Lisa and Jessica Kistermann seemed destined to become the dynamic duo they are today. Born and raised in Florence, Italy, the twin sisters come from multicultural roots that extend back to German and Greek ancestry. Having studied International Business and Russian, they never really wanted to be in fashion until founding CrimeLondon. With a strong entrepreneurial and creative side they have built the digital side of the business to be one of the top brands in Europe. Having founded well known sneaker brand @crimelondon, the sisters have shifted from Facebook and taken Instagram by storm.
It was wonderful to interview the sisters in our Los Angeles Offices recently as to the best strategies other fashion influencers can adopt to grow on Instagram. If you are a new brand, blogger or business that is just starting out on Instagram, breaking in isn’t easy. Getting the first hundred Instagram followers might not be difficult, considering the presence of friends, family members and such close people who can follow your account without requiring much convincing. However, for a brand or business like @crimelondon, you will need thousands of followers for business reasons. You will need to prove yourself as a successful influencer or brand. . Though daunting, this can be possible according to the Kistermann Sisters. They lay out to the following tips any budding influencer or brand can follow:
Post Quality Content and Post Consistently
On Instagram, your account is evaluated based on your uploads and shares. Instagram users decide on who to follow based on what they see on their Instagram feed. This is why you should focus on the quality of your content. You should be very selective, especially when it comes to images. They should be clean, high quality and attractive to look at.
As for captions, create attention-capturing posts that will leave the reader wanting to know more. Describe your posts in a story-telling sequence, especially if you are promoting your product.
You should also check on your posting schedule. Nobody would want to follow an idle and inactive Instagram account. Post content up to 3 times a day. If you upload posts consistently for a given period, your followers will begin to get used to your updates and will search for them regularly.
Share Others’ Posts
You can build your Instagram following by solely sharing other people’s content. The best way of achieving this without being flagged by Instagram is crediting the original poster in your post description. Instagram has updated its reposting policy and requires that you ask for permission before posting.
There are two ways to go around with this. First, you can take screenshots of your followers’ post and upload them in your account. Secondly, you can leverage Instagram’s Repost app. The difficult part about this is finding people with good content worth sharing.
Ask Customers to Share their Photos
Since you are just starting out on Instagram, getting more followers will be quite easier by uploading custom photos to your feed. This is important as it provides some sort of social proof. Well, if you don’t have a customer yet, you can reach out to influencers within your niche with less than 5000 followers.
Their numbers might be low, but influencers with such a few following will agree on monetizing their accounts. They will probably agree to take a picture of your products and post them to their feed for some fee. You can as well organize an affiliate deal, where they get a commission for every sale you make from their referrals.
On the other hand, if you’ve made some sales, reach out to your customers and offer them a free gift or cash incentive in exchange for high-quality pictures with the products they ordered. As more people see customer’s photos on your feed, they will naturally start uploading and tagging your brand to their posts when they receive their ordered products. You should comment, repost and follow such customers.
Work With Influencers
Getting an influencer shoutout or having an influencer takeover your account is another simple way to increase your Instagram following. Influencers with a loyal following will not only bring new followers to your account but also scale up some sales. The challenging part about this is finding influencers with real followers.
The best approach to get new followers with influencers is by asking them to do an account takeover on your stories. Through this, people will be following your page for the stories.
Host Giveaways
Hosting giveaways is another easy way of growing your Instagram account from zero to thousands of followers. Hosting giveaways on your Instagram account might not be the best idea, especially if you have a small audience. However, if you host it on your website and add an option to follow you on Instagram, Facebook and other social platforms, you will have a wider reach.
To get more people to compete in your giveaway, share it on Facebook groups or giveaway blogs. Hosting such giveaways should be done with restrictions. If you do them often, chances that you will not get the right audience are high. Giveaways might not be the best strategy if you want to increase sales but works quite well for growing followers.
Geo-location Targeting
Instagram’s Geo-location targeting is a good idea for brands who want to identify followers within their niche in a specified area. This is a good idea for those running brick and motor businesses who want to get the attention of local clientele.
Figuring out the various steps to increase your Instagram followers is challenging and hard at the beginning according to the Kistermann sisters. However, once you have made some few thousand followers, all your initial strategies will become a habit that attracts more followers.
