37 Harmful Mistakes You’re Making on Instagram
Instagram is an incredibly powerful social platform.37 Harmful Mistakes You’re Making on Instagram In September 2017, the platform reached 800 million monthly active users, up from 600 million in December 2016. That alone is quite extraordinary. Especially when considering the fact that it was done in just 7 years.
Instagram is tremendously effective for brands and marketing as well, and it is reported that there are 15 million registered businesses using Instagram business profiles.
It is safe to say that Instagram is extremely powerful, but the truth is that unless you’re using it in the right way, and using the strategies that are true and tested, you’ll have a hard time achieving the impressive statistics that Instagram has shown to be able to generate.
If you’re using Instagram, chances are you’ve committed a lot of mistakes on the platform. In fact, chances are, you’re making a lot of mistakes right now.
The worst part?
You’re not even aware of it.
Instagram is extremely effective, but there are also many mistakes and traps that are lurking, many of which are easy to make.
In this article, we’re looking at the top 37 Harmful Mistakes You’re Making on Instagram.
The key to avoiding mistakes is by being aware of them, so let’s dig right in!
1. Buying followers
This is a huge mistake that I see many brands and people committing, but the worst part is that many of them don’t realize that they’re making a mistake, and think that buying followers on Instagram will help them boost their results.
The issue?
It’s not true.
If you’re buying followers, you need to stop now.
If you think that buying followers is good, or even plan on buying them, you need to realize that it’s not.
The only way to reach success on Instagram is to build a strong and loyal following. And that’s not done with fake followers.
The big issue with buying fake followers on Instagram – because that’s exactly what they are, fake, is that they will never engage or interact with posts you share.
After all, they’re just bots.
And even if they did interact with your posts, what good would they do? You’re using Instagram to build your brand and ultimately to sell more, but if the people you’re reaching aren’t even real people, do you think you’ll reach your objective?
Hardly, right?
2.Not having a caption
Instagram is a visually driven platform, absolutely, but there’s a reason that there is a caption section for the posts you share.
Your caption allows you to give contexts to the images or videos you are sharing, and they can be used to greater impact your audience.
Therefore, if you’re not using the caption, you’re missing out on a great opportunity.
If you just share a post, there’s a great risk that people won’t understand what you want to say with your post. Plus, your captions allow you to tell your audience a bit more about your brand and get them engaged in it. A good caption helps you give your audience a better understanding of your brand, products, and the post you share, thus also increasing the chances of your audience engaging with you.
3. Not measuring or looking at the numbers
How can you know how well you’re performing unless you’re consistently looking at the numbers that tell you just that?
If you’re just investing time and putting your strategy into place without actually looking at what your efforts result in, there’s a great risk that you’re wasting your efforts on methods that aren’t working.
In order to use Instagram to its fullest potential, and to generate the best results possible, you need to actively and consistently look at the numbers.
By doing so, you can understand what type of content is performing well, which hashtags work and which doesn’t, what captions lead to the highest engagement rates, and much more.
On Instagram, there are tons of metrics you can measure, but the most important part is that you look at the metrics that reflect your initial objectives.
Obviously, if your main goal is to grow a large following and engaged following, then obviously it is your follower count and the quality of that follower count you should take a look at. Does the demographics of your followers match your target audience?
If not, you might be targeting your audience wrong, even if you’re increasing your follower count.
Instagram’s own built-in Analytics tool, called Insights is surprisingly detailed and effective, and it is constantly improved and developed. With that, you can get access to tons of information, which means that you necessarily don’t need to use a third-party analytics program, since Instagram already gives you lots of information in-app without having to pay a dollar for it.
4. Being overly promotional
This is something I see far too often brands do, and the reason for it is that they don’t realize that Instagram and social media as a whole doesn’t work the way traditional advertising does. Especially if you’re trying to build your success on Instagram with the help of organic reach.
No, Instagram success is not reached by shoving as many ads down your followers’ throats you can. If you do, they’ll quickly run away from you. And it’s not far to your closest competitor.
Posting too much promotive content is a surefire way to alienate your audience and get them to unfollow you. Instead, Instagram su ccess is reached with the help of the basic principle of providing value (more on that later).
And to understand how value helps you reach our goal, you need to understand the reasons that people are using Instagram. (Hint: it’s not because they want to see ads). Instead, people are using Instagram to get information, the be educated, to have a good time, and to be entertained.
If there’s one thing you should take with you from this point, it is that no: the more promotion posts you share, the better results yo u won’t get.
5.Not using Instagram like regular people do
When using Instagram as a business, it’s easy to forget about the basic principles of Instagram and how it is best used, as a result of only focusing on numbers and generating results.
It’s interesting because if you forget about that for a second, and instead focusing on the basic values and ideas of Instagram, you will soon be able to see much better results.
Try to understand why and how people are using Instagram and start using it the same way. When people can see you as an equal, and not just a brand that is superior to them, they’ll have an easier time resonating with your brand.
6. Not using emojis
Emojis are tremendously effective on social media in general, but also for Instagram.
In fact, did you know that nearly 50% of all comments left on Instagram contains at least 1 emojis?
That’s quite remarkable, and it should tell you something about the approach you should have with emojis on Instagram. If your audience are using them, then so should you.
Many brands insist that emojis doesn’t match their brand personality, but that argument is only valid in a few cases. Sure, if you mean that you don’t want to resonate with your audience and speak in the same language as you, then not using emojis is okay (not).
But the only valid argument is if your target audience consists of 80+ year-olds who aren’t using emojis, that won’t understand them if you’re using them. If you’re using them then, you might risk alienating your audience, but if that’s not the case, don’t shy away from them just because you ”want to keep a serious and strict profile”, because if your audience is using them, then so should you.
Emojis allow you to mediate feelings and empower the message you’re trying to send without saying a word. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, and don’t remember that an emoji essentially is a picture, or at least an image.
Emojis add personality and helps you make your posts (and comments) a lot more fun and engaging.
7. Not paying enough attention to captions
You now know that it’s important not to leave your caption blank, but just writing a few words or things that don’t add any value isn’t a great strategy either. You also need to pay attention to what you are actually writing as your captions.
If you want to make your post engaging, and get people to interact with it, then great captions are the key.
Not only does emojis help add context to your post, but they also help you generate emotional responses from your audience.
In fact, a study by Psychological Science found that by evoking emotions in people, you can increase its impact and its chances of being shared.
The best part?
That’s exactly what your captions allow you to do. But when you write them, you need to pay great attention to what you write, equally much as the attention you pay to the photo or video that is being shared.
When writing your caption, you need to pay attention to some common writing practices. Just because you’re writing a text on Instagram doesn’t mean those rules doesn’t apply, because they do to the very largest degree.
Start by using the most important words and keywords in the beginning of the text. That way, you increase the chances of people continuing to read, but also to give people the most important information if they only read the first few lines.
To make your copy engaging, you should always include engaging questions. Questions can greatly increase your engagement and make your audience engage more often with you. What’s more, by asking questions, you show your audience that you value their options and thoughts and that you want them to engage with you.
8. Misuse of hashtags
Instagram is the social media platform where hashtags are the most powerful, and help you boost your organic reach considerably. But you should use hashtags strategically and avoid misusing them – something that I see both brands and influencers do.
Hashtags are effective, but if you’re going to use them., you need to make sure that you’re using them correctly, and in the way that allows you to generate the best results possible.
There are many ways you can use hashtags, but all are equally harmful to your brand and for your success.
You can use the wrong hashtags, use too few hashtags, or just straight up use hashtags that aren’t relevant to your brand nor the content you share.
There’s a lot of confusion around hashtags on Instagram, so let’s try to sort a few things out. To really dig into hashtags on Instagram, and to make are you are using them in the best possible way, I highly recommend that you read The Ultimate Instagram Hashtag Guide (What You Need To Know About Instagram Hashtags).
First off, a common question regarding hashtags is how many you should use. I’ve investigated that question for many years now, and done a lot of experimenting.
Here’s what I’ve found:
There are tons of statistics out there that has measured the ”ultimate” number of hashtags you should use. But what’s confusing is that all of them say differently.
Some say you should use all 30 that Instagram allows you to use, another study (Ultimate. Guide To Hashtags) has found that the ultimate engagement and reach is achieved when using 11. The study found that posts with 11 hashtags (or more) receive nearly 80% more interactions compared to posts that contain just 2 hashtags (41% interaction).
What have I found?
I have found that what’s even more important than the number of hashtags you use is the hashtags you use.
However, I also have a hard time understanding the argument, and statistics for that matter, that you generate the best engagement on Instagram when you don’t use all 30 hashtags.
Isn’t that weird?
Instead of having you post displayed on 11 or 15 hashtags, you can have it displayed on 30! What do you think is best?
30 obviously.
You have 30 hashtags per post at your disposal so use them!
You also need to pay attention to the hashtags you use. Do hashtag research and think about keywords that are relevant to your audience and that people in your audience are using. Sure, you might reach more people and get a higher engagement by using services that generate ”the top 30 hashtags” such as #likeforlike and #followforfollow, but what people are you going to reach if you use those hashtags?
Hint: it’s not your target audience. It’s bots.
9.spamming hashtags
#Stop #using #hashtags #for #when #writing #your #caption!
First of all, it makes your post look spammy, and then make people scroll past it, but it also won’t do any good for you in terms of reach.
Think about it:
Let’s say I am going to share a post about hashtags on Instagram and I use this ”#Stop #using #hashtags #for #when #writing #your #caption!” as my caption.
How many of the keywords allow me to reach my target audience, the people who might be interested in reading a post about hashtags.
Who searches for #for or #your when they’re looking for photos?
Nobody, that’s who.
People search for keywords related to the industry and passion they have, so that’s the hashtags you want to use. And don’t place them in your caption. Put them as a comment right after you’ve shared your post.
10.Posting at the wrong times
Since Instagram’s algorithm was introduced, the time of which you share a post has lost importance, but that is not to say that it is completely irrelevant. Instagram now presents posts based on relevancy in your feed, whereas previously the latest posts were located at the top and the oldest posts at the bottom of your feed.
Since it is now based on relevancy, the time the post was shared isn’t as important, however, since Instagram don’t want to present posts that are several days old, you can reach more people with organic reach by posting at times when they are most active.
Note that you should take the”best times to post” with a pinch of salt since it mostly depends on your following, where they are from, and when they are active.
11. Not having a content strategy
Instagram is a visually driven platform so obviously, the content you share will have a huge effect on how well you perform on the platform, right?
With the help of a content strategy, you can know what type of content you should share, how you should share it, why you are going to share it, and everything in between that help you get better results from your visual content.
By jumping into a platform like Instagram that is so heavily dependent on visual content, without a strategy, you’ll have a hard time fighting with the giants that have a whole team that manages their content. By having a clear and concise visual strategy, you can stand out from your competitors and ultimately dominate your industry on Instagram.
Related: The complete guide to developing a social media content strategy
12. Not editing and correcting your content
Before you share anything on Instagram, you need to fine-tune your content. Did you know that editing your Instagram photos and videos can increase engagement by more than 45 percent?
The statistics speak very clearly, so unless you’re paying attention to this part of your content journey on Instagram, you’ll be keeping your content from generating the best possible results for you.
Editing your posts is difficult because there’s a fine line between over-editing them and enhancing them and making them look beautiful. Don’t go overboard with anything on Instagram, but try to follow your visual theme that you should have developed in your content strategy.
13.Sharing the exact same posts
Whether you’re actually sharing the same photo over and over again, or sharing posts of the same object, but with different angles and such, repetitiveness is a surefire way to get your audience to unfollow you.
What you need to understand is that Instagram is not only about individual photos, but your whole profile feed with images. If people who come across your page see that you’re basically posting the same type of content, again and again, it can keep them away from following you because they know what they can expect.
Keep things interesting by sharing different types of content (both photo and video) but remember to follow your visual theme and create a consistent visual style.
The key to keeping people engaged in your content is by sharing different types of posts, for example, different motives, different locations etc.
If you share identical photos over and over, people will be quick to unfollow you. Remember that there is nothing wrong with reposting content every now and then, especially if you do it after a year or so, when the majority of followers might be new and might never have seen that post.
If you’re stressed about the fact that you have to share a new post but have no content to share, know that it is better to stay away from posting rather than posting a post that everyone has already seen.
People have a short attention span, and providing them with content they’ve already seen certainly doesn’t help that.
14.You don’t have a description in your bio
Apart from your profile picture, your bio is the first thing people will see when coming across your profile.
What’s more, it is also the thing that will have the biggest impact on whether they follow you or not, at least if you look past your content.
If you don’t have a description in your bio, people will think you’re not using your profile or just don’t care about it. Not having one makes you look extremely unprofessional, and often times, people will think that if you haven’t taken the time to even write a caption, then you probably aren’t going to take time to create interesting content.
Their reason to follow you?
None.
15.You have a low-quality or boring profile description
Okay, so you might have written a profile bio, but is it that good?
A good description describes your business, shows your personality, and tells your mission and philosophy. If you’re world-wide known, you can pull off having just one or two words in your bio like
but if nobody knows who you are, you don’t need to explain who you are! Just look at Nike:
There are many things that can make a bio bad. It might be boring and put everyone to sleep (nobody wants that so why should the follow you?), you might make it all about your products (overly promotive), or just not provide enough information.
16. Ignoring your community
Your community on Instagram is extremely important, so start valuing it!
Having a community is tremendously valuable for brands as it gets your audience engaged, gets people talking about it, and makes
To get the most out of your Instagram community consisting of engaged and loyal supporters of your brand. you need to acknowledge the people that are talking about you, as well as show your appreciation for doing so.
If you ignore your community, people will eventually say ”f this” and go somewhere else and stop being a part of your community. What’s worst is that they might go to your competitors.
To get your audience more engaged in your brand, and hyped about how awesome you are, you need to take your time to respond to the community’s questions, and thoughts, as well as take an active part in the conversations that are taking place.
The key to success on Instagram is really about building relationships with your target audience, because after all, it is your audience that determines your success, and if they leave, what do you have left?
Establishing, building, and maintaining a community on social media is an art that needs mastering, so start today!
To show your appreciation, and to get them to continue taking an active part in the community, giving gifts and reposting their content are ways to show your appreciation to them.
The key is really to get your audience engaged, and then taking an active part in your community so that the members of it, your advocates, continues to be just advocates, and continues to be engaged in your brand and community.
Remember that if you ignore them, they will ignore you.
17. Not using Instagram ads
Instagram has one of the highest organic reaches across the different social media platforms, which means you can generate impressive results only from efforts focused on improving your organic reach.
The catch, however, is that it takes time. A lot of it.
Therefore, by getting your money to do the work for you, you can save time while also generating better results. What’s more, Instagram ads are very cost-effective, and the ad manager is very intelligent since it is integrated into Facebook’s ad manager that has been developed for years and years.
This means that you can target your messages to highly specific people and only pay for those people. Not reach and pay for getting the attention of people who are completely irrelevant to your brand, which you do with tv and billboard ads, for example.
A study found that, after running an Instagram ad campaign, over 70 percent of businesses saw a significant lift in online conversions.
In other words, Instagram’s ads are effective, and if you are already using the platform for organic efforts, why not boost your results by investing a few dollars in Instagram ads?
18. Not using Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is a built-in feature in the Instagram app that allows users to share photos and videos on their profile that then disappear after 24 hours.
Since Instagram rolled out Stories, it has grown immensely, quickly surpassing Snapchat, the app that Instagram has been blamed to steal the idea of disappearing Stories from.
Since Stories disappear after 24 hours, they don’t have to be so polished to perfection in the same way that your regular posts have to be.
Stories is also great for brands as it allows them to get closer to their audience, and build better, more genuine relationships with it.
19.Being inauthentic
If you’re inauthentic, people will quickly be able to see through it, and if there’s one thing that’s unappreciated and hard on social media, it is inauthenticity – especially for brands and influencers.
Therefore, put great effort int being authentic, show your brand’s personality and show your true personality as it will allow you to build better relationships with your brand, and make you more engaging.
The best part is that you can use Instagram Stories to make your brand more authentic.
20. Not having a goal-driven strategy
If you have developed a social media strategy, your goals and main objectives should be a part of it.
If you jump into social media without any goals or plans, you’ll have a hard time achieving any results. What’s even worse, without any goals and objectives, you’ll never be able to see if you’ve actually achieved your goals, because you haven’t set any!
Having goals is tremendously important for your Instagram efforts because they are the foundation of any plans and efforts on the platform.
Without goals, you’ll be operating in the dark on Instagram, not knowing if the efforts you are investing are helping you or hurting you.
Your efforts should also reflect your goals. If your main objective with Instagram is to drive sales, then your strategy should look different from if your goal is to increase traffic.
Sounds reasonable, right?
But if you don’t know what you want Instagram to do for you, and are only using it because ”everyone else is using it”, the sad truth is that you’ll have a hard time achieving any results.
21. Not having a link in your bio
Traffic is what feeds your website, and as a marketer, you want to take advantage of every single thing your social media efforts can do for you. If you’re not doing the simple thing of including a link in your profile you’re missing out on great opportunities, potentially even customers.
Instagram is a platform which is very strict with allowing clickable links on their platform since they want to avoid spammers and bots from hurting the platform, and this is why the link in your bio is even more important. It is one of few places where a clickable link that redirects your audience is allowed.
If people come to your page and see a photo of your product, and then go to your profile just to notice that you have no website link in your bio, you’re probably missing out on a perfectly good customer.
Therefore, take advantage of the traffic that Instagram can drive by doing the simple task of including your best website link in your profile.
22. You don’t have a call-to-action in your caption
I talked a little about captions and using them to empower the message of your visual content, but I didn’t talk a lot about the importance of using a call-to-action in your caption.
The thing is, if you want your audience to do something, you need to actually ask them, or tell them. Don’t speak in a crypto language where no-one understands what you are saying.
If you want your audience to do something, then flat out tell them with the help of a call-to-action in your caption.
You’ll be amazed at how much you can improve your results which such a small tweak.
Here are some simple call-to-actions you can use:
- Click the link in our bio!
- Shop now!
- Comment if you like!
- Like if you agree!
- Tag a friend!
23. Setting your account to private
Making your profile private is a huge mistake. Now, if you have a regular private profile, having a private page can be great for only allowing people you know to see your content and to keep out any stalkers, but for brands, making your profile is a stupid move.
A misconception that I have seen brands have is that if you set your profile to private and have a lot of followers, people will be curious to see what it is that makes so many people follow you, but the thing is that that is only true for a very small portion of your followers.
What’s more, if you set your profile to private, there’s no idea in using hashtags as your posts won’t be visible in hashtags anyway – thus preventing your post from getting a boost in exposure from hashtags.
What’s more, people might want to leave customer reviews, or just check out or interact with your posts, but if they then first have to request to follow you, they, might skip doing it. And if that is the case, you’re missing out on great ways to increase brand and product awareness, but also to get feedback that can help you improve your business.
24. Being Spammy
Instagram is not a place for spam.
And as you know, spam comes in many shapes and sizes, but Instagram is not a platform for any of it.
In fact, that’s why Instagram has developed advanced systems that identify spamming and blocks or bans you.
Spamming can also be if you are over-promoting your brand and products. Not that Instagram will hate you for it, because it is completely acceptable, but as mentioned earlier, people aren’t on Instagram because they want to be sold to, but if they are, there’s a risk they might unfollow you as a result of perceiving your promotion as spam.
25. Not being human
Being human as a brand is tremendously important as it helps people resonate with you and build better relationships.
When you become more human, you also become more approachable and can make people feel like they’re a part of a family – just like when they’re part of your community.
When you present yourself as a brand that is human, you’ll present yourself as more approachable.
The result?
More people will want to engage with you!
And when more people engage with you, you’ll be able to build better and stronger relationships with your audience.
And when that happens, they’ll become more loyal and engaged in your brand.
26. Not being consistent
Consistency is key.
In order to succeed on Instagram, you should post preferably daily, and then be active and ready to engage on the platform every single day.
If you’re logging in once a week to upload a post and respond to the customer messages and questions you’ve received over the week, it will already be too late.
Instagram demands you to be online 24/7, and when it comes to posting, ideally you should post at least once a day to keep your audience updated.
What’s more, not being consistent can have devastating effects on the people who come to visit your profile.
How?
Instagram success is not reached with a set and forget approach. That’s more of a recipe for disaster.
Did you know that 50% of online shoppers will check your social media before buying? Well, what signals will you be sending them if you haven’t posted for a week, month, or even year?
That you have gone out of business? That your brand isn’t active anymore?
Not being consistent and active on Instagram can, therefore, have an opposite effect instead of the one you are hoping it has on your business.
27. Not responding to user comments promptly
This one is crucial to Instagram success and building an engaged audience on Instagram, and it is also one of the strategies that I put a lot of effort into.
A study by SproutSocial found that people expect brands to respond within 4 hours, but the real truth is that brands respond within an average of 10 hours.
This is of course not very good, as it will give your audience a more negative image of your business as a whole, even if it’s only about one single comment.
If you can outshine your competitors by responding faster than them, you can show your audience that you are better than them, and ultimately steal customers from your competitors.
After all, 7 in 10 Americans said they were willing to spend more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. What’s more, In 2011, 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience.
And that’s where opportunities for you come in.
28.Not responding to comments
What is even more important than responding to your comments on Instagram promptly?
Responding to them at all.
Responding to customer comments on Instagram is crucial for many reasons. It doesn’t matter if it’s a complaint, question, emoji, or anything else. You should respond to your comments no matter what.
Why?
Because responding to your audience increases your retention rate and the chances of them engaging with you.
What’s more, by responding to your audience, you show them that you care about them, which makes them more loyal to your brand.
Did you also know that Google uses social signals as ranking factors when ranking your website? Google wants to provide content that people loves, and if you get tons of interactions on your posts it will send signals to Google that people love the posts you are sharing!
As a result of an increased engagement from responding to your comments on Instagram, you can ultimately boost your website’s ranking and get more traffic from it.
You should see responding to comments on your posts as a responsibility of yours. Think about it:
If someone talks to you, do you look away and ignore them?
Of course not!
People talk to you because they expect a response back! And if you don’t give them that, there’s a risk that they’ll go somewhere else, or see your brand as a brand that thinks it’s better than everyone.
If you don’t respond to your comments, it can come off like you don’t care about your fans and followers, and if they don’t feel appreciated, they’ll eventually leave.
Sure, it takes some time to respond to your comments, but trust me, it’s well worth the investment.
In fact, that is how I have got my most loyal and supportive fans on Instagram.
29.Creating a contest without any followers
It’s easy to see why people are doing this, however, don’t!e idea is that contests will give you more followers and more exposure, but the problem is that unless you have built yourself a foundation, you won’t have any contestants (except a few) and what will end up happening is that you give away a prize because you arranged a contest that didn’t end up doing much for your brand.
Contests are tremendously effective on Instagram, there’s no denying that, however, before arranging a contest that is worthwhile and that will generate you amazing results, you need to have built a strong following first. otherwise, your contest won’t gain any traction and ultimately generate no results for you
30. Posting selfies
If you have a private profile with only your best friends following you, you might be able to pull selfies off.
However, as a brand on social media, you should completely stay away from selfies at all cost.
It’s not about you! It’s about your brand! When sharing content on social media, you need to make sure that you provide value. Before posting anything on Instagram, ask yourself: ”do my followers get any value from this?”. If you are about to post a selfie on your brand’s Instagram account, chances are, the answer will be no.
If you’re working to build your personal brand, a selfie every now and then might be okay, but for brands, it is a big no-no.
31. Following more people than you have followers
Following more people than the number that are following you tends to look bad and unprofessional on Instagram. If you follow several thousand accounts, your account will look spammy, because spammers are often using the ”follow/unfollow” method in the hopes of getting people to follow you back.
Your goal is to make your account credible, so therefore, you need to show your followers that they can come to you for content and not the other way around,
32. Not using geotags
Geotags are tremendously effective on Instagram.
In fact, Posts using a geo-tag get 79% more engagement., and as a brand looking to generate better results, you should use every method you can come across to increase your reach and engagement.
A geotag is like a check-in that you add to your post to show where it was taken, or where you are right now. In other words, it is yet another way apart from hashtags that allows people to find your post.
Geolocations are great for brands in particular, for example in finding people who attended your event, or to engage with people who visited your store.
When such a simple change can boost your engagement that much, you’d be a fool if you wouldn’t use it.
33.Focusing on quantity, not quality
Quality is far more important than quantity, not only on Instagram but in almost all aspects of marketing. On second thought, it is more important in almost all aspects of life.
The bottom line?
As mentioned earlier, if you don’t have a high-quality image at your disposal, you’ll be better off skipping ignoring posting that that rather than compromising on quality just to bash out content.
The competition is incredibly tough on Instagram, with 95 million photos and videos being shared each day. This means that the only way to stand out from the crowd and grasp your audience’s attention is to post superior content that brings them value.
If you can’t give them that, there is literally endless of content for them to consume elsewhere.
The best is obviously if you can share quality and quantity content at the same time, but if it’s one you are going to compromise on one of them, it’s quantity.
34. Posting Without Purpose
Remember the most important rule of posting content that performs well on Instagram: providing value.
In order for your post to be successful, it needs to bring your audience value in one way or another.
It can be a good laugh, knowledge, information, or something as s simple as a good laugh!
Don’t just post for the sake of posting. That’s what your content strategy should keep you away from doing.
If you just post photo after photo on Instagram without a clear strategy, you can be quite sure that you won’t generate very good results.
Therefore, if necessary, go back to your content strategy, and social media strategy as a whole and ask yourself ”does this post help us achieve the objectives we have?” and ”does it fit with our brand’s visual theme?”
Doing so will help you determine if the post actually has a purpose or at least a good one.
35.Expecting Followers to Just Come to You
Yep, not going to happen.
The way you accumulate followers on Instagram is by sharing top-notch content and executing based on a strong strategy.
Unless your name is Kim Kardashian and you create an official account, you’re not going to accumulate a lot of followers by simply waiting for them.
To learn how I have been able to accumulate over 1 Million followers on Instagram in total, read my e-book where I go through step-by-step on all the methods I used without leaving anything out.
36. Your caption is too long
As mentioned earlier, Instagram is a platform driven by visual content. What does this mean?
It means that your focus towards creating incredible visual content because that is what will have the biggest effect on your success, however, that is not to say that you shouldn’t neglect the caption.
But since it also means that your main focus should be on your visual content, don’t take people’s focus from your content by writing captions that never ends.
This is also a bad idea since people who are on the platform aren’t there to read. They’re there to get inspired by images. Bottom line?
If you write a long text, chances are, people won’t read it.
Instagram captions perform best when they are short and snappy and include a call-to-action.
37. Not using hashtags
Did you also know that Ninety-one percent of Instagram posts contain a hashtag? Well, that alone should prove the power of them and encourage you to use them.
Conclusion
There are a lot of mistakes you can make on Instagram, but the foundation to not making them, and making you reach your goal quicker, is by being aware of them. Many brands and marketers are making mistakes without being aware of them, and the first step to not doing them is, of course, realizing that what you are doing is a mistake that is slowing down your path to success.
