Do you want to know how I sky rocketed my Instagram views by 300% and my followers by over 1500 in only 30 days? Well this is the blog for you..
Grab a warm drink and let's get started. :)
Firstly I have to be honest and in the interest of full transparency say that I took on help, I have hired my friend Jodie who works with me at least 3x a week on my social media, however I do think that one person can implement these techniques and see results so do keep reading!
How to sky rocket your Instagram in just 30 days!
1. Look through old posts
The first thing we did was look through my Instagram analtyics and picked out what sort of posts my audience liked the most, what was working for me and what wasn't - this can be hard as sometimes what you like personally, unfortuantely your audience might not like - What you want to be posting going forward is what works the best for you and what seems to get you the best engagement.
In my case what works the best for me is my illustrative quotes / self kindness or mental health related posts.
2. Get scheduling / planning
My biggeest mistake was just posting what I wanted when I wanted, since I stopped this it's not only been a game changer but also a weight off my mind. I invested in a scheduling software, you can get a free plan with Later.com or you can just plan out your week using a planner or Trello but I definitely recommend having a schedule and knowing what you want to post, you can always move things around if something crops up that you need to spontaneously post.
Jodie has been using Later and she has been finding it really easy to use, she grabs it on the PC and her phone.
*You can grab 10 extra posts in a month by using my link HERE*
3. ENGAGE
This is the most important step, if you take anything away from this blog post I want it to be this step. You HAVE to engage with your audience.
So let's get into some stats, last year I got very sick and because of this I had to take time away from my business and social media and because of that I hardly engaged at all with my followers like I usually would, I had hit 10k followers in the June 2021 and I only hit 11k in March 2022 and because I much prefer to look at engagement rate over follower count my posts were averaging around 400-600 likes in June but hit an average of just 100-150 by March.
So for context because I stopped my engagement with my audience when I got sick, all my stats dropped.
Here is an example of a post that is inconsistent for my stats, usually a post like this for my ratio of followers and enagement would get about 500 likes.
So I would say you definitely need to take some time out of your day to like, comment and interact with the people you follow and that are taking time to comment and interact with you. Those are your audience and if you want them to stick around you need to be interacting with them! This can be really time consuming but it's very much worth it.
4. Consistency
This one if pretty self explanatory, you dont have to post every day but having a consistent plan is important, that could be 3 posts a week, 1 reel a week and 3 stories a day, but make sure you are consistently showing up so your audience don't forget who you are!
I tend to post daily a grid post, and definitely multiple times on my story, I love stories as this is where people can see who I am behind my business and connect with me as a person, I do find this helps so much as people like to know who they are interacting with. You don't always have to show your face, I rarely show mine but I feel people still very much know who I am because I show up daily.
5. Stop selling so much!
Small business owners, this one is hard. I know what you're thinking because I was thinking it too - "I'm a shop, how can I not sell?" however I HONESTLY have made more sales by selling less. It's crazy but it's true. I tend to try and keep my selling more to stories and not on my grid unless it's a promo that I will be archiving or sometimes I will post a fancy dancey post but I wont sell in the caption. It's been hard but I got this advice from taking some online courses* which bring me to......
6. Swat up
You can always gain more by learning more. I stumbled across TheSmallBusinessHandbook on Instagram* and before I knew it i'd bought 90% of her courses and changed my mindset completely.
Olivia has affordable (im talking some of these are sometimes priced at £5) courses on Instagram, consistent sales, starting a business, branding, finding your target audience, pinterest, tiktok and more...
I'm a super fan already but she has helped me so much
You can check her out HERE*
I also get some great advice from Sam at SqueakandShout, who has the best advice on Etsy SEO if Etsy is your thing! You can find Sam HERE.
So that's how I have managed to sky rocket my Instagram in just 30 days (at time of writing this post) the main advice to take away from this post is that your engagement is key to your success, remember to reply to your comments and talk to your audience!
If you want to check your engagement rate a good place to look is here.
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it informative. Remember Instagram and any social media is meant to be fun and social, if you are finding it draining or upsetting then please take a step back and have a break, it is not worth damaging your mental health over. Please enjoy the platform!
Links marked with * are affilliate links