How To Get More Traffic On Instagram – The Fastest And Most Effective Ways

Instagram started off popular in the days where kids and young adults of generation Y were using it as a fun impression, and way of sharing mass amount of social needs. But new times are here…

Not only is Instagram utilized to share our day to day lives, but it’s quickly become a strong and serious way to use for:

• content marketing
• selling
• networking
• audience building

All these tools have been used for individuals and brands, but more so it’s become a way to build a long term business. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide with over 3 figures in the millions of people using it, over just 50 million images, and somewhere around 1.8 billion likes per day!

Just how FREAKING AWESOME is it?

Take a look at this users interactions with brands post:

Whether you are a small business, a larger multi million dollar corporation, or just simply a person without a business, there is room to shoot for the stars for each and every one. I don’t want you to shoot for average, I want you to aim beyond the limits, because like numbers, you are exponential.

In this article I’m going to share with you all the way you can grow your Instagram traffic through many different formats, and whichever your mission is, whether to get them over to a website, or just get more leads for conversions just on Instagram, so you can finally put an end to wondering if you can make money off instagram.

So let’s get to the focus point now…

ERRR…Pump the breaks,

But Who Am I To Tell you what to do right?

5 Days I ago I might have been looking to grow more traffic through Instagram, but Did I leave out the part where now I’ve situated myself to gain over 100 followers a  day!…Yeah, In a short amount of time.

What Instagram Does Now Will Change Your Traffic Potential

Before you get on Instagram and start clicking on every profile, adding every person in hope they follow back, and or commenting on each post just to gain attention, stop what you’re doing, drop your fingers, and listen up.

Instagram is like Google, in where they have algorithms that are constantly reading what is posted on the search engines and social media platforms, and they are constantly changing them from every 2-3 months.

So you have to ask yourself, “are you watching out for that?” Whether you are or not, this will become very eye opening in just a second.

Basically, there were privacy scandals surrounding Facebook, the co-connection with Instagram, and if you didn’t get the memo, it was all over the news! Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg had to appear in front of congress. After so, the Instagram algorithms were changed to appear more user friendly.

1. Interest
2. Timelines
3. Relationship

An example that details interest is if lets say you are frequently interacting with a post about apple iPhone's, the algorithm will give preferences to apple iPhone and apple product images and video when you’re going through and organizing your news feed. 

For timelines, this means that when you go to post, your image or video will be unlikely to be seen in just the following days. This means you should make a hit the first time, and make sure to leave a lasting impression on not only the potential followers, but the people you already have. 

Relationships become more apparent to Instagram, and what this does is lets say you engage with a family member more often through commenting, Direct messaging(DM), or clicking on each others likes, the more you will see their content come up on your news feed.

So why is this all relevant to you getting more traffic on Instagram, UH every little thing! See, if you want people to find you, and if you want the people that already follow you to see you, you need to be consistent at:

• Posting
• Liking
• Commenting

Here is how you may be able to approach it:

STEP 1: Take The Magic Shot

STEP 2: Publish Your Post

I know the pictures vary from step 1 to step 2 but this is only an example, or I might have decided to go with another picture instead. Now, I won’t get into the captioning, that will come later, so as for this demonstration I’ll just stick to the photo.

Now, step 3 and 4 can be done without 1 and 2, but since I’m spending my time posting about my own life, It would be a great time to spend the time you’re on Instagram to Like other peoples photos and add comments. Once you’ve posted your photo, on the back-end people will be seeing your content and they will be liking and even commenting on it. So let’s go to step 3 and 4 if we were taking the ALL-IN-ONE time approach

STEP 3: Surf Your News feed and “LIKE”

STEP 4: Commenting

1. Creating a good username

Your username is your identify, and more importantly your BRAND. It’s the basic foundation building block for your Instagram business, as well for your social media marketing if that’s what you are doing. It should be directly related to your business/page is supposed to be about. 

Tip: Try to keep it as short as possible so people can easily remember it.

2. Create a Quality Bio

TIP #1: Create Bullet points. If you’ve looked around or fished through some people’s profiles, you’ll see the bio filled with bullet points from top to bottom. In these bullet points you should include these three things:

1. Sum up who you are
2. What your business represents
3. What Your Page is About

TIP #2: Use Emojis. That’s right, the little faces, and icons are not just made for texting, they serve to make your Instagram profile stand out from the crowd and not to mention, your competition. Emoji’s are VERY appealing to a person eye and if you use the right ones for your exact businesses representation, it will really help to increase engagement on your page or get this, it will bring you MORE FOLLOWERS!

3. Instagram Content

Think of a movie, where you have like 10 sets of lines filled with war fighters that cover “acres”, and the first line of defense is the start, then the second one comes to set you up for more, the third hits you with more power and substance, and towards the end, you get the largest Animals and most prolific Authorities for last.

More That comes With Posting and Getting Traffic

Can you believe that most of what we just went over, about 95% of it has to do with just the makeup of your page, and getting things organized?

Yeah, I know, I’m a little surprised too! The rest will feel like a breeze now that you know the makeup of a good Instagram setup on the back-end, and now its time to share more tips about putting all of this together, from pictures to content, and the use of hashtags.

1. Use correct sized images

2. Use small paragraphs

Whenever you go to write out a caption under the image, you should try to keep it more brief and to the point of what your image and if you’re placing a link to is all about. 

3. Place A Call To Action

After getting your caption space together, the next logical thing would be to tell someone to check out your website or have them redirected to an external source. For example, If I’m ending my sentence, I can say something like: Make sure you check out how to stretch better by clicking here today.

4. Hashtags

But don’t just do this once make sure you are in away using the same hashtags over again, so just in case people missed your post or are not sure about you, they will start to see you more frequently, and beginning to become interested in your work.

There’s an easy walk through on how to build out your Hashtags effectively for your niche that I made. If you’d like to see the Hashtag article, click here.

5. Posting Time

6. Free Giveaways

TIP#1: Sell Your Product. The prize you giveaway should be your product, this will help people understand what you do, and you’ll make commissions of your efforts.

TIP#2: Let People Like to Join. To let people into your giveaway, you should just tell people to like your Instagram post if they want to enter.

TIP#3: Use Related Hashtags. Anytime you set up a contest, create a unique hashtag specific to it so that people can find it, and get to the next time you go to run a contest. Also, it can be a way for you to let people into the giveaway.

7. Use Instagram Stories

8. Follow Like Minded People

For example, If I was smaller than let’s say Entrepreneur. I can follow them and see what they are doing, and take my Instagram traffic differently, and be able to create different and more unique content.

Here are some steps you can take to follow people:

1. Post with targeted Hashtags to your niche
2. Visit your followers friends and add them
3. Go to Explore Page and Like
4. Use search to find hashtags and or people

Which way will work best? :

Knowing which way to get followers and get the most the fastest way is a contradictory one. Some people just like to post their work with hashtags and immediately have people following them, while others go to their “like minded” people’s pages and press the follow button, or just by “liking” and “commenting” on their photo works well.

For me, I usually post first, then I go searching for others that I may already know and add them. But In a little, I will show you a really cool way that I do things, and you might have interest in as well.

9. Respond To Comments

10. Add A Link

In a way I mentioned this earlier, but make sure that if you want people to check out a cool blog post or your website, that you place a link, and you do that in your caption space. This will have people checking out your content over and over again.

11. Instagram Ads

The most notable way to get traffic to your website these days is Advertisements. Like they say “You have to spend money to make money”. It’s OUTRAGEOUS how Instagram’s advertising platform is expanding….blowing up status!

But don’t just take my words and that jaw dropping explosion above and check out just how large Instagram advertising is scaling over the years:

There was a steady growth from 2015-2017, not too much of a differential, but then turn your head to the right side of the graph and focus on year 2017 and 2018.

About a 3 BILLION jump! That’s Insane for the robust advertising platform that Instagram has been delivering. And if we had to compare it to Facebook, that would be a whole different conversation and “ANIMAL”(around 46 billion users at the moment).

So as you can see, there is room in Instagram to post up your ads, and not because it’s less than the likes of Facebook, it doesn’t make it inferior. I like to think of it like Batman and Robin. Batman is Facebook, and Robin is Instagram.

And at some point Robin will be the prodigy or the successor per say. It’s like watching Karate kid if you’ve ever seen it, where “Daniel” is getting taught karate by his teacher the great Mr. Miyogi.

Just picture that for a moment

If you’re thoughts are with mine-in the sky, there is no shame in being there, because it is HONESTLY believable.

The other thing that you get better returns on Instagram advertising as opposed to Facebook are:

• Less cost per ad campaign
• Less cost per click
• Faster Return On Investment(ROI)

NOTE: I’m not going to go into how to run an Instagram ad specifically in this article, but If you’d like to learn and know how to do it better, you can check out the Instagram ad article here.

In addition to all the different ways to drive REAL traffic to your Instagram, I left a video just below that just re-iterates and adds a couple more ways for you.

Content Is KING

One problem we all have or at least had in our Instagram and online digital marketing careers is undervaluing our audience, and expecting more than giving, but why is that?

By human nature, you are receptive to making money at all cost, and you might not know it but consciously you’re getting farther and farther away from helping people, and living just to earn another paycheck…

That doesn’t matter if it’s a customer service related job or a hard busting your butt construction position. Rather than providing your audience with VALUE, we suffocate them with a bit of information with a sale upfront…

Like who the HECK are you? Let me draw this image in your head…

I get this all the time in my Instagram Direct Message Inbox and every other social media platform, and it’s just shocking…

Something along the lines of “Hey Michael, I’m a social media marketing manager and I think that we can partner up to bring your social media account more exposure, we charge cheaply, about $19/monthly, blah blah blah.

STOP IT! This is annoying, and it doesn’t meet two things:

1. Provide Value
2. Get to know me

Now, let me tell you why this strategy sucks…

For one, the person or bot on the other side doesn’t know how to communicate, and some other reasons could be:

• No value to offer
• don’t have the right skill sets
• don’t care about you enough

Listen, every time I get these type of messages, I 100% of the time ignore them. At this point its rubbish, and I skip over them before I even open up the message.

Don’t be this person, rather follow a more constructive approach with these 3 things in mind:

1. How can I provide value to my prospect?
2. What Can I do For You?
3. How can I solve your problem?

No one cares about your upfront sale nor who you even are from the second you drop into their DM, people care about a problem you can solve for them. So do just that, solve “a” or “multiple” problems the real person on the other end has.

Follow the templates up above if you need help with. If you’ve never read the book 80/20 principle, get on it…

Otherwise known as the Pareto Principle, use this when you’re trying to recruit people into your world:

• 80% of your time should be actively engaging with people in your niche and helping them solve a problem.
• 20% of your time you should be selling your services to meet their needs.

Using Instagram For Affiliate Marketing

My favorite, tried and trued method to making money with Instagram is with Affiliate Marketing...

Most in part because I don't have to own the product to make money, all I have to do is promote other people's products for a commission...

Before I select “CBD” to start, you have to know that you will be using all the other relevant hashtags beneath it and doing the same strategy I’m about to show you.

After I selected “CBD”, it brought me a whole list of pictures and what you want to do is select a photo, and eventually comment on it.

Make a valuable comment on someone else’s post. Your comments can be:

• Motivational
• Respond with something valuable
• Respond to their stories

Do this until you build up a whole $1.80. Make sure to reference the Gary V $1.80 article I hyperlinked to you from up above.

Method #2: City Location Marketing

Warning: This method will take sometimes hours, like 6 hours of your day every day. If you’re ready, then read on.

Back before there were Influencers, actual tactics to design your page or get to automate your media account, you would have to do it manually. I challenge you for 3-10 hours a day to find people’s pages, go to their picture and comment.

Here’s how to do it effectively by phone in 3 Simple steps:

STEP 1: Go to Search and type in a city of your interest.

And as alternative, you can be more Hashtag specific. So going to the hashtags and selecting what you exactly want can work out too.

What does this accomplish?

You get more brand awareness or just awareness in general. Doing this on repeat for 3-10 hours a day is like pushing a HUGE Boulder downhill…

At first, you’re struggling to get it to move, it’ll take time, force, and strategy. But once it takes the first couple of motions forward, you’ll have a boulder traveling downhill with Momentum.

Again, this works, I did this, but it takes time and most people will give up within the first 48 hours, the first week, the first month.

It doesn’t hurt to recognize someone else’s work so that you can get that in return. In doing this, you’ll get attention, they are more likely to act on your post/engage and click through to your website or place where you have a product/service.

I wanted to show you more information from an Instagram management expert. Most of what you will hear are things I’ve already talked about, but he will also let you know how to not only get your first 1,000 followers in a day but every day!

The LESS “Recruiting and Selling” Route With My Secret Sauce #1

Every single person I talk to and that I don’t want the same thing, and can you guess what that is?

Sales! Conversions, a Lifetime Value of the customer, whatever you want to call it, you want it but it’s easier said than done, or is it?

The difference between me having no customers and customers as well as Loyal Customers and people just trying to view what you offer(as cold leads) is because I do one other thing that hardly anyone else does.

I provide so much value upfront before I expect anyone to land on my website, my funnel or whatever. This technique will work really will for you if you have a blog, and it could work just as well if you use landing page software.

What you should do more of is use your Direct Message inbox to talk to your new followers, and already existing customers to get a WARM lead to opt into your email list.

The keyword there is WARM. Too many times you’ll want to leave them one message with like 30 lines and at the end a link to your page or offer, and that rarely converts am I right? And if you haven’t tried this yet, DON’T-you’ll be frustrated trust me. Plus, I always usually avoid reading and replying back to these messages(Okay, maybe I’ll throw in a double-tap for a heart).

Here’s how to do it correctly so that you can build either someone who:

• Doesn’t know about your product, but has a desire. You should talk to this person about what they desire the most first – no product mentioning. (warm lead)
• Who knows your product and you can talk to them about it better. This person you can talk to openly about your “product” hence mention it in conversation. (hot lead)
• Or someone who doesn’t know what they need at all. You need to build up a general overview and then get into the specifics later.(cold lead)

This all ties into something I’m about to show you. Whenever you want someone to be your customer and repeat customer you need to add VALUE 10X. Give more than you receive. So first get to know the person on the other end for a little. Ask them who they are, what exactly they do for business, where they are from etc. And then…

What most moderate to expert people on Instagram would do next is offer their product or service, you’d link to your merchant or maybe your blog post, but that’s where it ends usually. Most of the time you’ll get an Okay, I’ll get back to you, or like an “I don’t know if this is for me”.. Something along those lines, right?

It leads nowhere. Then you have to chase them the following days “hey did you think about my offer”. Let’s stop that and do things differently. Are you with me?

3 words: GET THE EMAIL!

If you’re not getting an email, it will not be easy for you to convert cold to warm leads. But if you get someone into your email list, these are hot buyers….they know more about you, and want to get to know you better.

Your job is to build the relationship and then hit them with your offers(because businesses need to make money too). But I do this step differently than most.

What about instead of just building a small rapport with that person, why not give them tips and tricks? Like what if you were a content marketer like a blogger, a YouTuber, podcaster, etc. and you sent them to your content? “AHA”! Did you just have an AHA moment?

Send them value first my friend. What I do with people is in this order:

1. Get to build rapport, understand who they are and what they need
2. Send them to my blog post(video, podcast works too).
3. Follow up with them 2-3 days after, ask how they’re doing, did it help
4. Send them to your opt-in/squeeze page

This is going to work so well, but so many people are lazy and they would rather just get to the point on day 1. If you’re an expert or if you have knowledge that person seeks, show him/her your work. This will build even more of a stronger relationship with them, and they will learn to trust you and come to you for help.

On that page, they land on, try not ask for there email…I mean you can subtly put a form within your content, side widget or if you have YouTube, a link in the description works just fine.

Now, in the back of that person’s mind, their world just changed, and they feel so good about what they’re about to read from you. Now in the next 2-3 days, follow up with him/her and ask if you’re information was helpful, are they doing better, you know things of that nature.

And then you can hit them with a “Look, I have extra training on this “your product/service”, that I think you would benefit from greatly, would you like to see more?”

Something like this or similar. And then when they say yes, now send them to your squeeze page to get an email right away.

This landing page can be:

• Extra training
• A guide
• A report
• A Course

This is where you will send them into your funnel so they build an even stronger relationship in your email list now, and for the funnel, you create to sell to them immediately after opting in. Selling to them after they opt-in is great because you can quickly tell who are your buyers from just your subscribers.

I suggest low-end product like a free book, or like free shipping and handling.

Overall, this is an example of how it should look:

STEP 1: Talk to your follower or the person who messaged you back first. If they message you back first it’s even better because they’ve already shown an interest in you, and chances are they’ve seen your page and know more about you.

Now, after they reply back use what I would call “your product/service hat”, wherein mind you know you want to talk about your product/service but you need to go around the curb first. So say something like what I said above in the first message when I said:

• What are your goals for your health this year
• What are your goals for exercising in 2019
• What are your goals for eating more protein than carbs( Idk lol)
• Or just simply what are your goals for Instagram this year

This can depend on your niche, and the reason I specifically ask them about their Instagram goals is that I want them to learn more about increasing their followers, comments, direct messages, more leads, more traffic, how to use Instagram Ads, and if they can make money off Instagram.

Why does that matter? You will be using your content and sharing it with them. Next step…

STEP 2: Send them your content

At this point she is not in “a buyers mindset”, but she is more aware of you, knows who you are more about than just your IG profile, and now that she’s read your info, you could ask for an email in the next coming days. But you can also do what I’m about to show you if you can go even beyond the line of duty(more is always better and without buying intent to start is WAY better).

Optional, but I HIGHLY encourage you do this…

1. She can message me back with help and or more of your articles
2. She doesn’t message me back and I follow up with here 2-3 days after looking to get an email.

STEP 3: Ask for the email

You can follow up with the person in like 2 or 3 days(after they’ve had some time to soak in your content, and are in that “I still need help mode” but have had enough time to think about the help you’ve provided them without you messaging and messaging them.

So now try to send them back to your website or funnel where there is nothing else but focus on getting an email(limit distractions). Example:

Option #2:

If you would like to follow up with this person and send them to another one of your blog posts but with an email pop up, email in the widget section, the content section or whichever way works best for you, then go ahead do so.

That’s pretty much it right there. I use this and it works very well because I don’t just send someone to my site expecting them to buy right away or give me their email address, especially if they don’t know you and have only seen your face once.

One other thing, If you wondering if you can go to someone completely new that’s not following you and do all this, it could but at the same time could not work. The reason I try to avoid this is that you don’t have leverage…

You don’t want to pop up in someone’s Direct Message box(without at least commenting on their post asking to DM you back) because you need to offer your services to them in a less “let me share with you all my content kind of way”.

It can be done, but I try to avoid it.

Secret Tip #2 will come up after the More tips I’ll give away. And in these next tips, you’re going to hear a similar kind of repeat to what I just stated but with more visuals and more specifics.

More TIPS

On the basis of getting a flock of birds, you still need to point them in the right direction once they land right? Have you ever seen a bird land right on top of their meal…Well at times yes, but what happens when they don’t?

Getting more traffic is no different, whether you have a good product/service or not, the same things apply.

Once you have people coming to your Instagram page organically(without ads), you’ll get more people to click on your bio link – and hopefully, you have one by now, but if you don’t go put what you have in mind there or wait because I’m going to show you just that.

You need to use your link via tactically. What I mean by this is that you shouldn’t just post an affiliate link to your product/service, although it does work.

We’re visual by nature, and we love to see videos, so use them to your advantage on the other side of your link(s). Once I click on your link, I want to see a quick image or video. What does this helps your traffic(your people) see what your:

• Blog post
• YouTube Video
• Message

…is going to be about. You can have anything on that landing page, but make sure you make it easy for people, introduce the concept of why they are there with visuals and or video so they don’t always have to read the script.

Where to Send Your Traffic?

Great, you have your link and you know where you want your traffic to end up destination wise, but are you letting your traffic slip away?

It’s beautiful and you’ll probably pat yourself on the back “Yes people are checking out my website/page now”, “they’re following me now”, but this can be your BIGGEST mistake too.

How can you ensure that the traffic you’re getting will buy from you or become a life long customer? You have to think about LTV or Lifetime Value.

What is the Lifetime Value of your Customer? Is it to just send someone to your page, they read your work, watch your video, go to your podcast, etc. etc, or do you want them to follow your work at all times?

You see, once you send traffic to your destination, people are not likely to just check out your future work…

They’re probably following you but are they continuously coming back to the link and checking out more work? Not all the time. So what you should have is an Opt-in page, a Squeeze Page, or a blog post/content post with an opt-in form.

What this does is allow you to capture your audience in your email list so that they are sent emails every time you want to communicate with them. And you can follow up with them about your product/service.

They’ve already learned to trust you enough to put to give you their email, so they are in there to do a couple of things:

• To see what you’re all about
• How you can better serve them
• And how you can help their specific problem

Here’s an example of each way to do this:

1. The landing page opt-in.

Now, if someone places their name and email(it can be just emailed), then I can follow up with my traffic. The great thing about Instagram is that you can get good traffic, but you can also get super targeted traffic(In which I will show you how to do it much faster).

What I accomplished:

• A video
• Pictures
• Got the lead

Do you need fancy landing page software? Not really, and not as a beginner Is my answer. In the beginning, you can get a feel for creating a squeeze page with Free software like Elementor. You’ll get everything to create a landing page right on your website.

And the great thing about using Landing page software directly on your website is that you can keep it there for good without having to use third-party services(Which I’ll show you here in a minute). I’ve personally used Elementor and I have opt-in pages created specifically for my goals.

The second option is using a paid landing page/funnel software service. What this does is allow you to create better-looking landing pages and one that is proven to work better and convert.

The other advantage of having a paid landing page software is that later down the road, it will help you get more sales and scale your business. I definitely recommend that you use them from time to time. Here are some options:

1. Clickfunnels
2. Leadpages
3. Instapage
4. and many more!

I’ve used each one, and for a while now I’ve been using Clickfunnels. With Clickfunnels, you get proven templates, email marketing, a domain, and so much more. Plus, millions of users that are entrepreneurs, small businesses, affiliate marketers, internet marketers, and so many more utilize them.

The other advantage is that if you’re reading this and you don’t have a website, you can use Clickfunnels by itself, and create a business around it. I have a review of Clickfunnels that I believe you should deeply check out. If you’d like to learn more about this funnel software service, go here.

2. The blog post.

Do you have a blog post that you want to send your traffic too? You can utilize images, video, and even just written content so that people can read your post and have an opt in page there too.

Keep in Mind: People Do not usually purchase from you the first time around, it takes the average person 7 times before they do. So getting them into an email list is great. But if you’re falling short of meeting that, utilize your Instagram Direct Message to get in contact with traffic.

If you’d like to have more than one link in your bio you can cover more of your real-estate with a service like LinkTree. What this service does is let you place more than one link in your bio. So you can mix and match, try out different landing page destinations or if you want to do A/B test, you can do so.

I know there can be a hassle of going to people’s direct message box, commenting, liking people’s pictures and all that fun stuff(Yeah right lol), so I have something that can speed up your work without having to do a single thing!

My Latest And Most HONEST Recommendation, Secret Sauce #2

I spent the last bit of the section above on advertising, and I also shared with you My secret go-to sauce #1, and now I want to talk about how to get more traffic with Secret Sauce #2.

What I’m about to share with you will speed up your work so that you can target more people organically, and talk to more people in your Direct Message(DM) so you can implement strategies like Secret Sauce #1 and others I shared before that.

We’re blessed to use free ways of getting traffic to our page and business, and it never amazes me in how many different ways people are losing traffic because they are simply not targeting correctly or setting up their pages accurately.

You can wait for people to follow you on social media but it can take time, you can wait for people to comment on your work and vice versa but that takes so much energy, and for someone to direct message you back or for you to direct message your new followers, it can take sitting in front of your phone or computer for hours in a day(not that it’s wrong, especially if you’re starting out I recommend that).

I’ve had my own success with getting traffic from Instagram, and as of lately I wanted more for one of my web pages, so what I did was take a leap of faith…

I signed up for a Business Platform that has been able to grow my Instagram page, get me more leads and traffic, all while being able to make money from it in the process. Backtrack first…

After about 11 months of trying to grow out my page with no automated system or influencers, I was chipping away day-to-day. I even once turned to those automated bots where you’d have to set it up all yourself, posting times, add the amount of followers per hour and so forth…and get this, I’d have to leave my computer on for it to run.

So after sometime organically growing my page, I started using an automated social media management tool with a dedicated back office team called FueldLeads(FL for short).

Here is the video version of today's presentation: