How to Optimise Instagram Accounts to Gain Followers [Infographic]

Optimising Instagram accounts is more than just giving yourself a pretty profile picture and adding your website link. In fact, optimising Instagram accounts is a whole speciality in itself, with many people making a living from doing this full time.

But that’s not to say you can’t do it yourself! Before you start to plan, create and post content to Instagram, you should think about optimising your account to increase the chance of people following when they come across it.

It’s all well and good having top-notch content to bring people in, but if you don’t have an account that looks attractive and worth the follow, what’s the point?

What’s more, a well-optimised Instagram account can also help with reach! By including industry- and niche-specific keywords in your bio and name, you have a chance of your account appearing when your target audience is searching for said keywords.

When you optimise Instagram accounts, there are six main areas you need to think about:

Account Handle

When possible, this should be the full name of your business or brand. For added brand recognition, you should aim to have the handle uniform across all active social media channels.

Profile Image

If your account is for a brand, the profile image should be a high-quality image of your logo, on a contrasting background so it stands out. But if you’re a single person – someone like a YouTuber or influencer, the best option for your profile image is to have a photograph of yourself. A face allows potential followers to connect with you on a more human level – something that isn’t usually possible with just a logo.

Name

As well as including your name (or your brand name) here, you should also include a keyword about your account. For example, my Instagram is where I share my poster designs, so my name includes the phrase “Poster Designs.”

When people are searching for this specific topic on Instagram, my account has more chance of being shown to them, because the keyword is included in my name.

Bio

You should also be including keywords in your bio too. It should be simple, eye-catching, and provide at-a-glance reasons why people should follow your account. Think about the content you’ll be sharing and the industry you’re in, and use this to influence how you write your bio.

Profile Link

There’s a good chance that you want your target audience to do something outside of Instagram. This is where the bio link comes in. Because you only get one bio link, you can use a service like Taplink to create an external “landing page” with multiple links. This is perfect if you’ve got more than one thing to promote.

Story Highlights

You don’t necessarily need story highlights, but if you want to provide extra context about you or your brand, it’s a good idea to pin these informative stories to your page. Make sure to include high-quality covers too!

In the infographic below, you can see each of the points above linked to the respective section on your Instagram account.

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