In her first column for The Gaitpost, Milla shares 4 golden nuggets for growing your Instagram account organically.
Instagram is busy, it’s competitive and it can feel like hard work if you aren’t seeing results, so how do we grow an account and build an engaged community when we’re up against it?
1. Be consistent: There’s no use posting 5 times one week, then going quiet for 2 weeks, this won’t work! The algorithm (pesky mechanics behind Instagram) won’t favour your account if you’re irregular. Always think consistency over frequency. Think about the amount of content you have + the time you have and find a frequency that’s achievable and maintainable.
2. Engage, engage engage: Focus on building a community. Interact with your tribe. If someone comments on your post, take the time to comment back, if someone messages you, message back. Go out and comment on other people’s posts, respond to instagram stories, spark up conversations, be an active player. Engaging with other accounts also lets the algorithm know you have a relationship with that account, this will help your account show up in related and suggested account suggestions.
3. Create useful content: Focus on providing valuable content for your followers, how can you help them? How can you make your page a useful resource? If people save and share your content that’s a strong indicator to the algorithm that your post deserves to be pushed higher in the news feed. Focus on tips, tricks and tutorials….never assume someone knows what you know. Try to motivate, educate and inspire through your content.
4. Mention and be mentioned: The more people mention you, the more visibility your page will have. Sometimes it’s a case of pat my back and I’ll pat yours. Don’t be afraid to tag in your captions and your stories in the hope that they tag you back or repost your content. It’s a tried and tested strategy that really works. Growing your account can be a challenge but if you follow the right techniques you will make real progress.
Look out for part 2 coming next month and in the meantime try some of the above tips and I really hope they help.
Milla @pinkstormsocial
