15 Instagram Promotion Strategies For 2024: The Ultimate Guide

Social media is a great marketing and promotional tool for businesses. It can help you find new potential customers, create community, and build trust. But before any of that happens, your primary goal needs to include Instagram promotion. Promoting your Instagram is the best way to find new followers who can eventually turn into customers or clients.

There are one billion monthly active users on Instagram. With so many profiles vying for people’s attention, it can be difficult for users to find you and for you to make an impression. That said, many users are making it work. After all, 200 million users visit at least one Instagram business profile every single day. Following these steps for Instagram promotion will put you ahead of the curve in finding and attracting your ideal followers and customers.

Instagram Promotions

Before we get started, there’s one important distinction we need to make: Instagram promotions are different from Instagram promotion strategies. Instagram promotions are similar to Instagram ads. They’re the way you can promote existing posts and Stories so that new users and potential audience members can see it.

Instagram promotion strategies, on the other hand, are a variety of ways you can promote your brand on Instagram. Some of these tactics cost money, others cost time, and others are simple to implement. This is what the majority of this post will focus on, but first let’s talk a little bit about Instagram promotions and if they can make an impact for your brand.

Instagram promotions look similar to typical feed or Story posts, except that they have the word “Sponsored” beneath your handle. They also allow you to add a call to action that’s clickable for a feed post or has a swipe-up if it’s a Story.

Creating an Instagram promotion is one of the easiest ways to use paid advertising, as long as you have a business account. It only takes a few steps.

Instagram promotion steps:

1. Go to your profile and select the feed post you want to promote.
2. Click “Promote.”
3. Finalize the objective and create your CTA button.
4. Define your audience.
5. Set your budget and timeline. 
6. Add your payment information.
7. Tap “preview” to see what your audience will see.
8. Submit the promotion for approval by Instagram.
9. View insights after your promotion has been running for a few days.

While some of these steps are very self-explanatory, let’s go a little deeper with some of the more involved steps. When you’re creating your promotion, you can set the objective, whether you want to have your audience visit your website or your Instagram profile, call your phone number, or other objectives. 

If you choose to increase your web visits, you’ll be prompted to add a URL, or you can choose your Instagram profile. If you choose your URL, you can select the action button that makes the most sense, whether that’s Learn More, Contact Us, Shop Now, or any of their other options.

If you want to reach people around a certain address, like if you have a physical business, you can choose to give them your phone number to call now, or to give them directions. You’ll obviously need to add your business’s address if you choose “Get Directions” as your CTA.

Once you’ve decided on your objective and CTA, it’s time to choose your audience. You can let Instagram automatically create an audience for you, or you can create your own audience by targeting a specific location, gender and age range, as well as up to 10 different interests.

You have total control over your budget and duration, but you must spend at least $1 per day for the promotion to be activated.

After your promotion has been running for a while, you can look into your insights to see how well it did. Much like your normal Instagram posts or your other paid ads, your insights can be broken down by demographic, but you can also see how many clicks your promotion received.

Instagram promotions can be a great way to get your brand name and Instagram handle in front of new people, but it’s certainly not the only way. Now that you know how to do this, let’s take a look at 15 other Instagram promotion strategies you can use to optimize your profile and take advantage of all that Instagram has to offer for your business.

1. Optimize Your Profile So It’s Ready For Promotion

Before you can attract the people you want to have following you, you need to make sure your account is ready for them. Let’s take a look at some of the most important steps you should take to prepare your followers.

• Make sure your Instagram name is easily searchable. This is one of the areas that you can put keywords to ensure that your profile appears when your ideal followers are searching. Jordan Lee Dooley has a podcast called “She,” so for this account name she uses @shepodcast, which clearly describes this account.

• Use a business profile. Business profiles allow you to access analytics, add extra contact information to your profile, create ads, and access the swipe-up feature once you reach 10,000 followers.
• Add a photo that depicts your profile well. This is one of your audience’s first chances to understand who you are. Sarah’s Day (@sarahs_day): Australian fitness and lifestyle influencer known for her balanced approach to health, including fitness routines, healthy recipes, and holistic wellness tips.Her profile picture shows her active lifestyle. 

• Write a headline that states exactly who you are or what your business is. This headline is also searchable, so this is a great place to put keywords if you need them. Deliciously Ella (@deliciouslyella): Ella Mills is a wellness advocate and cookbook author who shares plant-based recipes, mindfulness practices, and insights on living a healthy lifestyle. The headline provides the next level of key information so you know if you’ve found the right account.

• Add a link to your website, e-commerce page, social media profile or wherever you’re trying to send users. This is also a great place to add a freebie or a lead magnet if you’re trying to build your email list. If you talk about a variety of links in your posts or stories, it might be a good idea to use some sort of link service such as url.bio to be able to include multiple links in one. Kicksta uses it and here’s how it looks:

• Make sure you use branded hashtags and other hashtags to help users find your profile. Remember, everything you put in your profile is either helping your potential followers find you or showing them why they should follow you. Marie Forleo primarily sticks with branded hashtags because she’s known for a number of phrases. The hashtag #MarieTV refers to her YouTube show, and #TheMarieForleoPodcast is self-explanatory. Her book is called #EverythingIsFigureoutable, but it’s also a phrase her community uses regularly.

• With a business profile, you can promote your Instagram by adding a button that encourages people to email you, call, book a reservation, or take another action. This is a great way to give them easy access to taking the next action. Taft’s Brewing Company has a “Contact” button and an easy way for visitors to “Get Tickets.”

2. Create Excellent Content

Once your account is prepared to attract your ideal followers, it’s time to create exceptional content that makes them want to not only follow, but also engage with your posts. This is one of the most organic forms of Instagram promotion. 

The fact is that every audience behaves a little differently and responds to content in different ways. Try creating different types of content, and then use your analytics in your business profile to see which types of content they’re engaging with most.

• Long-form videos
• Short-form videos
• Funny posts
• Behind the scenes
• Informational posts
• Quote graphics

These are some of the most common examples of post types you can be creating for your Instagram. If you need help with creating content or you’re running on a tight deadline, you can use the ChatGPT writer to whip up some awesome content for Instagram. Just remember to check for plagiarism once the content has been generated. Unless there’s something that your audience outright dislikes for some reason, you should be producing all of these types of content as frequently as you can. That said, understand which are the top three types your audience engages with the most and focus on them.

Make sure you incorporate Instagram stories into your content creation plan too. They’re a very easy way to ensure that you’re appearing in front of your audience. Stories are still posted chronologically, while the feed posts are shown based on an algorithm. Stories can contain any of the types of content we mentioned above, and they can also direct viewers to see your most recent post.

When it comes to how frequently you should post, that’s up to what you and your team will realistically be able to handle. The most important thing is that you determine a schedule and a frequency and then stick with it. If you know you can post once a day, everyday, then go with that. If you’re determined to post twice a day, then do so. If you only have the bandwidth to post three days a week, go for it – and make those posts count. The important thing is to show up for your audience when they expect you.

3. Use An Instagram Growth Service to Promote Your Profile

Now that you’re consistently producing high-quality content and you’ve created a schedule, you can use an Instagram growth service to promote your Instagram, and help you gain real followers, not bots. The best way to generate organic Instagram growth is to leave likes and comments on your ideal followers’ pages. This lets them know that you exist and will hopefully inspire them to come check out your profile.

Kicksta can help you with Instagram promotion by handling that manual work for you. Once you sign up, you’ll be able to provide a list of accounts that you want to target. These accounts can be profiles that are similar to yours. For example, Starbucks could list Dunkin’ as an example. Chances are followers of Dunkin’ would likely be interested in Starbucks’ offerings too.

Your list of target accounts could also include complimentary brands. For a boutique fitness studio, they could target the local supplement shop or smoothie store. It could also feature direct competitors, like two local Mexican restaurants. Don’t forget to include influencers in your niche. A brand that offers sustainable products and solutions could easily target @thegirlgonegreen, as she’s an influencer in the sustainability space.

Once you provide your targets, the growth service will get to work. The system likes photos of the followers of those targets you’ve provided. This helps promote your profile the same way it would if you manually went and liked the photos of your targets’ followers. It gains their attention to send them to your page. This in turn, results in exposure and eyes on your content. (That’s why we needed you to be creating great content first!)

In this way, a growth service can generate organic growth and real Instagram followers. The target users check out your page on their own, and make their own choice to follow you if they’re interested in your content. This means that you’ll only be getting real, engaged followers who want to see and engage with your content, increasing traffic and sales.

4. Instagram Paid Promotions

Instagram ads are a great way to reach new users too. The first step is to ensure that your Instagram account is connected to a Facebook business page, because you’ll actually create your Instagram ads in the Facebook ads manager. Ads can be a great way to reach new potential followers, or you can use them to re-target your existing followers to get them to take a particular action, like download a guide or even make a purchase.

As with any advertisement, you want to begin with a goal. You need to know if you’re looking for:

• Conversions
• Likes
• Follows
• Video Views
• Messages

Or any other type of goal you want. In general, Instagram ad goals are categorized into three options: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. 

Once you select your goal, you can customize your audience based on demographics, or you can create a custom audience based off of a list you already have. This is a good option if you want to target your current subscribers with an ad about a product or service.

Instagram ads vary in cost, depending on factors like the specificity and popularity of the audience you choose, but in general they can cost about $0.70-$0.80 per click, although that could reach as high as $1.30 per click. You’ll want to decide on your budget ahead of time, based on the value that these clicks will bring you. 

Finally, you’ll also need to determine how long your Instagram promotion will run. This is an easy decision if you have a specific amount of time that your program or service will be for sale: your promotion can end when you stop offering that program or service.. However, if you’re advertising something that’s not for sale, or if your product is always available, it can be difficult to determine when to end your ad. It can be a good idea to just let them run for a little while and see how they do. If their ROI is too low after a few weeks or months, you can stop them at any time.

When creating Instagram ads, you can choose to place them in stories or in the feed, and you can use a variety of formats, like carousel, video, or collections. Let’s take a look at some examples of good ads.

No Evil Foods created a great Stories ad that is bright, colorful and simple:

The Social Bungalow used this video ad to retarget its followers to lead them into the funnel for their currently-open Instagram program. It’s a captivating video that can easily stop the scroll:

This night run photo ad includes an easy link and a sale, which is a simple way to capture attention:

This carousel ad included two pictures that show off different angels of this wedding dress. The first picture is well-styled, and the second shows off more of the dress itself:

5. Use Hashtags For Your Instagram Promotion

Believe it or not, hashtags are still relevant and important to a successful promotion strategy for organic Instagram growth. Hashtags are the easiest way to search on the app, and users certainly do so when looking for brands and products. They’re also a great way to help you build authority. When new potential followers stumble across your posts in a hashtag, it’s good for them to easily see more posts from you in the same hashtag. That increases your authority on that particular topic because you’ve posted about it frequently.

There are various types of hashtags, so let’s quickly talk about the most important ones.

• Industry hashtags: These are fairly self-explanatory, as they’re important hashtags for your industry. This might mean #EverythingIsFigureoutable, from our earlier example. Marie Forleo is a prominent name in the online entrepreneur space, so many people in that industry will use that hashtag, even if they’re not specifically talking about Marie.
• Competitor Hashtags: Using competitor hashtags can be a gray area, especially if they’re direct competitors. These are typically branded hashtags that relate directly to your competitor’s business.
• Niche Hashtags: Niche-specific hashtags are typically smaller but filled with people who are very interested or involved in that particular niche. This could be as simple as #PortlandPhotographer or #SundayGolfBags.

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In any post you can use up to 30 hashtags. If possible, use all 30. After all, that’s 30 chances to add keywords that your potential followers could be searching to find you. Make sure that your hashtags relate to your post. You should have some that relate to the photo, and some for the caption, otherwise Instagram might get suspicious. You don’t want to post a photo of a puppy and use the hashtag #icecreamsandwich. Their algorithm understands the difference and could potentially penalize you.

“Avoid using hashtags with over 500,000 uses. Your posts will likely just get lost within a few minutes, unless you have a substantial following in the first place.”

– @kicksta.co”

For example, look at the post below by American Trucks, a company that sells truck rims and parts and uses relevant hashtags of different sizes in their posts to easily reach their target audience.

Make sure to use hashtags that have a variety of sizes. Add some that have only been used 5,000 times (niche hashtags), some with 10-50,000 uses, and some with 100-300,000 uses (industry hashtags). Create a nice sampling you can mix and match depending on your post.

6. Location Tags

Another tactic to use is location tags. You can add these to traditional feed posts at the top of the post or add a tag in your story if that makes more sense. Location tags help people find your business when they’re looking for accounts in a certain area. If you’re a local restaurant, using location tags is really useful. For example, Ecliptic Brewing uses the Portland, Oregon location tag on their photos to reach people looking for restaurants in that area.

7. Tag Brands You’re Promoting

Tagging brands you’re promoting can also be a great way to promote your Instagram. By tagging a brand, they could likely want to share your post, which in turn puts your name and account in front of all of their followers. When you tag brands in your posts it’s a great way to show that you support them. Be smart when you’re choosing which brands to promote though, because your followers are watching!

8. Work With Reputable Influencers

Working with reputable influencers who match your brand and mission, can be a great Instagram promotion technique. They share your brand with their followers, and they can create social proof by using and sharing about your product. Influencers often have a very loyal, devoted following, and their followers typically trust their recommendations. Because of this, influencers are often protective of that following and only partner with brands and accounts that share their mission, and ones that they personally love.

9. Run A Contest/Giveaway For Instagram Promotion

Another great strategy is to run a contest or giveaway. You can call on your existing follower base to share your brand with their friends, which is a great way to reach people. Overall, people trust their friends more than brands. Giving away a product or even a gift card can be a great motivator to turn your followers into advocates. In a typical Instagram contest or giveaway you’ll ask your followers to tag their friends in order to be entered to win. If you want to go one step further, you can giveaway two things: one to the person who commented and one to their friend they tagged, with the requirement that they’re both following you. This can be a great way to grow your following.

10. Cross-Promotion

Finally, you can always cross-promote across other social media channels. Whether you promote your latest Instagram live in your Facebook group or link a Pinterest pin back to an IGTV video, it’s a great idea to use your existing audiences on other platforms to grow your Instagram audience. These audiences already know who you are and like you, and they’re likely on Instagram already anyway. The following sections are cross-promotion strategies that you can put into practice.

Cross-Promotion on Instagram Using Emails

The best way to increase your social media reach and gain Instagram followers is to combine your Instagram marketing with your effective email marketing strategy.

In this case, email marketing will offer you a unique chance to reach your email subscribers and offer them the chance to connect with you on Instagram.

1. Make Instagram Part of Your Email Campaigns

If you want your emails and Instagram to work in tandem, then you should create a specific email campaign that will show your audience that you want them to visit your Instagram account.

St. Ives, for example, has an amazing example of infusing their email with a social media CTA that’s meant to lead their subscribers to their Instagram profile:

To get their email subscribers to join them, St. Ives first asks them what their favorite go-to products are, and in the next section tells them that they love sharing tips on how to “turn up the glow”.

And to make sure that the subscribers will click on the CTA, St. Ives uses the appropriate CTA copy to show their subscribers what they need to do to get access to the brand’s best tips. 

2. Insert A Clickable Instagram Icon In Your Email Signature

To consistently promote your Instagram account to email subscribers without being repetitive, consider adding a clickable Instagram icon to your email signature. This allows your social media presence to be subtly highlighted in every email campaign you send. Look for email marketing platforms like Constant Contact competitors that offer robust features for inserting social media links into your campaigns, enabling seamless integration between email and social media marketing efforts.

Here’s an example from Bulgari’s email:

Adding your Instagram social button to your email will let your subscribers know that you also have another resource where they can reach you, ask questions about your products, gather information and even praise you.

Instagram Cross-Promotion On Facebook

With 2.41 billion monthly users worldwide, Facebook reigns as the leading social network alongside Instagram. Utilizing Facebook marketing is an excellent strategy to enhance brand promotion and increase both organic and paid traffic with targeted content. 

Through Facebook ads, brands can efficiently target their audience and deliver compelling content to drive clicks to social landing pages and boost conversions. Facebook’s diverse audience and integration with Instagram make it an ideal platform for cross-promotion and driving traffic to newer social media accounts.

1. Include An Instagram Account Link In The “About Us” Tab 

To cross-promote your IG through Facebook, you need to find the perfect place in your Facebook profile to add a link to your Instagram profile. 

As posting it around will easily get lost or even go unnoticed, you need to insert your Instagram link somewhere that it will be easy-to-find.

The perfect place to add your Instagram link and show your Facebook followers that you want them to interact with, is in your “About Us” tab.

Since your old followers will already know about you and your social media accounts, adding your Instagram link in the “About Us” tab will give your new Facebook followers the chance to learn more about your company and follow your business Instagram profile for more news and content.

Here’s how MAC does it:

Instead of placing their Instagram link in their ‘General Information’, MAC strategically places it in their ‘Contact Info’ to show their followers that Instagram is not only a platform to see content, but also a channel they can use to communicate with the brand.

This example shows us that when you aim at gaining more followers on Instagram using social media cross-promotion, you have to make sure that your followers will see why they have to follow you there.

2. Share Your Posts On Facebook And Create An Instagram Tab

Sharing your Instagram content on Facebook not only saves you valuable time to come up with new posts, but also allows you to cross-promote your social media accounts in the most efficient way.

When you link a post from Instagram to Facebook, you give your followers the chance to discover your Instagram account, interact with the post, and click the follow button.

To get the most out of your Facebook cross-promoting efforts, you should also consider creating a separate tab on your Facebook profile to let your Facebook followers know where your visual content comes from and how they can find its source.

Colourpop, for example, has an amazing IG tab on their profile to get their Facebook followers to visit their Instagram account:

2. Promote Your Instagram On The Cover Photo Description

Updating your profile and cover photo is a great way to offer fresh content and engage your Facebook followers.

As users will take the time to like and comment on your new cover photo, promoting your Instagram account through it can be a piece of cake.

To take advantage of this technique, you can use one of your Instagram posts as a cover photo and add a link to your Instagram account in the description.

Since Facebook users appreciate your new and creative cover photos, showing them one of your Instagram posts will incentivize them to click on your Instagram account.

Cross-Promotion On Youtube

1. Add A Link In Your Video Description

If you thought that you can’t promote your Instagram account on Youtube, then you thought wrong.

Youtube is actually the perfect place to gain Instagram followers, who after watching your incredible videos, will need a place to interact with you and see more of your content.

Aligning your Youtube and Instagram efforts is the perfect way to showcase your products through posts and provide more information to your subscribers.

Here’s a simple example from Bobbi Brown Cosmetics:

And here’s what their Youtube subscribers, who watched their beauty product video, will come across when they click on their IG link:

2. Mention Your IG Account In Your Video

If you want a more direct way to incentivize and increase your Youtube subscribers to turn into your Instagram followers, then you can promote it through your video content.

To successfully do that, you need to mention that you have an Instagram account either at the beginning or at the end of your video to let your viewers know there is another channel where they can reach out to you and access more content.

While adding a link in your video description is a great way to do that, telling your subscribers yourself that you want to connect with them on Instagram will add urgency  and help you gain Instagram followers who will gladly support you across different channels.

3. Promote Your IG Account Through Influencer Collabs

Collaborating with influencers is essential for developing a sizable Instagram following and raising brand recognition. 

Using YouTubers and influencers to promote your Instagram account on their channels is one way to take advantage of Instagram marketing on YouTube. Engage influencers who can persuade their audience to follow your business on Instagram for further information and content, rather than just asking for a link. 

Working with influencers is a great way to cross-promote on YouTube and Instagram since it gives you access to their reputation and following.

Cross-Promotion Through Pinterest 

To successfully promote your Instagram using Pinterest, then you need to keep in mind that Pinterest users want to see quality over quantity, meaning that they will look only for the best posts that will pique their interest and get them inspired.

Pin Your High-Quality Instagram Posts

The first thing you need to do is to create a new board and then create a new pin using your best Instagram photos. When you click on create a new board, you’ll find yourself on this page:

The trick here is that apart from drag-and-dropping your high-quality Instagram image, you also need to add a destination link that will get your Pinterest followers back to your Instagram profile.

Neglecting to add a destination link won’t link the pin back to your Instagram post, so be extra careful when you create new pins, otherwise you’ll miss the chance to get more traffic to your  profile and gain Instagram followers.

Here’s an amazing example from NYX:

Creating a board with your most aesthetically pleasing posts, will expose your Pinterest followers to your Instagram account, skyrocket your referral traffic, and give you more Instagram followers.

Cross-Promotion On Twitter 

You can leverage Twitter’s power successfully to promote your Instagram.

While taking advantage of Twitter can happen with sharing your posts and including a link in your profile bio, there’s an equally powerful technique to get your Instagram follower count to higher heights.

Now let’s see how to cross-promote using this simple, but well-known tactic:

Tweet Your IG User-Generated Content

While Twitter’s 280-character limit can be a deal-breaker for your creative Instagram captions and your hashtags, leveraging its powerful short status update can help you promote your posts a lot more effectively.

What you can do to leverage Twitter the right way is to use one of the best tactics to boost your Instagram followers, namely user-generated content.

Instead of linking your Instagram posts on Twitter, you can link posts from customers and influencers to show that people love your products.

Here’s an example from Glossier:

In this case, promoting your user-generated content (UGC) will increase your trustworthiness and help you nurture your leads into loyal Instagram followers who will support you no matter what. 

11. Post Videos to IGTV

Speaking of IGTV, it can be an excellent promotional strategy on its own, too. With a little thought and planning you can create IGTV videos that people can watch as your own mini TV show. The key here is to create excellent content you know your audience will resonate with, because if you’re going to invest in creating a full IGTV, you want to know that it will work. Test out your content in your Stories and in your feed, and then once you find a topic your audience wants to learn from you about, create a captivating IGTV video. Promote it in your feed and your Stories and watch the views roll in from your audience!

12. Use Instagram Stories Frequently

Make sure you incorporate Instagram stories into your content creation plan too. They’re a very easy way to ensure that you’re appearing in front of your audience. Stories are still posted chronologically, while the feed posts are shown based on an algorithm. They can contain any of the types of content we mentioned earlier, and they can also direct viewers to see your most recent post.

Stories are easy for Instagram users to consume, and they’re incredibly popular. Many content creators now are putting the majority of their focus on Stories and showing up there daily, while posting in their feed 3-5 times per week. Stories also give you the chance to ask for easy engagement. With stickers, polls and other engagement tools, your audience only needs to tap once or twice to vote or choose their response. This can be a great way to get your audience used to responding to your calls to action.

People also feel like they can relate more to Stories, since that’s where users often share their behind-the-scenes. They can tend to be less polished and more candid, showing the real side of your brand. On the flip side, though, Stories can also be strategic and use pre-created graphics that promote your products, services or even free offers. Here are two different examples, one from Shunta Grant, and the other from The Emma Rose Agency.

13. Post Content Consistently

Consistency is key for a strong Instagram presence, whether you choose to post daily or on a schedule that works for you. To stay organized and avoid last-minute content creation, use a planning tool to schedule posts in advance. By batching content creation and scheduling posts, you can maintain a consistent feed presence while also engaging with your audience through Stories.

Here are a few of our favorite post scheduling programs:

• Buffer: create a preset posting schedule and then add your posts to fit our needs.
• Preview: drag and drop your posts and view them in calendar mode to know you’re keeping with your consistent schedule.
• Plann: design your beautiful Instagram feed in advance and even create graphics directly with Canva.

14. If You Have It, Use the Swipe-Up Feature

Even without 10,000 followers or a verified account, the swipe-up feature on Instagram is valuable for directing viewers to external websites, alongside DMs and bio links. It’s one of the few ways to include a working link on the app, allowing redirection without leaving entirely. For those without the swipe-up feature, alternatives include encouraging DMs or creating Instagram Stories ads, which enable the swipe-up feature. Influencers like Stacy Tuschl and Landyn use these features to promote their content and products effectively in Stories.

15. Incorporate UGC and Reposting 

User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful Instagram promotion strategy as it fosters trust with your audience. People tend to trust peer opinions more than brand messages, making UGC an invaluable asset.

• To generate UGC, encourage your followers to create content featuring your product or service by hosting contests or using branded hashtags. 
• Once you receive their content, obtain permission to repost it and share it on your Instagram account, showcasing your customers’ experiences and building trust with your audience.

Instagram Promotion Strategies

So there you have it: our best Instagram promotion strategies for 2024. Now that you know how to promote on Instagram, which strategy will you try first? Do you need to update your profile first, or are you ready to dig into an Instagram growth service?