INSTAGRAM STRATEGY FOR GROWTH | How to grow on followers on Instagram 2023 | Instagram growth tips

1. Introduction to Instagram Growth Strategy
2. Tactic 1: Seven Posts a Day for Instagram Growth
3. Messaging Strategy for Instagram Growth
4. Utilizing Stories and Highlights for Instagram Growth
5. Leveraging Instagram Lives for Growth
6. FAQ

Introduction to Instagram Growth Strategy

Guys, this is a really big deal. This video that I'm about to record is a big one, potentially the biggest and most significant video that I have recorded on this channel today. God, I love a dramatic opening, don't I? Jesus. So, the reason why I'm giving you this dramatic opening is because this video is part of a series. The series is designed to give you pre-made, pre-packaged Instagram strategies for you to use yourself. Why am I doing this, I hear you scream? Well, even though I'm a firm believer that everyone should come up with their own strategies for their Instagram account, I do know that there are a huge amount of people out there who either don't want to come up with their own strategies or they need some help. They need a bit of a starter. Maybe they need someone to give them a strategy for them to try and then they can try it out. They can test it, and they can adapt it to suit their own channel and their own objectives in the long run, right? So, I know that that's what my audience want. Guys, I listen to you, right? I'm here to deliver. I know that's what you want, which is why I've decided to create this series. Now, each video within this series will focus on a specific Instagram strategy which has its own goal or objective. Today's strategy is going to focus on growth. So, if you are someone who wants to grow on Instagram, that is what today's strategy is going to be about. Next week's strategy is going to be for anyone who wants to improve their engagement. So, when I say strategy, you might be wondering, "Okay, what am I actually going to be covering?" Well, I'm going to talk about your posting frequency. I'm going to talk about what features you should be using, and I'm going to be giving you a specific set of tactics that you should be focusing your energy on in order to meet this objective, which as I already mentioned, the objective of today's strategy is growth. So, enough chit-chat. Let's just get straight into the good stuff. So, before we kick off, it probably goes without saying, but if you want to watch the rest of my videos within this series, if you want to see my next strategy all about increasing your engagement, then make sure you subscribe to my channel and you hit the notification bell, so that you are the first to know when my next video is released. Let's just get straight to the good stuff.

Tactic 1: Seven Posts a Day for Instagram Growth

Okay, so tactic number one for Jay's Instagram growth strategy, that's the official name, um, is to post seven times a day. I laugh because there's probably people who hear me say that and they're like, "Nope, switching off this video, keeping it moving." We have to start with the post frequency because it's one of the most important variables when it comes to your growth and kind of your trajectory on Instagram, right? If you're in the growth phase and you're trying to get in front of more people and gain more followers, you actually do need to post more often. I will say that there is a maximum and there is a cap on that number. So, while I'm saying yes, post seven days a week if you can, I don't ever recommend posting more than that. So, in my experience with my own accounts and with my clients' accounts, when you post more than once a day, you actually end up decreasing the effectiveness of your content. So, the algorithm potentially gets a bit overwhelmed. It doesn't know which of your posts from that day to push out, and the result is that both posts won't end up doing well. I want you to focus on posting seven days a week. I know that's going to be really difficult for a lot of people. I get it. However, the thing I promised at the start of this video was to give you a strategy which would help you grow. So, if you are trying to grow on Instagram and you are committed to growing on Instagram, seven days a week is the schedule that I am recommending to you. There might be some of you who will listen to that and think, "I don't care about growing enough to post seven days a week." I'm one of those people. My strategy is all around engagement and building a community, so I don't actually post seven times a week. I post five times a week. But if I were to one day wake up and say, "No, I need tons and tons of followers. That is my main objective," then I will change my posting frequency to seven days a week. Not only that, but at least five to six of those seven posts need to be reel. So, I'm not part of the rules police. In case you're wondering, the rules police are people who are like, "Post a real every day, 18 times a day if you can." That was so shady. I didn't even mean that to be shady. The rules police are really good at creating reels, right? And they usually have a really big, engaged following. So, there's absolutely no hate on them at all. However, the reason why the reels police have really huge accounts and probably very successful businesses is because they know that posting reels is what's going to help them grow. The reason why posting more reels will help you grow is because the algorithm, which actually powers Instagram reels, is different to the algorithm which powers your normal carousels or your photos, right? The main difference between the reels algorithm and other algorithms within Instagram's platform is that the reels algorithm is designed to share your reel to people who have not seen your content before, right? So when you share a photo, maybe it gets on the Explore page, maybe you get under a hashtag, and maybe that's how you get seen by more people. When it comes to reels, not only is your content more likely to be shown on the Explore page and also under a hashtag, but your reels will also appear under the reels tab. So when people are looking at reels and they're just scrolling along and watching different people's reels, your reel is very likely to appear under that section. How many times did I say "reel" in the past few minutes? Anyone who guesses correctly gets a free cookie. No, you don't get a free cookie because I've only got two left and they're mine. And you don't get anything. You just get my respect. But the point I'm trying to make is the more reels you post, the more people who are going to see your content, and that is going to lead to a higher follow account for you. So 5-6 of your posts need to be reel. Your other posts for the week could be whatever format you like. Carousel, photo, whatever type of format you like and you know your audience likes, that's what those remaining posts can be. Another thing to add to this tactic is that not only am I asking you to post seven days a week, and I want five to six of those posts to be reels, but I would like at least four of those reels to have a trending sound in it. Okay, so you may or may not know that when you use trending sounds on your reels, it actually massively increases the chance of that reel performing well. Okay, and if you're wondering, okay, great, but how do I find trending audio? You want to head over to your Explore page, you want to click on a reel, and you just want to scroll and you want to hear what sounds people are using. When you start to hear more than one sound being used, you can make the assumption that that's probably a trending sound. If you're super committed and you have a TikTok account, head over to TikTok and actually start to make note of what songs are trending over there. The thing to remember when it comes to TikTok and Instagram is that all trending sounds will start on TikTok. TikTok are the originators, right? That is where the trending sounds will start, and then they'll make their way over to Instagram in like one to two weeks' time. So, if you're really committed to this process, which I really feel like you are, I just have this feeling, then you can head over to TikTok and actually start getting a jump on the trending sounds there. Okay, so let's move on to tactic number two.

Messaging Strategy for Instagram Growth

This is all about the messaging. So, I mentioned when I gave you an overview of this growth strategy that one of the key things you need to focus on is actually creating content which converts people. Because, yeah, it's great. You're sharing loads of reels. You're posting loads. You're getting loads of attention. But if you're messaging and your content isn't convincing people to follow, then none of that is going to equate to anything, right? So, how do you do this? Well, one of the first things I want you to bear in mind whenever you're creating content, writing captions, anything along those lines is that you should be writing your captions or creating your content for an audience who don't know you yet. So, there's a common pitfall that a lot of us fall into. I do all the time, and to be honest, I'm probably not going to stop doing it because, again, my objectives are more around community and engagement. But when you've had an Instagram page for a little while, what could end up happening is that you start speaking to your current audience and your current audience only. So, what that means is that you start saying things like, "Oh, guys, you know how much I love to do this because you've seen my stories all the time," or you actually stop talking about certain things that you know will perform really, really well because you feel like you've already spoken about that thing loads of times and your audience already knows how you feel about it. An example I'll give here is me not necessarily sharing really basic Instagram tips on my profile because in my mind, a lot of my audience have been following me for a little while now, and they already know all those basic tips. If I was trying to grow more, I would change that, and I would start incorporating more basic tips into my content because that is actually what my new audience needs to see. There's a whole audience out there who are completely unfamiliar with you and your content, and it is your job to create content which speaks to that audience and which actually convinces them to follow you and to hang around. Okay, so that's the first kind of shift for you to bear in mind when it comes to the content you're creating. I also want you to think about the reason why people should follow your account. So, if you have watched a lot of my videos before, you'll know that I like to call this your value offering. So, it's quite literally identifying what value you give to your followers, right? So, this could be anything like, "If you follow me, you get the best cooking tips," or, "If you follow me, you get the best sustainable fashion looks." Whatever it is, it's important that you understand what your value is. Not only that, if you're trying to grow, you want to consistently remind people of that value in all of your content. So, say you create a reel, and it hits the explore page, and it's getting loads of views, you want to make sure that either within the reel or in the captions, you are clearly saying, like, "Hey, this is the type of value that I give my audience on a regular basis. You should follow me." You're saying, "Follow me for more tips like these. Follow me for more of my best fashion advice." You're saying that. You're including it as a call to action so that all of these new people seeing your content will know the value that you offer them if they decide to follow you, and that will be enough to get them to hit that follow button. Another thing that I want you to do when it comes to your messaging and your content is to over-deliver on the free value. This makes people feel uncomfortable at times. Like, "I don't want to just give everyone my best tips. What if they steal them? What if they don't want to work with me because I'm giving them so much free value?" I'm here to tell you, as living proof, that that is not the case. The content that I make where I give as much value for free as possible is the content which performs the best for me. And if you're a service provider and you're a bit worried about, "Is that going to translate to sales?" The content where I share the most value is the content which results in the most business for me. Because by sharing this free value and giving people these small, quick wins, they're able to draw the conclusion that you know what you're talking about and therefore you're the right person to work with. So, over-deliver on the value that you're promising your audience. Do that in every single piece of content that you create. Okay.

Utilizing Stories and Highlights for Instagram Growth

So the next part of this strategy is all about your stories and your highlights. First thing I'm going to want you to do is create a "Start Here", "Get to Know Me", Q&A, whatever you want to call it. However you want to format it. Some form of highlight which is going to allow new visitors to get to know you very quickly, right? You want to do that when you're trying to grow because, hopefully, if you're following my other tactics that I've taken you through, you're going to be getting a lot of traffic to your page. When you get this traffic to your page, it's important that you've got things set up which is going to convert that traffic. One of those things that can convert that traffic to followers is this type of highlight where someone can click on it and really quickly get to know you. What you're about, learn something from you, get some form of value from you, and just instantly build that connection with you. That is massively going to help you grow and actually acquire more followers. The next thing I want you to bear in mind when it comes to your stories and your highlights, specifically your stories, is to actually get a bit more... What's the word? Like, a bit more selective about the stories that you're sharing. Now, I'm a firm believer that you should not be showing up on your stories every day just for the sake of showing up on your stories. When you get someone viewing your stories and they view some absolute string of nonsense and they're like, "This was rubbish. It wasn't entertaining," or, you know, they just didn't get anything from it, it's very unlikely they're going to click on your story again. So, that's why I really believe that if you're going to show up on your stories, like, do it right. This is especially important when you're growing because you're getting all this new traffic to your page. People are potentially seeing your content on the Explore page. They're a lot more likely to click that little profile photo and look at what stories you've got up. Your stories can actually play a huge part in whether or not someone decides to follow you straight away after seeing one of your posts on the Explore page, right? So, you want to make sure that whenever you're showing up on your stories, it's for a good reason. And remember, that story is all about behind-the-scenes content. So, I'm not saying that it has to be this highly-produced story. It's just that it needs to have some substance to it. So, just avoid consistently reposting quotes for, like, seven stories in a row and then leaving at that. That's not a good story series, right? You want to show your face, you want to talk to the camera, you want to show a bit of behind-the-scenes of what you're doing and how your life works. Okay, that's what you want to focus on, especially when you're trying to grow. Okay.

Leveraging Instagram Lives for Growth

So, the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to this specific Instagram growth strategy, it's all about lives. This is another thing where when I say it, I can hear millions, millions, millions of people around the world, like, rolling their eyes, like, "Oh, I don't want to do that." Right? The reason why I'm talking about lives is because lives are a super, super strong growth tactic, specifically when you go live with other people. So, I really want you to get out your comfort zone and start reaching out to others within your niche or reaching out to other pages who you feel have a similar audience to yours. Reach out to them and just say, "Hey, would you ever think about going live together in, like, a couple of weeks? This is what I think. We should talk about this is what I think you can get from this live. Make sure you pitch it correctly and you're not just saying, 'Hey, want to go live?' question mark. Give them a bit of flavor in regards to what you want to be talking about on the live. Sell it to them a bit. Make sure they know what's in it for them. It's probably going to help them grow, too. And see if you can get anyone who can agree. When you go live with other people, it means that everyone on their follower list, as well as everyone on your follower list, gets a notification or can see that you're live. So what that means is that both parties are able to reach a brand new audience, and that's super valuable for both parties, right? I want you to try and do this between one to two times per month, and I want you to schedule the live. So in case you didn't know, Instagram have updated their live scheduling feature quite a few times over the past six months. You can now actually create a post which will schedule a live for you. So you can share a post to your feed where you're talking about a live. It's pre-scheduled and people can click on it and actually register to be reminded about when the live will take place. Not only that, but as of a recent update, you can also add like a badge, I guess you'd call it, to your profile. And what the result of this will be is that anyone who's visiting your profile, for example, all of these new people who you're getting traffic from, anyone who's visiting your profile will see at the top in your bio that you are actually due

FAQ

Q: What is the purpose of the Instagram Growth Strategy series?
A: The purpose of the series is to provide pre-made, pre-packaged Instagram strategies for users to use in their own accounts to help with growth and engagement.
Q: What is one of the tactics mentioned for Instagram growth in the series?
A: One tactic mentioned is to post seven times a day as part of the Instagram Growth Strategy.
Q: What should be the focus when it comes to messaging for Instagram growth?
A: One should focus on creating content that converts people and writing captions for an audience who don't know you yet, among other things, as mentioned in the series.
Q: How can stories and highlights be utilized for Instagram growth?
A: Creating highlights such as "Start Here" to help new visitors get to know you quickly and being selective about the stories shared are ways to utilize stories and highlights for growth.
Q: What is the importance of leveraging Instagram Lives for growth as discussed in the series?
A: Leveraging Instagram Lives, especially going live with other people, is highlighted as a strong growth tactic to reach a new audience and help with growth.