#5 Tips to Gain a Massive Following on Instagram Know your hashtag and put yourselves in the shoes of your target audience so you can help them trace their way to you.

Many online tools help businesses bring their product ideas to life. A right tool can offer a number of advantages and opportunities to online retailers. Instagram is one of the best tools that boost the business online by promoting the products to the consumers. Adding hashtags related to your product in the Instagram posts ensures that it gets discovered more and more by the audience online.

But how can a brand get more followers on Instagram? Entrepreneur India spoke to experts to know how can brands engage with their audience and grow their following on Instagram.

Be Authentic:

For Shuchi Pandya. Founder and CEO of Pipa + Bella, an online jewellery e-commerce platform, one of the most important tips for building a genuine database of followers is to be authentic

"Instagram is an incredibly important part of our marketing strategy, given that nearly 30% of our target audience's daily time spent on social media is done on Instagram. Users on Instagram are not expecting glossy images or editorial content. Instead, we have found that users engage better with content that humanizes the brand. This typically means more images of our users wearing our jewellery rather than models," said Pandya

She believes Instagram will give back to your brand if you give something to Instagram.

"What that means is that the more you engage with other people's or brand's content that is relevant to your own, the more likely it is that those users will follow your brand and engage with your content too," added Pandya

Create Compelling Content:

Instagram is a brilliant platform to communicate with the audience and build your brand effectively.

Celebrity Chef Rakhee Vaswani, Owner, Palate Culinary Studio and Academy personally feels that the golden key to building your brand is creating compelling content.

"This is most obvious but often the most neglected one. The content needs to speak for itself and reflect the brand effortlessly. This requires beautiful imagery, engaging captions, and interesting patterns. This will leave the audience curious and ensure that they come back to the page looking for more," said Vaswani

Create Engaging Content:

Another brilliant aspect businesses should focus on is engagement.

"This means creating content that ignites an interesting conversation where the audience can tag their friends and respond to the post. This makes the content more personal and unique. Try and share the posts of other relative accounts. This makes your content genuine and sensible," she stressed.

Know Your Hashtag:

In order to be successful on Instagram, it's very important for brands to use the right hashtag.

"Know your hashtag and put yourselves in the shoes of your target audience so you can help them trace their way to you. You can also cultivate your niche audience by using appropriate hashtags and associating with larger Instagram trends," emphasized Vaswani.

Convey the Personality of the Brand:

According to Siddhartha Sacheti - CEO & Creative Director of Jaipur Gems, the Instagram posts should convey the personality and the thought process of the brand.

"Make sure the posts are focussed and targeted to the audience, which you cater to. The post should be personal, warm and welcoming towards your audience. Secondly, make it a very beautiful experience to go through your Instagram profile at large. Let the followers experience the brand aesthetics with you by creating interactive posts and engaging the followers with a contest," said Sacheti adding that brands must give minute information in their posts.