Do you want to grow your instagram community? Have you struggled with gaining traction or knowing what to post or when? Then you are in the right place! In the post, I will share my top 15 tips for growing your influence on instagram. And if you want to dig deeper with direct mentorship, post prompts, photography tips, and more, then be sure to join my Facebook group to take advantage of my FREE training course! No email list sign up, no gimmicks or hidden fees, just me showing you what I do!
Top 15 Instagram Tips – Part 1
One: Be consistent
Whatever this means for you (once a week, once a day, morning, noon, and night), keep it consistent. Consistent content is going to improve your ability to be seen within Instagram’s algorithms. While I won’t get into teaching the algorithms in this post (that will be in my upcoming free training ), I will recommend you post at least once a day!
Two: Utilize all your hashtag realty
If you were to pay for an ad in printed media, you would be granted so many words. A wise advertiser would work his thoughts into concise, action-oriented directions and use every single word available. So why not use all of your advertising space in hashtags? Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction. You get THIRTY hashtags! You should use as much of those as you possibly can, and no less than twenty every post. Need ideas for helpful hashtags? Feel free to follow me (instagram.com/ambertheblog) and steal my hashtags, join my group for the free training, or study some of your favorite “grammers” for inspiration. You get free advertising. Be sure to use those hashtags!
Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction.
Three: Post your hashtags with your image
You’ve probably seen two types of grammers (that’s the term for people who use the gram, aka instagram). There are those who post their content and hashtags together, and those who post their hashtags in a comment. You can do it either way, but the most effective way to be at the top of the hashtag feed (which is how others will find your content) is to post your tags along with your image. The delay between adding the tags in the comments can be the difference between someone seeing your content or seeing what others have posted!
Four: Offer value
The number one mistake people can make is to use instagram as a marketing tool. Instagram c an be and is a very powerful marketing platform, but it is not by actively marketing that you build a community. Consumers look for products. Communities look for service. A product is the same whether you get it on Amazon, in Wal-mart, or Target. Where do you buy it? What drives your loyalty? The service. The dictionary defines service as the following:
| synonyms: | favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand; |
Wow! That is definitely different than simply marketing a product. What do you offer your community? Position your service, not your products.
Consumers look for products. Communities look for service.
Five: Practice your photography
There’s no getting around it – instagram is a visual community! If you want to get attention, you need to up your photography game. As a retired wedding photographer, I can definitely write way too much on the subject! While I plan on getting more involved and doing a photography workshop during my instagram training, I will keep this portion here brief.
Remember the phrase “shoot in the shade.” Direct lighting is going to be the harshest to view and hardest to correct. Look for shade and indirect lighting or shoot on an overcast day. This is going to get you the softest shadows and the most flattering lighting for just about everything!
Utilize your camera’s brain. Unless you’ve done training on using a camera in manual mode, learning what auto settings are available are going to be your best tool. I specifically purchased my Samsung Note 8 because I liked the options it had as a camera. Get to know everything about your camera and you will inherently learn how to take better photos!
Use apps to improve your photos before uploading. I suggest Facetune, Pixlr Express, Handy Photo, and PicsArt. I’ll show you how to use them in detail in my training! Facetune is great for polishing up portraits, while I use Pixlr for cropping, adding text, and basic color correction. I use Handy Photo for the amazing magic crop feature, as well as making my backgrounds have that studio feel. Seriously, this app has so much power! It’s like Photoshop on my phone. Try them out!
Six: Eliminate ghost followers
While it might really stink to intentionally make your follower count go down, it is actually imperative to building an engaged, organic community. Plants need pruning to grow to their best potential. Your community is the same way. Spam account, ghost followers, or automated accounts that never engage with you are actually harmful to your engagement percentages, which ultimately tells instagram that your content isn’t that interesting to your followers. And then it decides that it won’t be that interesting to new people, too! Yikes! Culling disengaged followers is an imperative step to keeping your community to members who enjoy in what you have to offer.
That’s it for part one of my Fifteen Tips for Instragram Growth! Be sure to subscribe for part two and three, and join my facebook group for the free intensive training to make your instagram rock!
