Instagram is among the most used social media platforms across the globe. In India, Instagram has over 100 million users, making it one of the most engaged platforms with its share of influencers with thousands of followers. To become an influencer, you need to be active on the platform and make sure your content is unique.
Here are a few lesser-known tricks that can help you stand out from the crowd and put you on the path of becoming an influencer:
1. Switch to a creator profile
If you are still using a personal profile on Instagram, then it's time you switched to a creator profile. A creator profile offers several extra features over a personal or business profile. These features include a smarter look for your profile, access to insights, options for branded content and the option to use promotion payments for advertising.
To make the change, open your profile and click on the menu button on the top and open settings. In settings, go to account and tap on the switch to creator profile to activate it and set it up.
2. Create your personalised hashtag
One of the tricks you should employ in your posts is to use a personalised hashtag. Personalised hashtags ensure that your content is found on Instagram by a single click or search of the hashtag. The hashtag works as your tagline that would make you stand-out from others and works in tandem with other general hashtags to help other users discover more posts from your account.
3. Use your story archives
The archive feature has been around for a while now but few users know or use it. With the archive feature, Instagram keeps all your story posts saved in the app for easy access later. You can access these by opening your profile, tapping on the menu button and then selecting the archive option. It shows all of your posted stories and even gives you the option to share the photos, save, promote or share them as a post directly. You can use this feature to make a post of your story that sees high engagement to get more views on your profile.
4. Set up quick replies
One of the best tricks to grow on Instagram is to be active on the app and interact with the comments and messages you get on the platform. Typing individual replies to each post or person is time-consuming and hectic. Instead of doing that, you can use quick replies to create text replacement shortcuts, so it's easier to post standard replies or comments.
Open settings of your profile and click on creator and then open quick replies. Here you need to type in the full message and create a text shortcut to it – the full message could be "Thank you for the appreciation" and the shortcut could "tyfa”. Every time you type "tyfa", it will replace the text with a full message in Instagram comments/inbox.
5. Creative Profile description
Your profile is your identity on the platform and you need to make sure it is as unique as your content without looking tacky. To do this, you need to be creative with your profile description. The first thing would be to use an online custom font typing website such as http://igfonts.io or http://lingojam.com. You can type in your profile text on these websites, choose the font you prefer and copy the text in the custom font. Next, you need to paste the font in your profile text and it would carry the same font, making your profile look creative and stylish.
6. Hide hashtags for a cleaner look
Hashtags are essential for your posts as they help your profile reach out to a broader audience by making it discoverable. However, long multiple hashtags below each post do not look very clean and can also be a turn-off for some.
Instead of showing all your hashtags in your post, you can hide them with a simple trick to get a cleaner look on your posts. After typing in the post text, press return to move to the next line and just put a full stop in the line. Repeat the steps to put a full stop in the next line 5 times, and after that, type or paste your hashtag list.
The post would now show your text description, followed by three dots with an option to show more —only if someone clicks on the show more links, will they see the hashtags. Your content will still be discoverable and your posts will have a minimal consistent look.
(Karan Bajaj is a senior tech journalist based in Delhi.)
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