How to Promote on Instagram Effectively: Boost Your Reach in 2025

Want to learn how to promote on Instagram effectively? Getting your name out on social media has become more difficult in recent years. It seems like it was only yesterday when experts recommended harnessing platforms like Instagram to grow their digital presence. But as this advice became common knowledge, countless brands flocked and flourished in this space.

The result is an environment where new faces on these platforms face an uphill battle to boost their reach. New faces in social media are faced with an uphill battle, while old ones continue to reign supreme in their niches. It almost feels like boosting your reach in such an extremely competitive environment is pointless.

That said, trying and failing multiple times is far better than not trying at all. Your audience can only come to your brand if they know it exists and it’s exactly what they need. If you want to stand out, understanding how to promote on Instagram effectively is essential.  As far as Instagram is concerned, enhancing your Instagram presence boils down to several key points, including using Instagram hashtags strategically.

The Power of Signals

Algorithm updates are largely responsible for the challenges brands face in boosting their reach. One day, your content is on top of your audience’s feed; the next day, it’s nowhere to be seen. Then, you learn too late that an update has rendered some content creation techniques irrelevant or obsolete.

Instagram uses a unique algorithm for each of its five parts: Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, and Search. Each has its own set of signals that determine how an Instagram post will rank.

Upon a closer look, you’ll realize that it comes down to three crucial signals.

• User activity: What does the target user usually view or search for on Instagram?
• User-content author interaction history: How frequently does the user view and interact with the content’s author?
• Content author’s information: What’s the nature of the author and their content?

Understanding these signals is crucial when learning how to promote on Instagram effectively. By analyzing the platform’s algorithm, you can tailor your content to increase its visibility and engagement.

Here’s a scenario: a real estate agent wants to market their properties for sale to Instagram users. Promoting in a visual-first platform naturally requires them to post various photos of their properties, but knowing how viewers interact with such a post also matters. Not all will be interested in the images of a particular property.

Once you have an idea of how your target audience interacts with your content, performing these Instagram tips for real estate agents will be easier. In addition to posting high-quality images and visuals, these Instagram posts should also tell a story to keep users engaged.

Proper use of Instagram’s signals improves key metrics, namely sends per reach. Platform CEO Adam Mosseri revealed this last year as a top signal, measuring the number of people who sent the content to close friends and relatives. Such a performance is relative to the total views the content has received.

Attention Marketing

One advantage Instagram has over other social media platforms is its orientation to visual content. Whereas X (formerly Twitter) leans on short text messages and YouTube on short and long-form videos, Instagram harnesses visuals to grab users’ attention. High-quality images are only one of many forms of visual media.

Despite their limitations compared to other forms of content, visuals shine due to people struggling to focus. Dr Gloria Mark, Chancellor’s professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, stated in an interview that attention spans have been on a downward trend since her team began measuring them in 2004.

The rise of short-form content is another reminder of why knowing how to promote on Instagram effectively matters. Brands must grab their audiences’ attention quickly with visually compelling and distraction-free content.

In the beginning, the average attention span was 150 seconds or two and a half minutes. Fast-forward to 2012, and it dropped to 75 seconds—a 50% decrease. The drop tapered somewhat another five to six years later, with the average at 47 seconds—a 37% decrease.

The consolation is that humans don’t have a worse attention span than goldfish, as many believed at the time. Still, this means that reading a 2,000-word blog post or viewing a one-hour video won’t be as eye-catching. This is already made evident by the domination of short-form content on social media.

Brands and content creators are under pressure to grab their audiences’ attention within seconds. That’s where attention marketing comes into play, and Instagram is the perfect social media platform for it.

Granted that the industry has yet to agree on relevant metrics, it’s safe to say that attention marketing is more viewer-focused than cost-focused. While managing costs is essential, it shouldn’t come at the cost of the opportunity to engage your audience.

Experts agree that minimizing distractions is key to achieving effective attention marketing. Pop-up ads are notorious for this, not just because they disrupt a user’s online session but also because they’re often used to transmit malware.

Visuals that don’t conform to Instagram ad dimensions are also a source of unnecessary distraction. Imagine your call-to-action message being cut off because the visual is too large to view without clicking. Removing these distractions helps direct people’s attention to the Instagram content that they want or need.

Note that distractions in this context shouldn’t be mistaken for distractions purposedly used as legitimate marketing efforts. Catching sight of an ad while multitasking is different from being interrupted by one.

Using the Right Hashtags

Hashtags are the social media equivalent of keywords in search engines. First used in early chat programs like mIRC, they rose to pop culture fame when then-Twitter integrated them in 2007. Instagram adopted them upon its rollout three years later.

That said, hashtags are different from keywords in a number of ways, one of which is how they’re used. Unlike keywords, hashtags are typically a reflection of the user’s emotions in a specific post. 

Using hashtags is an integral part of mastering how to promote on Instagram effectively. They not only help users discover your content but also ensure your posts reach a targeted audience. For example, a post about their keto lunch may carry several hashtags like #FeelingHealthy or #MealOfTheDay.

Using hashtags is an integral part of mastering how to promote on Instagram effectively. They not only help users discover your content but also ensure your posts reach a targeted audience. 

This makes hashtags more personalized, which helps make content resonate with users. You don’t have to look far and wide for successful cases, from Adidas’s #HereToCreate to Apple’s #ShotOniPhone. Adding these makes content feel more human, a reminder that behind every brand is a human (or group of humans) expressing themselves.

No marketing expert worth their salt would tell you that coming up with the right hashtags would be easy. After all, the audience decides what’s viral and what’s meh, not brands. As such, some trial and error is required here.

The good news is that brands can find the hashtags they need among influencers. These personalities attract a substantial following (at least 10,000 followers) for being relatable or experts on a subject. Study their content and choice of hashtags and determine if they apply to your content.

Another way of searching for suitable hashtags is with specialized tools. Some of them tap into the platform’s hashtag data, measuring metrics like a hashtag’s popularity over time and ease of ranking.

Cleverness may have its merits, but hashtags are usually straightforward. You’d want your audience to catch on to the hashtags fast; otherwise, they’d be less inclined to use them. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand what #ShotOniPhone means.

While Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, promotional content often uses three to five for a more focused campaign. A good idea is to use one of any of the following types based on the content:

Hashtags can be placed on the post caption or the first comment, though there isn’t any difference in engagement between them. The only advantage of preferring the latter is to keep the caption clean and readable.

Collaborations with Influencers

The latest State of Influencer Marketing report forecasts that influencer marketing is set to grow to a USD$24-billion global industry by the end of 2024. Compared to USD$1.7 billion eight years prior, the 14-fold spike in its market value speaks volumes about its necessity among brands on social media.

Positioned between brands and consumers, influencers generally provide their insights on certain topics. Whether for their tongue-in-cheek approach to content or having a relatable personality, influencers promote engagement among their audiences.

Collaborating with influencers is one of the best ways to learn how to promote on Instagram effectively. These partnerships allow brands to leverage the influencer’s audience, creating new opportunities for engagement and exposure.

It’s no surprise that more brands and even content creators are investing in collaborations with influencers on various platforms. Instagram takes this a step further with its Collabs feature, which allows users to co-author a post. The result is that their followers see the post and the collaborating users’ handles on their respective pages.

Thanks to this feature, even small-time brands and content creators can boost their reach if they team up with their larger counterparts. Coupled with quality content, a collaboration can show how well brands and content creators work together. It may even result in your followers demanding future collaborations with that brand or influencer.

Collaborations can be in the form of a post or livestream.

For all its potential, brands and influencers have to be transparent about the terms of the collaboration. Interviews with influencers and influencer intermediaries show that the two parties see the value of collaborations, often classified as sponsored content, differently.

• Brands can be fixated on achieving maximum return on investment. As such, they might ask influencers to promote their goods to the point of restricting the latter’s creative freedom. It’s also bad optics for the influencer’s impartiality.
• Influencers struggle with determining their fees, and disagreements over costs can end a collaboration before it begins. Also, being pressured to achieve collaboration goals might motivate them to resort to unethical means like buying fake followers.

Successful collaborations are built on trust, so both parties should be reasonable in their objectives and efforts. This also applies when the partnership involves fellow brands and content creators.

Always Post Something New

Instagram favors users who post new, original content every time over those who don’t. This approach was made clear in April when it introduced a major update that replaces reposts with new content in the user’s recommendations. It also dissuades aggregation or reposting content from other creators, whether or not due credit is given. To stay competitive, brands must prioritize creativity and consistency when determining how to promote on Instagram effectively.

The reason for this isn’t hard to understand: content creators toil over every post or piece of content they make. Losing reach to a content aggregator disheartens the original author and discourages them from producing new content. This is Instagram’s way of rewarding content creators for their creativity.

Repurposed content and content published on other platforms also qualify as “original” in Instagram’s eyes. For example, if you published original video content on TikTok, you can repost it on Instagram (remove the TikTok watermark before uploading). Snippets from articles or blog posts can be recreated into eye-catching infographics (don’t forget to place sources).

Collaborations are also a great way to produce new, original content.

Wrapping Up

Boosting your reach on social media platforms like Instagram may have gotten harder but not impossible. People love seeing and learning something new on the Internet every day and reward its creators with due attention. They may not be ready to buy from your brand right now, but they know your name now. 

That’s a good start. By applying these strategies, you’ll not only learn how to promote on Instagram effectively but also establish a lasting presence on the platform.