I grew about 5000 followers on my Instagram in April.
A few months ago I took a little break from Instagram mentally. I think it was the winter cold weather slump but I just didn’t have any effort to give to my feed. It really started to hurt my blog, I saw a dip in my likes, impressions, and followers. I started to feel kinda bummed like I worked so hard for so long, I don’t want to lose all I’ve worked for so far. I took a hard look at my feed, my blog, and myself, and realized it was time to make a change. I really want to grow my influence because I love blogging so much! I love creating content and connecting with my followers. I decided to try some new strategies to grow my Instagram Following. Below are my tips and my story on How I Grew My Instagram Following by 5000 in 1 Month.
Screenshot of my follower growth in April 2019
How to Grow Your Instagram Page by 5000 in 1 Month
Finding Out Why You’re Not Growing
“It’s so hard to grow on Instagram these days!”
There’s nothing more I hate hearing than that. I took a bit of a break earlier in the year from Instagram. I wasn’t creating engaging content. My following took a bit of a dip and my sponsorships did too. Looking back at my feed I can straight up see why my page wasn’t growing, there was no effort. I always believe that Instagram is a bit of a catch – you need to give the perfect amount of effort to start to win at the game.
If you haven’t increased your Instagram following in a few weeks it might be because:
- You’re inconsistent
- Your content isn’t interesting
- Your content isn’t engaging
Let’s find the reason your page isn’t growing:
You’re inconsistent
Maybe you’re like I was a few months ago and your game is kinda week. One thing that people like is consistency and the thing people hate is change. It might feel like setting yourself a schedule is unnatural or restrictive, but it helps you be there for your audience. If you talk about styling clothes for work, you shouldn’t be randomly posting about your son’s lunches. Your content should all tie together. If you’re a lifestyle blogger like me who likes to talk about a little bit of everything, you should pick topics. The magic number of topics is 9. So as you go through your old content and begin to plan your new content, you should begin to find topics. For example, toddler lunches, traveling with kids, mommy and me fashion, blogging as career tips – they all are related to you but can connect to specific audiences. Your followers will know what they can expect and what they won’t be able to find your mommy blog, like muscle growing tips.
Your content isn’t interesting
I hate to say this, but maybe your photos, tone of voice, videos or content just isn’t interesting. Most people take to social media as an escape, they want to see a story or find inspiration for their own lives. Poorly taken pictures of your jeans and t-shirt #ootd or selfies in dirty mirrors just don’t cut it. I like to use this rule – if I don’t want to hang the picture in my fridge, I won’t bother sharing it. In my experience, it’s better to not post than to post anything for the sake of posting it.
The blogging and Instagram community have become so saturated over the past few years. Your content should stand out and be unique to you! Don’t try to copy someone else’s success because it shows.
Your content isn’t engaging
When you’re posting on social media, you’re marketing. The basis of marketing is to create something so exciting with a strong call to action that makes people want to act right away. In our case, when we post on Instagram, we want those posts to excite people enough to follow, like, comment, swipe up, or even purchase through our affiliate links. If your page isn’t growing, it might be because you aren’t giving people a reason to. Ask questions, offer insider tips, or tutorials give your audience something to get excited about.
Geo-Tagging
I did a little test on my posts and found that the location you tag in your post determines the reach of your post. The thing that sucks about living in a rural area, is that you live in a rural area. If you live in a small city, the chance is that there is only a small number of Instagram users checking out that location. When you use bigger city locations, you open up the chances of your posts of being seen from hundreds to tens of thousands. Recently I tagged a few posts in Niagara Falls, NY a city with under 50,000 people. My impressions, likes, and follows were basically nothing. Then I tagged posts in Toronto and Miami, both cities with millions of people, and had my engagement and following from the post-boost right back up!
Engaging
Another thing I hate hearing “I spend 3 hours a day engaging and I’m getting nothing back, no follower growth!”
Let’s think about Instagram like a relationship for a minute. No one wants to spend time in a marriage that has no love. So why are you spending time ‘engaging’ with people on Instagram that you don’t care about? There’s a big difference between leaving meaningful comments and making actual connections and just commenting to grow your pages exposure. If you’re going to only engage to grow your page, you might as well save yourself the hassle.
Check out My Secret Engagement Strategy for Growing My Instagram Following HERE.
Giveaways
There’s no shame in offering a little something extra to your followers. Giveaways and contests are a quick and easy way to help grow your page. You can find different types of giveaways depending on what you’re looking for. The most popular Instagram giveaway is the loop giveaway. Several accounts buy-in and give away a big prize like $1K or a Macbook. The new type of giveaway is sponsored by a huge account or celebrity. They promote it to their followers and in turn grow your page.
To make your giveaway succeed, I recommend posting your best content while the giveaway is live. Because the thing is, they follow you to win the prize, it’s your job to keep them interested. Like I mentioned above you have to market yourself in the best way possible. So be sure to post engaging and interesting content, give these new followers a reason to be interested in you!
Hashtags
Using the right hashtag strategy can boost your posting reach. I’ve found the sweet spot for hashtags to be about 15 hashtags. The thing about hashtags is you need to use the right ones. There are hundreds of posts to help you find the right hashtags to use, but in my opinion, it’s trial and error. Start by creating a few copy and paste hashtags lists that combine different types of tags that directly apply to your post. Then, try them out for a few weeks. See which tags bring more impressions, likes, and followers to your posts.
Check out my Copy and Paste Hashtag List for Fashion and Beauty Bloggers HERE.
Follow Fridays
This was one of my best Instagram follower growth strategies for April! I collaborated with a few of my blogger friends and shared each other’s profiles on our Insta stories. For a while, I forgot about the follow Friday strategy. Follow Fridays can be done any day of the week, it doesn’t just have to be on Friday. With a Follow Friday, you introduce yourself to an audience who has an interest in the type of content you create. It can be really effective if you connect with bloggers that have similar feeds, aesthetic, or blogging topics as your own. You can share each other’s pictures, swap videos or collaborate on a theme – like ‘How to Style a Jean Jacket’.
Feel free to send me a DM on Instagram @monika.boch. I’m always down to arrange a follow Friday with a fellow mommy, style, beauty or travel blogger!
