Last Updated on September 13, 2024
Most people in this world own at least a few social media accounts to stay connected and communicate with their friends and loved ones. One of the most popular of these social media platforms is Instagram, a renowned application that boasts over 500 million active daily users.
Through its vast network of accounts that are owned by millions of people worldwide, it contains a plethora of content and information that flows around the world. Getting followers on Instagram is also pretty smooth and seamless, usually involving just a click of a button.
As such, it has also become a highly valued visual marketing platform which is utilized by everyone from a local store in your area to some of the world’s biggest multinational corporations.
To effectively utilize and promote your company’s, or business’, Instagram account, there is a need to engage new audiences and focus on getting followers on Instagram that might be interested in your products. This can be the start of a loyal following who closely pursue, or at least show a modicum of interest in, your listings.
How To Steal Competitors’ Followers on Instagram
1. Stay Visible
One of the most basic ways to improve the visibility of your business account on Instagram is to spread the word as far as possible.
This leads to greater advantages in the future as it can be a very powerful tool. Your business’ Instagram account does not just let you advertise your products but also enables people whom you have attracted (also known as your “followers”) to buy them directly from the platform.
Thus having a large following is an essential step to a successful exposure of your Instagram account. One of the main ways of doing so is to attract and eventually convert your competitor’s followers to your side. Getting followers on Instagram can be a challenging process, as not all people are going to be interested in the products that you may have listed.
However, generating exposure with the followers of a company which engages in products in the same field as you can speed up that process considerably.
2. Be Eligible as an Instagram Seller
To be eligible to use your Instagram account as a seller, you must meet the requirements set out by the company’s “Shopping On Instagram” policies. A few of them are listed below:
- One of the first things to do is to check whether Instagram supports setting up a business account in your country. There are still some markets where the company is yet to release this feature.
- Set up an active Instagram business account for your company’s products.
- Your business account must be connected with a corresponding Facebook page that has been approved to sell on the Facebook platform. It might also be necessary to be an admin on the said page.
- Your Instagram business account should primarily be selling physical products, preferably ones that you already have in-stock.
- Your business account must also be connected to a Facebook Catalog.
3. Use Third Parties
The easiest way to steal your competitor’s following and attract them over to your side is to give them an option to shop at your channel that is infinitely easier in terms of accessibility and likeability.
Either through repeated orders or word-of-mouth, once your reputation starts growing, and your channel is considered trustworthy, it will automatically start generating more traffic to your product listings.
This will lead to an increase in purchases, the flow of revenue, and getting followers on Instagram that are interested to peruse your catalog of products. However, while these points may sound easy, it is very hard to build a business account’s reputation from scratch.
Fortunately, there are a number of tools available on the market that allow you to effectively manage your Instagram business account and Facebook Catalog. You can utilize Facebook’s own Catalog manager which will allow you access to performance metrics of your page and related hits from your Instagram account.
Or you can also opt for a third-party online marketplace manager that allows you to seamlessly tag and link products from your Facebook product catalog to your Instagram business profile.
An example of such a third-party e-commerce platform for managing your online marketplaces is Shopify. Being an external retail point-of-sale system, it makes it easier for sellers to integrate and manage their product listings across different marketplaces.
This is especially useful in the case of your company’s Instagram business account that also includes links to your Facebook account. Since you can integrate your Shopify store with both your Instagram as well as Facebook business channels, you can keep track of all managerial tasks from one single platform.
This can help in reducing your burden as you can spend less time overcoming management-related tasks and focus more on the visual marketing side of your operation, which is the main appeal of Instagram in the first place.
