Instagram has exposed more people to my photography than on any other social media platform, forums, blogs, or personal websites. I’m not a professional who does it to earn a living, nor am I an influencer. I’m just a guy who loves capturing photos and sharing them. If you feel the same about your photography, your Instagram account is struggling to get attention, and want it to grow beyond what it is now. I have some proven suggestions that can hopefully transform your Instagram account to get more engagements (likes, comments, saves, and shares) and start to grow your audience to new levels.
Disclaimer: This is not the only way to grow your Instagram account. The information that I will share is based on my experience while using the platform. The process described in this post is an involved and long-term strategy not one of rapid growth. Instagram is a platform that is constantly changing and evolving. The suggestions made in this post may or may not be helpful in growing one’s account in the future. Nobody knows exactly how the Instagram algorithm works, but my knowledge of it is based on my successes and failures. This may or may not work well for you.
Before we begin, there are two things you should consider doing and are crucial for this process to work. First, make sure your account is not private. As long as it is private, its growth will be severely limited. This is because the only people who will ever see your posts are your approved followers and nobody else. The second is to switch your account to professional. It’s free and easy. By switching your account to professional, you now have access to the account’s analytics. A needed and insightful window revealing valuable information such as the number of accounts reached, number of engagements, growth of your followers, and so much more. To switch, go to your settings and privacy > account type and tools > switch to professional. From there, you’ll be asked to select a category that best describes your content which will appear in your bio. Hit continue and boom done.
With that out of the way, I have found five key ingredients for growing one’s Instagram account. Beginning with having sustainable content, next is understanding what your followers like, then posting consistently, most importantly using the right hashtags, and finally having patience. These five things anyone can do and if you start to use them, with time and discipline you’ll see positive growth. Let’s take a closer look at each and unpack them further.
Let’s begin with having sustainable content, which is directly proportional to your ability to post consistently, which we will discuss later. Here are a few questions worth asking yourself. What do I enjoy doing and sharing? How often do I take pictures of me doing it? And how much content do I have now? The answers to those questions should give you a good indication of how sustainable you can be. Your content doesn’t have to be the most up-to-date images of your work or project either. Take a trip through memory lane and share some of your past travels or projects. You don’t want to run into a situation where you run out of content and start making it just to post something. Which I shouldn’t have to tell you is a bad idea and leads to the dilution of your creativity.
With your body of work, it needs to be accessible from your mobile device when it comes time to post. One solution to this is to have a copy of your photos saved on a cloud-based storage. This way you are not losing or editing your original files. If you don’t have access to any type of cloud-based storage, you can email yourself the images and open the email on your phone to save it. To avoid reposting images, simply remove them from your folder or place of storage once you shared them. Another benefit of this Instagram folder is that you will always have a location to add new photos for future content.
Note I didn’t say good content. Aesthetically speaking, what qualifies as a good photo is subjective and ultimately, it’s up to your followers. And understanding what your followers like is important. From my experience, every time I’ve posted an image that I liked, the results are nowhere near the ones my followers did. It’s not surprising that my tastes are different from those of my followers. And that’s okay, as long as we post images more in line with our follower’s taste and not our own. Over time based on the results of each post, you’ll see what type of content your followers like and dislike.
Posting consistently is the next key ingredient. It is known that the Instagram algorithm promotes accounts of users who post on a regular basis. Along with posting consistently keeps your followers engaged so that they don’t lose interest and look for content somewhere else. So, “What’s a regular basis?” It could be once or twice a day, three or four times a week, or every day. It is up to you to come up with a rhythmic schedule that you can maintain that is not a burden. I don’t know how much spare time you have in your life to tell you how often you should post. Nor do I know how large the body of work you have along with how often you create new content for your account. It is a balancing act, and it is different for everyone. But it is up to you to discover and post to your rhythm.
I would like to share with you my posting schedule only as an example. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday I post a single image on each of my accounts. Then on Saturday, I post a weekly review of my accounts on each to try to cross-pollinate my followers. Here’s my logic for sharing one image versus multiple per post. If I post multiple images in one post, in all likelihood when users come across it, they will look at the series of images, get their fill, and move on. But if I post a single image, they do one of two things. They either move on or go to my profile where they can continue to keep scrolling and liking. This way leads to more engagements which is good for the algorithm.
The less obvious meaning of posting consistently is of subject matter. Your content should live in a similar space or genre. For instance, if all you post is floral images, don’t out of nowhere post food pics. Those who are browsing flower photos aren’t interested in what you had for dinner last night. I made a similar mistake when I was new to the platform. I posted warbird photos, modern jet fighters, plane spotting shots, and photos of my scale models all on the same account. With my content being all over the place, the growth of my account suffered. This was because those users interested in my warbird photos, had no interest in my scale models or spotting images, and seemed like neither audience had any interest in modern aircraft. However, once I made separate accounts for each focused audience, the growth of each of them is far better than when they were clumped together. It should be clear to your audience what kind of content you are sharing with them.
On to the most important ingredient, using hashtags along with finding the right ones for your content. Let’s briefly explain what hashtags are, how they work on Instagram, and the all-mighty algorithm. Hashtags or tags for short, are the way you are going to distribute your content across the platform. They are words or short phrases that describe specific topics preceded by a # symbol. Each post is allowed up to 30 hashtags and can be placed in your post itself or in the first comment. Your tags should be separated with a single space. Like #art #artwork, and not #art#artwork. And make sure there is not a space after the hashtag itself. For example, #love and not # love. It is worth mentioning that posting without hashtags will result in the only people who see your posts are your approved followers and no one else. And the same goes for private accounts, any tags you use in your posts, will not appear in any public hashtag page.
The algorithm will place new content in the feeds of others based on their interest in the hashtags used in posts they liked. Here’s what happens when you post. First, your content will be seen by your followers, and it will appear on the pages of the hashtags you used. Then how the algorithm responds to and promotes your posts is based on the number of engagements (likes, comments, shares, and saves) and how fast it receives them. Hashtags are like little flashing lights in a giant dark room and Instagram is that dark room. The more engagements they get, the brighter they glow and the faster they blink, drawing more and more attention. Posting without them, your throwing photos into the dark void going unnoticed by the algorithm and all who are on the platform. So, my logic is to get the posts in front of as many users as possible and have them get engagements so that the algorithm notices it and starts pushing it out to others.
This doesn’t mean using the most popular hashtags is a good thing. For example, #photography currently has over 1 billion posts, the same goes for #photooftheday, #instagood is sitting at 1.7 billion, and even #photo has 482 million. When you post with hashtags with such crazy high numbers, your photo becomes a tiny needle in an enormous haystack. Think about it, how long would it take for someone to scroll to find your post among millions or billions for that matter? That’s why finding and using the “Right” hashtags for your posts is so critical.
So, what are the “Right” hashtags and how do I find them? They are tags that are focused and relevant to your content where users can find your posts within a reasonable amount of scrolling. Tags that have a minimum of 10K posts and a maximum of 500K. Not too small due to lack of activity and not too large that your post is lost in a massive crowd. To locate the post number in any hashtag, tap the tag, it will take you to its page, and above the “Follow” button you’ll see the post count.
Before we go hunting for hashtags, we’re going to create a premade post to save them. It can be any type of file, just as long as you have access to it on your phone. It can be a note file for iPhone users or Google Keep for Android. Or better yet a Word document, or simply as an email sent to yourself. It could contain a host of information, such as some form of copyright, links to your other Instagram accounts, thanks for looking message, or maybe a call to follow you. But most importantly, your list of “Right” hashtags. This way you don’t have to remember all your tags and don’t have to rewrite them every time you post. You just have to write a brief description of your image and add or remove relevant hashtags. Then copy and paste it into your post. This makes the routine of posting more streamlined and no way of forgetting to add your tags in a separate comment.
Now for the tricky and time-consuming part. Remember, we are looking for hashtags with the number of posts ranging from 10k to 500K and not super popular ones. In your Instagram feed, find a post (not a sponsored one) within the same genre of photography that has a few hundred likes. In the post caption or in its first comment, there you’ll find the post tags. Check each tag post count and when you discover a tag you want to use, save it in your premade post. Continue farming them until you have about 15 -20 hashtags. This leaves you room for specific tags for locations, brands, makes/models, and so on.
Once you start posting with your set of newly found tags, you should be able to gauge your results on which one’s work and what doesn’t. To gauge how well or how poorly your posts is doing in whatever tags you used, go through each hashtag page to see where your post is on that page. The algorithm ranks each post from most active to least. The higher up a post is on the hashtag page, the better it is doing. Don’t be afraid to add new hashtags that might help you. To clarify, you are adding or removing hashtags in your premade post and not from your post itself. Major editing of your posts such as removing hashtags will flag your account, resulting in a noticeable decrease in reaching users. This is because you lose the engagements from the removed tag. Minor corrections like correcting typos and adding new tags are fine. I’ve noticed as well as others, that the algorithm is sensitive when it comes to editing after posting. That is why it’s a good habit to double and triple check your post before sharing.
The last essential ingredient is patience. Unless you’re a celebrity or a famous public figure, it will take time for your account to gain traction and grow. I’m not going to lie, it’s painfully slow in the beginning. Seeing your post only get 10 or 20 likes while others are getting hundreds. And it is too easy to start comparing your account with others. But comparison is the theft of joy. So, to counter this train of thought, shift your focus and celebrate your accomplishments. Beginning with every time you pass a hundred followers, create a “Thank You” story post and share it. Then celebrate every thousand after that. If a company or brand you tagged reposts or likes your content, share it too. Everyone’s account grows at different rates, just stay engaged and focus on growing your account. Also be patient with the status of your posts. Meaning how well or poorly you think it is doing. Let them marinate for a while, giving them time for users to find and view your post. Something to consider is that people are on Instagram at different times of the day all over the world. Think in terms of days and not hours on how well your post is doing. You must give your account time for it to grow.
Here are a few bonus helpful bits of information that can help with your success. Don’t delete a post. Regardless of how you think it is doing, let it be and wait for your next opportunity to post. By deleting your post, you lose all the engagement it has gained. As well as it’s a negative action on the health of your account from the point of view of the algorithm.
Reply to every comment regardless of how you feel about it. Not all comments are meaningful, thoughtful, or even helpful. The fact is the all-mighty algorithm considers all comments as an engagement. The way I think about it when someone comments on one of my posts, regardless of whether I like it or not, is that my post gets three interactions to help promote it. The first is their comment, the second is me liking it and the third is my thank you response to it. And if it is a comment from an account that I tagged, I’ll pin it. To pin a comment, swipe left on it and tap the pushpin icon. You can pin up to three per post. But when it comes to useless and distasteful comments, my reply is something along the lines of “Thanks for the comment, this will help the algorithm promote this post.” And if someone’s comments break the Community Guidelines, don’t hesitate to report them.
Tagging other accounts whenever possible, especially larger ones. It’s a great way to get someone’s attention and possibly make connections. When you tag an account, they get a notification saying you tagged them. They could repost your image on their account which would increase your exposure to a larger audience. Remember, just because you tag someone, doesn’t mean they will respond. In my premade post, I keep a list of accounts of companies, brands and organizations I frequently tag.
This one is a very delicate issue, having notifications off or on. There’s no denying that heavy social media activity increases one’s risk for many aspects of poor mental health. And if you’re easily influenced by the negative effects of social media, maybe this one is not for you. It is known that the all mighty algorithm tracks how users interact with their accounts and how turning off notifications can affect how it promotes your content. If you look at it from the point of view of Instagram, notifications are a constant and insidious way to keep people engaged and active on their platform.
I’ve managed to grow each of my accounts far beyond my expectations using these five ingredients. My most successful one is far148studio with over 15K followers and my second best is far148models has over 6000 followers. Both transformed into what they are today by the persistent use of these steps over the past 3 years and there are still growing.
Until next post,
Steven
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