We haven't had many local event during the past year, BUT maybe that will start to change soon. I wanted to go ahead and teach you this Instagram growth strategy!
We've covered how to use and interact with local hashtags and even how to leverage local places to grow your Instagram following.
Now we're focusing on local events.
I've never seen anyone else teach this before but it's exactly what I've done to grow my own local following. Using local events on Instagram is just another creative way to find more local people.
First, make a list of events that happen in your city throughout the year.
For example, here in Baton Rouge, we have LSU football season, parades, fairs, festivals, markets, races, concerts, fundraisers and more.
Next, from that list consider which events your target customer would attend.
After the event, search for hashtags related to the event or search for locations near the event.
Stay with me...
Let's say my target customer attends LSU football games or tailgates. I can look at and engage with people who are using the hashtag #lsufootball or #lsutailgating after a football game.
I can also search and see if anyone posted any photos with the tagged geo location of LSU's campus or Tiger Stadium -- or maybe some popular bars or restaurants around campus.
You can do this leading up to the event, but you're likely to find more posts after the event.
Then you can go through people's posts and engage with them.
It's about free visibility and increasing your brand awareness.
The idea is you comment or like their posts, and they click on your business name to come check you out. At that point, they decide if you're a local business for them.
Let's do more examples:
Let's say you're a local wedding planner. Maybe you're browsing photos taken at certain wedding venues after a weekend. Then you can go engage with those photos or people.
Maybe you're a local artist and you want to engage with photos tagged at a local fair or market.
Or maybe you're a local sporting goods store and you want to interact with people who just ran a race in your local community. So you can search for the races hashtags or think of where the race was, then you could go through and tell people congratulations on the race afterward.
This is simply a way to virtually introduce yourself and engage.
There are a lot of options for you doing this but it definitely takes some creativity!
I have more tips for you on engagement and how to use local events in my free guide so be sure to download it here.
