Wednesday, September 21, 2016

How I Gained 2,000 Instagram Followers & Doubled My Engagement In One Month ♥

Instagram is by far my favourite social media platform. It's what wakes me up in the morning and what puts me to bed at night, the beautiful images shared on there and the sense of community keep me interested and excited to see what will appear on my feed.

As a blogger, growing my social media presence is a very important aspect of my work and for the past month now I've been trying to grow my Instagram organically, and thankfully I've had some success with this, gaining 2,000 new followers in the past month and passing the 7,000 follower mark. My Instagram is @fiandtylerlee for anyone reading this who's curious about my account.

However, when it comes to Instagram, the number of followers you have isn't everything. I've come across accounts with 10,000+ followers but with very low engagement, getting 100 or less likes on pictures and very little comments, and for me, Instagram is all about engagement and community. So, as well as growing my followers I also wanted to grow my engagement, and thankfully that's gone very well for me too, with my pictures going from an average of 150+ likes and a few comments to 300+ likes and 50+ comments on pictures, doubling my engagement if you will.

So, I thought I would share how I've grown my Instagram organically, for anyone else who's trying to grow theirs too. There aren't any special secrets, just tips and tricks that have really paid off for me. I hope they'll be useful to others too.


My Instagram feed - bright, light and full of what I love in life

Keep it consistent. My Instagram is very personal. I share pictures of my boys, my photography and lots of things I love on there. I don't use it for promotional purposes, unless something will fit in well on my gallery without sticking out like a sore thumb.

For example, I'm happy to share pictures of my boys wearing clothes that were sent to us for a collaboration, but a household item we may be sent for review on the blog, such as a vacuum cleaner, wouldn't look natural on my feed so I don't share things like that on my Insta. Basically, I keep everything on topic and don't post anything that would look far-fetched and out of sorts on my feed.

Have a theme. The most successful Instagram accounts all seem to have a theme, and although mine never really did, for the past month I've been trying to establish one by focusing on my boys, my photography and bright, beautiful flowers. 

I try to post just three times a day and my first post of the day is always a nature/flower picture with a 'good morning' greeting and then my other two posts are usually photography, my boys or anything I love and want to share. I think my theme is very 'me' and identifiable to my personality and my blog theme too and I think it's good to have everything tie in together and be representative of me and what I love.


My picture of Beau's 4 month update as a top post in three of the tags I used in my picture description
Post bright, good quality pictures. All the pictures I share on my Instagram are my own, apart from the daily feature I do every second day for mine and Hayley from Sparkles and Stretchmarks new Insta community #themagicineveryday. I'm very into my photography, but you don't have to be the best photographer to have good quality images on your Insta gallery. 

The brightness tool on Instagram itself is great for making pictures lighter, but my favourite app for sprucing up pictures that I want to post is Snapseed, which is free. The brush tool for increasing exposure works really well and helps to make pictures light and bright.

Engage with your followers and those you follow. It's 2016, everyone's busy, I get it, but, if you don't engage with people and show an interest in their pictures or in what they say to you, then they're going to give up engaging with you altogether and may eventually unfollow you too. Sometimes when I have a free moment I go through my most recent likes, click onto those people's profiles and give them a few likes and comments too.

I also make sure to go through my live feed throughout the day and like some pictures there too. For the past month I've also begun replying to each comment I receive on my pictures too as I think it's nice to show people you appreciate their compliments on your pictures.

Hashtags, hashtags, hashtags. This is the most important element to getting your images seen on Instagram and something which I had been slacking on before. The more hashtags you use, the more your picture will be seen by different people. Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per picture, so I always put three or four in my picture description and the rest as the first comment.

However, it's important to know your niche and not spam hashtags that have no relevance to your pictures. I have three sets of hashtags I use for each of my photo themes - nature/flowers, photography and my sons and for the past month my pictures are getting into the 'top posts' section of these hashtags, meaning they may be seen first by everyone who clicks onto that hashtag.

A recent picture of my boys got into the top posts for the hashtag #brotherlylove, a hashtag with over 1,350,000 pictures. I was amazed. My image is the one on the bottom left and I've noticed that my pictures are appearing as 'top posts' for a lot of the hashtags I use now.

I try to use a mixture of very popular, medium use and niche, lesser used hashtags so that my pictures are seen by a lot of different audiences and this method has been working well for me.

Join a comment pod. I recently joined the Instagram Posse Facebook group and was able to fill out a form to request to join their group for setting up and joining in with comment pods. Comment pods are a group of 14 people maximum, who converse via DM on Instagram and share the pictures they'd like some love on from the group. I've found some lovely new Instagram accounts to follow from my pods and the support we all give each other is lovely.

Plus, the Instagram algorithm gives more weight to comments rather than likes, so basically, the more comments your pictures get, the better chance it has of being seen - when you use hashtags of course.

Follow people within your niche. Deciding your blogging/Instagram niche is a must when it comes to choosing the people you want to follow. The people I follow on Instagram are mostly bloggers, parents/grandparents, photographers and nature lovers. I find that when I follow these people and they see that my gallery features something they're also interested in, that they're more inclined to follow back. 

I follow back a lot of the people who follow me but not all, I'm selective as I only want to see pictures that interest me on my Insta feed (personally I can't stand accounts that just post memes, quotes or dark, blurry pictures). You'll find that a lot of people who follow you that you don't follow back may then unfollow you and while that's annoying I say good riddance as I only want people to follow me if they're genuinely interested in my pictures, not just for a follow. 

I find that these people are doing the follow/unfollow method to grow their followers - where they'll follow you and then when you follow back they'll unfollow in a day or two. I now just ignore these accounts, which can be spotted as they have a very high following number compared to the number they're actually following.

So there you have it, the things I've been doing which have helped me to grow my Instagram followers and double my engagement. Hopefully these tips and tricks will be useful to others and if anyone has any questions please leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

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24 comments

  1. I defo agree with some of your tips - especially hashtags. I think I need to delete loads of my insta's and make mine look more professional like yours x

    LAURA ­THINKS ABOUT BLOG

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  2. Great post, I really need to build my Instagram followers up! You just gained another one, me :) Beautiful pictures..

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  3. All really great tips! I have been doing most of what is listed here, but I know I need to work on picking a theme and staying consistent. I have seen tons of growth and engagement and I think having a set theme will kick up a notch! Thank you for the awesome post!

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  4. Great tips! Been meaning to join a Pod too but haven't had the chance yet. Also, I'm really bad with using hashtags :( I better start using them properly. x

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  5. Fantastic post! I think being consistent is one of the most important things. When your photos 'flow' you see much better results.

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  6. Great post I agree hashtags are like gold! The only way really to be discovered...

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  7. I have to say that I really dislike lots of hashtags as a reader but sadly they seem to work

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    1. I don't think readers see the hashtags unless they're the first or second person to comment as then Instagram bumps up the comments.

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  8. Interesting tips. Thanks for a great post. I always find it funny when someone writes the most random quote under a Insta picture.

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  9. These are some awesome tips Fiona, I use lots of hashtags and that improves my engagement but I need to do more.

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  10. Some great advice and I am a lover of Hashtags but not to much themes I have to say x

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  11. Wow congratulations, I need to get onto instagram too. Not used it yet.

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  12. I love your Instagram photos, they are such beautiful shots of your boys and life. I really need to start getting back into Instagram as I love it when I am using it. I am going to save this post for later xx

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  13. Thank you for sharing Fi - really appreciate it! I've found I've hit a limit with my follower numbers and everything has been quite stable for some time. But, inspired by your advice, I've now created three accounts as I do really love a variety of areas but think people will be interested by some but not necessarily all of what I share. So, @tobecomemum has been joined by @tobecomestyle and @tobecomehome - reflecting different areas of my interests and my life but organising them so followers can find what they like. Thank you! :) I'm going to share this post now on my blog too, linking back x

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  14. Yes to all of these! I was reading the other day you can cheat IG and actually 60 hashtags on a pic.write your caption, then put 30 in the comment and go back and edit the caption. Apparently it will let you add another 30.

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    1. I read though that if you edit your hashtags that your pictures will no longer show up in the tags.

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    2. They do work. One person in my comment pod tested it and found about 50% increase in engagement. Due to the algorithm, I'm for anything that gives you a quick burst of engagement!

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  15. This is such a good indepth post. I've had such good success since joining the Instagram posse. Have you bought their guides? I wrote a post about how they helped me. http://lenatalksbeauty.com/get-more-instagram-followers/

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  16. Thank you so much for this Fiona, super helpful! I definitely agree that having a theme does absolute wonders for my Instagram. I have found it difficult recently to stick to a theme now winter is here, the dark evenings make it so hard! Immy x

    www.immymay.com

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  17. Thanks for this :) I have been putting off sorting my hashtag list that I'll use each time so this has moved it up my priority list �� xx

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  18. That is awesome! These are some great tips :) Thank you for sharing.

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  19. I'm trying to grow my Instagram so these tips are really useful thank you

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  20. Hey Dolly! Thanks for your article, it helped me a lot of increase my Instagram followers. Cheers

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  21. Alright, so if you're on social media, you don't have to be on all the platforms. Your company just needs to be on the ones that are best able to reach your customers. After all, the content you post on LinkedIn may not apply to Snapchat, as your audiences on both platforms may also differ. Homebusinessmag

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