Grow Your Instagram

Grow Your Instagram

You have decided that you want to grow your presence on Instagram. Maybe you want to make more friends, expand awareness of your business or elevate your personal brand. I have been working on my business growth on Instagram for about three years now and here are some things that have worked well for me. Unfortunately there is no super fast way to effectively grow your Instagram community, like most things in life worth having, they take time and effort.

Authenticity

I try to share my world through Instagram and while I do love curated content I also like to share content from my everyday days. I do the same with my captions for my images, some are fluffy and some are deep real emotions. Through this mix of sharing I have made some really great friends. If you are a more traditional business you can still share less edited content. Believe it or not, the people following your feed want to know the behind the scenes of your profession as much all the pretty details that make you the expert. Sharing many facets of your life/business keeps things interesting and allows meaningful relationships to form. 

Engagement

All social media is a two way street. You need to be dedicated to posting and sharing as much as you need to dedicate your time to interacting with others. If you find social media overwhelming just choose one or two platforms to focus your time on, you will be able to create much more meaningful relationships. When posting on your own feed ask questions and for feedback from your community, when they respond in the comments, continue the conversation. Take part in the conversations of your community as well and if someone has posted something relevant to your business, repost it to your feed. The same applies if someone has tagged you in a post. 

Consistency

Choose a schedule for posting to your feed and try to maintain it. Maybe you can only post three times a week or maybe you can post three times a day, either way people will begin to look for your content and you don't want to let your community down. Save time and organize content by collecting and creating a large portion of content in one day, for the month, that you can later share throughout the month. 

Collaborate

Working with other people who compliment your work or are within your industry is a great way for both parties to generate interest about their businesses. Work together to develop creative content that will benefit both parties and when sharing the content be sure to tag and talk about everyone involved in the project. 

Influencer/Creator

Social Influencers and Creators are looking for opportunities to work with brands and businesses who match their personal interests. They work to create content through personal experience with your products, service or business and then share it with their audience in a storytelling manner. This is the new way to advertise your business and provides you an opportunity to connect with the consumer on a very personal level, allowing them to experience your brand from a friends perspective, thus growing your community very organically. To learn more about working with me, check out my ambassador page here. 

Techniques You Can Apply Today 

Hashtags 

Save time by creating a list or lists of hashtags you would like to use on your posts, then every time you post, go into your notes and copy and paste your hashtag list into your caption. This will ensure consistency. Then spend a little time connecting with posts that have similar hashtags as the post you just created.

Location

Including your location in your feed posts and Instagram Stories, will make it easier for new people in your area to find you. If you are travelling, posting your location provides you with an opportunity to connect with an entirely new community. 

I hope my past experience on Instagram will save you time and help you to take your page where you want it to go. Most importantly, this sharing gig is supposed to be fun. Don't get caught up on numbers of followers and likes, focus on the really awesome people you have the opportunity to connect with and everything will fall into place. 

I would love to hear from you, connect with me on Instagram below or send me an email heatherlapier@gmail.com. 

xoxo, Heather