So you want to know how to go viral on Instagram. Well, viral content gets significantly more engagement than your regular posts usually do. But going viral can be hit and miss if you don't have a proper strategy in place.
Therefore for this article, I created an ultimate field-tested guide for how to go viral on Instagram in 7 easy steps. Now you can apply my years of experience and research in a matter of minutes.
Going viral on Instagram means getting abnormal amounts of traffic to your profile and posts.
Doing it consistently increases your trust score on Instagram, making the algorithm soften inflicted limitations and boosting your chance to build momentum.
A post has gone viral on Instagram when it has a significant rise in both reach and engagement compared to the average engagement rate of the Instagram account (also called an engagement spike). What has gone viral will go viral again. Not loop infinitely, but usually a minimum of few times too.
BONUS TIP: Therefore, don't be afraid to reuse or re-purpose your older viral posts. Neil Patel does it up to 6 times per year.
Momentum on Instagram means continuously getting large amounts of traffic to your profile and posts, making you grow like crazy.
Momentum builds up when you consistently post great content that surpasses your account's average engagement rate. That leads to:
What's a sign of momentum building? A significant increase in Other traffic to your content.
Traffic from Other in your post insights indicates people saw your content through:
- DMs;
- Mentions;
- Explorer page;
- Other websites;
- A browser, computer, or a tablet (outside of the app).
If my repost page results from above didn't astonish you, continue reading to change your mind.
Owning a repost page is the perfect way to get the hang of Instagram and to understand what content is viral and highly consumed on the platform in your niche. You can also shoutout your other niche pages with it later on.
If you're creating a brand new page with the sole purpose of reposting, you can later transform it into a brand or even into a personal page.
So basically—easy growth, with the opportunity to test and learn about what works, because you don't have to spend time creating content.
If you understand what going viral means and how momentum works, the following steps will show you how to achieve viral status on Instagram.
To understand what viral content is on Instagram, you need to be well informed on what makes your followers tick, what their interests are, and the type of content they interact with the most.
That is why having insight into your (ideal) target audience is crucial. The easiest way to understand your audience is to create a customer persona.
A customer or marketing persona clearly defines your ideal audience so you can quickly determine their interests.
Your persona should include:
For Instagram, it's a must to include the type of content they like to consume and the Instagram accounts they follow.
With this research completed, you’ll understand what content is relevant to your audience.
site:instagram.com -inurl:/p your_niche_or_keyword
I additionally recommend you check whom those accounts are following or whom Instagram shows in their "Suggested for You" section. Which you can find by pressing the dropdown button—located to the right of the follow button.
When you post on Instagram, the algorithm ranks your content by how much engagement it gets in the first few hours.
For example, if you post a photo and it gets 2x the regular amount of likes in the first hour, Instagram will boost your photo out to a lot more people. It will rank (show up) higher in people's feeds, appear on the explore page and maybe even appear in the top posts on hashtags or locations that you used.
Therefore the best time to post is when your audience is the most active.
If you're using an Instagram Business or Creator profile, you can see your audience activity throughout the day in your account insights. Time is displayed locally within the app.
Creating content? Or reposting? Look for niche repost accounts, because they usually grow off viral content, making it easy to find what's viral in your niche.
We need to find content that is visually striking, thought-provoking, memorable, or highly shareable. Since content that has proven to be viral—can go viral again, and we want to use this to our advantage.
But how do I know if a post is truly viral? Look out for eye-catching (clickbait) thumbnails and for posts with at least 3x engagement than the average post on that account.
If you want to find viral repost pages—look for accounts in the 10k to 100k followers range.
Why? Repost accounts above 10k followers usually have a high engagement rate. And how do I know that? Because getting to that follower count through content alone isn't easy
But why below 100k? Pretty simple—accounts below 100k don’t have a large loyal following, so they mainly go viral from great content being pushed by the algorithm. Making it easy to consistently find big engagement spikes and so viral posts.
If you plan to download posts for either reposting or inspiration, I recommend using this free Chrome extension It lets you download any post on Instagram in a single click, and makes life easier for all Instagram marketers.
Want to do it on your mobile device? Here are a few apps:
➡Instant Save (Apple)
➡Instake (Android)
Even if you are a content creator, you can still include reposts to save time and to increase your engagement rate! But don't forget to start slowly. You want to gradually increase the repost number and watch how your audience reacts to your new content because you don't want to stuff your followers with something that's neither interesting nor' yours.
1) Find a viral post matching your niche and vision
2) Download it, delete post data
Why must you delete post data? Instagram records image and video data after a post is uploaded. So, this step is necessary if you don’t want Instagram to limit your post’s reach. You can do it by re-rendering the video or resaving the image in paint since it will delete previous data recorded by Instagram making the post looking like your very own to the algorithm.
If you want to do it on mobile I can recommend InShot. You can download the app here for Apple, and here for Android users.
3) Caption it. Credit the creator
You can try reusing the same caption from the original post or adding minor adjustments to the caption. Easiest way to find out what works the best by testing it for yourself.
4) Post (or even better, schedule it!)
Schedule your posts ahead of time to ensure consistent high-quality content.
How to schedule your content? Facebook Creator Studio.
Don't know how to use it? Well, check out this guide by Facebook.
If scheduling for a week or more—I highly recommend you first download all the posts and captions. Then afterward use an app like Preview to plan your feed before you schedule.
5) Review what went viral and post more of that!
A great Instagram caption adds meaning, entertains your audience, shows your brand’s personality, and/or drives people to take action.
Caption limits currently are 2,200 characters in length. Want to avoid getting punished by the algorithm? Use only up to 30 hashtags. I also recommend you add them as a comment for a cleaner look, and only use hashtags in your caption to add context to your post.
I wrote a full guide on how to write good Instagram captions, but including it here would make this article way too long, rendering it unreadable for many.
So, if you want to learn how to write captions that make people engage, and convert them to followers, check out my extensive guide here.
I've been testing hashtag strategies since 2016 and there are numerous ways for getting them right. Now I'll share one of the easiest growth hacks that don't get talked about a lot, but takes no time whatsoever, and has been working for me and my clients since the beginning of my Instagram marketing days:
1) Go into your Explorer feed
2) Find a viral post that is close to your content
3) Copy the hashtags and try them out!
Just don't forget, your post needs to be viral as well since the hashtags can't do their magic without highly consumable content.
Post didn't go viral in 36 hours? Test another set from another post!
BONUS TIP: If you want to get better results, try reusing hashtags from accounts with smaller and similar follower counts.
How to repurpose social media content by Neil Patel
Instagram engagement rate calculator
Instagram post downloader (Chrome extension)
Instagram post downloader—Regrammer (Apple) (Android)
Instagram post downloader—Instant Save (Apple)
Instagram post downloader—Instake (Android)
How to schedule your content using Facebook Creator Studio
Instagram feed planner—Preview
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May 12, 2024
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