Congrats!! You started an Instagram for your blog or business! And it’s sitting there all blank and empty staring at you… kind of overwhelming, right? Okay, take a deep breath and don’t panic. Just follow these steps and you’ll be up and running in no time!
What To Do To Start Your Instagram:
- Find Your Competition. You can learn so much about your audience by looking at how similar accounts are relating to them on Instagram! Look at what hashtags they use, when they post, who they follow, and what type of content does best for them.
- Choose 20-30 relevant hashtags by searching keywords related to your account and looking at what type of content people use those hashtags on! You want to be similar without being exactly the same, so that people who follow the hashtag will engage with your content. It’s also a good idea to choose less popular hashtags (I try to stay in the 100k-500k posts range) so that you don’t get buried by the bigger accounts using the hashtag!
- Post 9 photos with good captions and your 20-30 hashtags. This is the only time I will ever tell you to post this much at once but let’s face it, people aren’t going to follow an account that looks brand new. Content gives you credibility!
- Ask 10 people that you know to follow you. This is for the same reason as the photos, having a few followers gives you credibility! I always follow new Instagram accounts from my personal account and other business accounts that I have access to, and then I’ll ask other people who are involved in the business to do the same.
- Start Engaging and Following Your Target Audience. Go to your hashtags or to the follower lists of your competitors from step 1 and start liking people’s posts! You can also comment on the post, but make sure that when you do you say something specific about the post. There are a ton of bots that comment generic things like “OMG so cute” or the flames emoji on Instagram, and you want to come off as real. This is always important but especially for a new account!
- REPEAT. Repeat. Repeat. Re-evaluate your hashtags every few days when you see how your posts perform over time. Spend an hour or two every day engaging with people that you want to follow you. Post content consistently. And reply to every comment. You’ve got this!!
Remember that this isn’t going to happen over night, and that’s okay. It takes time to find the right audience for your brand, and taking shortcuts may work in the short term but it won’t give you an audience of potential customers who love you and your brand (and isn’t that the dream???).
I see it all the time where people panic and take a shortcut, so I made this list of what not to do with your new Instagram account.
What Not To Do With Your New Instagram:
- DO NOT BUY FOLLOWERS. Don’t do it. They aren’t real people who will potentially buy your products or products you promote. It will actually hurt you in the long run!
- DO NOT JUMP ON *FOLLOW TRAIN* GIMMICKS I see these things all the time and I do not understand why y’all keep falling for it! First of all, you don’t get followers in your target audience by doing this. Second, you will lose about 80% of the followers you gain from this. And third, it looks really bad in your feed!! Don’t do it, it’s not worth it.
- DO NOT RUN A PAID PROMOTION… yet! I 100% believe that a social strategy should include paid and organic, but paid performs better when you have solid organic performance. Don’t waste your money running an ad before you have that!
Now if you only take one thing away from this, this should be it… BE CONSISTENT. That’s right. The best way to grow an engaged audience of potential customers is to show up consistently for them on your feed. Spend time every day engaging with them, post content that is relevant to them, and respond to their messages in a reasonable amount of time. If you think of your social media like building relationships rather than growing numbers, you’ll be more successful in the long run!
Market with Emily 