Instagram: How to create awesome content, and increase your followers.
This isn’t your typical “10 Instagram Marketing Tips to Make People ❤ Your Brand” type of blog post. If that’s what you’re looking for turn away now. For those of you who have stayed — awesome! I can promise you after reading this top to bottom, you will be further along your path to Instagram mastery. I’ve read countless articles with titles similar to above, many have been useful, many have been awful, but none have provided a range of comprehensive strategies showing you how to:
- Build the foundations of a great profile.
- Use techniques to produce high quality content.
- And finally, equip tactics to reach an audience and thus increase your followers.
The blog itself is split into those three sections. I’ve chosen this format as it’s harder to successfully do C without A and B in place. Pick and choose strategies that suit you best. Some are simple, but some are hidden gems — I’ve provided resources to help you use them successfully.
This article is primarily for an audience who want to boost their following without paid strategies such as; sponsored posts, product placements, paid shoutouts, or giveaways — it can be done!
Let’s get into it!
Foundations of a great profile:
- Decide upon your niche: Look at examples of profiles within your niche to understand common characteristics and find inspiration. Keep it specific, it’s not enough to be “photography”, your niche should be “photography of luxurious travel destinations” or “photography of delicious desserts”. You need to evoke strong emotions within the people that land on your profile. Some people really love dessert — If they trust your profile to post stunning pics of dessert, they will be inclined to give you a follow. Alternatively, very few people love dessert, and architecture, and nature, and coffee etc, they can’t connect. Get creative with your niche, stick to it, and be brilliant at it. Here is proof this works: @craptaxidermy, @hotdudeswithdogs.
- Post photos that are consistent to that niche: Clearly communicate your niche to your audience, it should be identifiable at first glance. For example, if your niche is fashion, don’t post low-quality photos of you and your friends dressing up before a night out — this confuses people, is this just another personal account or not?
- Make your username Instagram-search friendly: Notice that when you search for people on Instagram, it takes an exact match of the letters you have typed in. For example, it would be more effective to use @london_hawk than @hawk_london, due to “London” being a more popular search term than “hawk”.
- An enticing bio: Your bio is the first thing anyone reads when they land on your profile, make good use of it… and for goodness sake — make it professional! Don’t attack your audience with excessive amounts of irrelevant emojis, it’s unprofessional. Keep it neat and concise. Remember to include the purpose of your account.
- A cohesive feed: Take a moment now to have a look at your feed… Done? How does it look? What’s the overall feeling you get? I ask because so many people neglect the layout of their profile. This is what people see when they first click on your name! You don’t want a mish-mash of clashing colours. Place importance on the overall look of your feed. Perhaps you use a harmonious colour palette. Perhaps every middle photo is a quote. Experiment with patterns. A great example of colour-coordination: @helloemilie.
Techniques for a visually engaging profile:
- High quality photos: Unless your niche doesn’t require it, you should never post content that is blurry/ugly. Never. Low quality photos = just another mediocre Instagram profile, of which there are millions, it will be impossible to stand out.
- Tiled photos: This is when you split one photo into three or more “tiles” that give a complete photo when posted in a row. You can create your own tiled photos using the mobile app Tile Pic. One limitation is that you’ll need to post future photos in close threes so the tiles stay in a row. See an example here:
- Tell a story: This can be super engaging if done well. People love to see progression, it entices your audience to look for the other photos in the collection. Anything you build/create (a painting, a desk, a movie) could be posted in chronological order, the preparation, the process, and the final product. Tell your story!
- Quotes: This isn’t anything new, but I wanted to provide a free resource you can use to quickly create your own professional looking quotes — Canva. Be sure to add your logo if you have one (that being said, people usually would rather see awesome photos.).
- Unsplash: If you’re struggling to find a new photo to post, you could head over to Unsplash. This website has a huuuge collection of absolutely free to use (creative commons) super high quality photos.
- Row of photos with a similar theme: Similar to the tiled-photos technique above, but instead of splitting one photo, you post a row of photos of a similar theme. Check it out:
Engage with your audience and increasing your followers:
- Follow/unfollow: A good tactic to use when you’re starting out, but not sustainable. You should be aiming to create a community of people that identify with, and support your account… First search for accounts within your niche who have a high number of followers. Then (and this is gold), follow ~50 profiles that leave likes and comments and engage with that account’s content. If they follow you back, you’ve just gained a follower with behaviour inclined towards engagement. This is important for IG’s new algorithms. Use the free Followers+ mobile app to identify and unfollow profiles that don’t follow you back. You generally shouldn’t have a higher following than follower count as it looks desperate, but it’s forgivable in early days.
- Shoutout 4 Shoutout!: This is arguably the most effective free strategy you can use to boost your following, and seriously underused by smaller accounts! Search for profiles with a similar target audience and a similar or higher follower count using hashtags related to your niche. This article has an in-depth tutorial on how to use S4S effectively, with examples of types of posts for shoutouts.
- Hashtags: Use hashtags relevant to your niche. It’s better to use slightly less popular tags as it increases your chances of being within the top posts. A TrackMaven study discovered that engagement is highest with 11 or more hashtags. A little trick is to comment these hashtags under the photo once it has been posted to keep it neat. I also came across this technique which is useful to hide hashtags (it doesn’t hide hashtags on desktop).
- Hashtags created by “big-players”: Several large profiles curate all their content from smaller accounts. People tag their photos using hashtags created by these “big-players”, and they then stand a chance of being regrammed and featured. One example would be @designsponge who have several hashtags they have created.
- Effective captions: Captions should be used with the purpose of engaging with your audience. Simple as that. Encourage your followers to interact and leave a comment sharing a story or tagging their friend. Captions along the lines of “Had the best pizza yesterday. Where is the best pizza you’ve ever had?” or “Tag someone you’d eat this pizza with!” work wonders. Another technique is the “double-tap if you think XYZ” caption, as it can boost likes.
- Frequency of posts: I’ve read over and over again the best frequency to post is three times a day. I’m not saying this is incorrect, but I don’t think it’s realistic for many accounts. Unfortunately they try anyway and the quality of their content suffers. You should be posting as often as possible, whilst being able to consistently keep to a good standard. Quality beats quantity.
- Join Instagram Facebook groups: These are some excellent communities. Use them to ask any questions you have and to engage with other Instagrammers. Join discussions regarding what tips and tricks have worked for who. My favourite groups are: Instagram Marketing Mastermind, Instagram Posse, Going 0 to 50,000 on Instagram.
Case Study I (@homies_app):
I came across this profile when they commented on one of my posts — I was super impressed. It’s unique. It’s rare to see this level of story-telling on Instagram. Their profile lays out the step-by-step journey of their startup, from the formation of the idea in their first uploaded post, to the stage they’re at now. They’re bringing their audience along with them for the ride.
If you want a better understanding of how you can use Instagram to tell a story, and look at a superb example of how to use Instagram’s row layout to create a beautiful profile, check them out → @edinburgh_homies.
Case Study II (@hustlegrindco):
The Hustle & Grind account is a great example of how to leverage the followers of other accounts with shoutouts, and use the use of engaging captions.
Case Study III (@helloemilie):
I’ve added this profile simply because it’s stunning… You might pick up a couple tips regarding what makes visually stunning content.
That’s about it! The essential things to remember:
- Strike a balance between high quality content, and strategy to reach an audience. Your content could be awesome, but if nobody is seeing it, that quality doesn’t mean anything.
- You need to stand out. There are far too many mediocre accounts out there, and you need to be remarkable. People need to go onto your profile, and make a remark about you — something you do different or better than the standard profile. Search for that thing!
- Stay true to your niche, be consistent, and look professional. There should be no doubt in your audiences mind the purpose of your account.
- Interact with the Instagram community, and create a tribe of dedicated followers you engage with on a daily basis! You only get out what you put in. Spread some love and some love will come back your way. Like photos, leave genuine comments, and follow profiles that impress you.
These tactics will put you on your way to achieving your follower goal, but it’s important to remember there is no silver bullet. You can’t expect to blow up after posting nine photos. Getting a large following takes patience, and you must be prepared to put in the work… but I know you can do it. Good luck fellow Instagrammers!
Thanks for reading! If you found this post useful, I would truly appreciate it if you hit the little green heart in the bottom left, it helps other people see the article too.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you. I’ll be posting more content like this in the coming weeks, follow me on medium if you’re interested :)
