving the mobile application. nine0005

To switch to a company profile, do the following:

1. Connect your Facebook account to Instagram (if not, register). To do this, launch Instagram, open Settings - Account - Linked Accounts - Facebook and grant access to your account.

2. Click Settings - Account - Switch to company profile (or Switch to business account). Then follow the system prompts. nine0005

In the process, you will be able to create (or select one you have previously created) and link a Facebook business page to your Instagram profile. Don't skip this step if you want to be able to set up Instagram ads not only within the app, but also through the Facebook website.

When completed, your profile will have new buttons to contact you, as well as a separate "Promotions" button that opens the section for managing ads. nine0005

Set up and run ads

If you switched to a company profile, all that remains is to link a bank card to the application to pay for the promotion. After that, you can start running ads.

1. Connect the card in Settings — Payments — Payment method.

2. On the main profile page, click Promotions, then click Create Promotion.

nine0002 3. Select the post you want to promote and mark "Your Profile" as the destination. This item means that Instagram will display a button on the promoted post to go to your profile.

4. Select automatic target audience settings so that the system itself selects users to display ads that are as similar as possible to your current subscribers. Or set up an audience yourself using the "Create your own" item. In this case, you will be able to select the interests, age, gender, and regions that your audience meets. nine0005

5. Set the advertising budget you want to spend and the duration of the advertising campaign. The app will predict and display the estimated number of impressions.

6. When you're done, click Next.

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