WHY YOU'RE NOT GROWING ON INSTAGRAM | INSTAGRAM GROWTH STRATEGY | INSTAGRAM GROWTH MISTAKES

1. The Importance of Niche and Direction on Your Instagram Page
2. The Significance of Value Offering on Instagram Growth
3. Utilizing Analytics Effectively for Instagram Growth
4. Creating an Effective Hashtag Strategy for Instagram Growth
5. The Impact of Consistency on Instagram Growth
6. Evaluating Your Content Strategy for Instagram Growth
7. FAQ

The Importance of Niche and Direction on Your Instagram Page

Like I'm guilty of this, so I can tell you firsthand that it will stop your page from growing. Like I've done it before, and my page stopped growing. Hello and welcome back to my channel. Today's video is actually a two-parter, which is exciting. I'm gonna be breaking down the reasons why your channel might not be growing in this one. This is part one. It's gonna be talking a lot about your actual page and what you could be doing differently. And I want this to be more of like a peer-to-peer conversation, you know? I'm gonna put my coach hat aside and I'm gonna be sharing some of this stuff I've, I'm guilty of, and I've done in the past, right? So I'm not gonna be lecturing you. I just wanna share some tips and advice. [Music] Okay, so before I drop all my knowledge, um, please can you like this video and subscribe to my channel? It will help me out a lot. Okay, first thing I want to talk about, and I want to get out of the way because it's one where everyone always mentions, I'm sure it's going to really annoy you, but one of the main reasons why your channel might not be growing on Instagram is because it lacks a niche and it lacks direction. And please don't roll your eyes at me if you're thinking, "Oh my God, everyone tells me this all the time." The reason why everyone tells you this all the time is because it's so important. When someone lands on your page, they need to know exactly what it is you're about straight away. If your content is muddled and it has no direction, people will look at your content and they'll be confused and they won't follow you and your page won't grow. Or you might have attracted an audience within a certain niche or within a certain interest group and then you steered away from that niche. And then you tried a different niche, and then a different niche after that, and then a different niche after that, which has resulted in your followers being confused and potentially unfollowing you. So it's just very important step, even though it's a very frustrating step. that you're really clear on what it is that your content is about. And you stick to that.

The Significance of Value Offering on Instagram Growth

Second thing which I see a lot with my clients and when I'm looking at their Instagram pages, and this is people who are like influencers, these are business pages, these are service-based pages, the lot, is the fact that they don't have a clear value offering. I actually hate myself every time I say the phrase "value offering." I was trying to get away with saying something else then because I say all the time in all my videos, but it's because it's so important. So in the context of growth, the reason why your value offering is so important is because Instagram is a value-based channel. And what that basically means is that when someone's landing on your page, or when someone's deciding whether or not to follow you and engage with your content, the process they're going through is they're thinking: "What value has this offered me?" So gone are the days where you can just post about whatever you've done that day, and it could be all about you, and you know, offering any form of value to anyone, and people will just go mad over it. That doesn't happen anymore. You have to be offering something to someone. And I think the biggest example of this, which is proof that this is so important, is when you look at the different growth that I've experienced from the multiple Instagram channels that I run. So I have four different Instagram channels, and two of them are for my boutiques. One of them is for my influencer channel, and the other one is for this, and then I technically have five because my other ones a personal channel. But I never talk about that because that's not growing. Um, but in regards to these four channels, out of all of them, the one which grew the quickest, so it's not the biggest channel, but it grew the quickest is this one, is the one for We Side Hustle. So I started that one in November, and it's now on like two and a half thousand followers, which to some people might be a lot, some people might not be a lot. To me, it's a lot because the first few thousand followers on your Instagram page, in my opinion, are the hardest ones to get, especially when you're growing completely organically. Like I'm not buying any engagement, I'm not buying any likes or anything like that. And so to me, that's pretty impressive growth. And the reason why that one's grown so much quicker than my other ones is purely because, I should state that I'm filming this video in Feb, but in case you're wondering how quickly that growth happens, I'm filming this in fact. And the reason why that one grew so much quicker is because the value of my content on We Side Hustle is so much stronger than the value on any of my other channels. The content that I'm posting on that channel is quite literally teaching you how you can make money online. Who doesn't want to know how they can make more money? Like, that is the value. There is so, so, so strong. Whereas the value offering on my other channels like Orange Collective, which is my influencer one, is more like, if you follow me, you'll get great tips on where to eat food in London. Or, you know, you'll get great travel content. For you, which will help you plan your next trip. So the value is still there, albeit at the minute, that value is not very high because no one can travel or eat out because we're in a pandemic. But the value is still very much there and the value offering is defined, but it's not as strong as my value offering on We Side Hustle, where I'm literally saying, "I'm going to teach you how to make money."

Utilizing Analytics Effectively for Instagram Growth

The next reason why you might not be growing is because you are not using your analytics effectively. If you're interested in this subject in a bit more detail, please let me know because I could do a whole video on it. But the basics of what you need to know is, first of all, to access your analytics, you need to have a business or creator account. So make sure you do that if you've not done that before already. But basically, your analytics is a super, super powerful tool, which is made available to you for free in exchange for setting up a business or creator account. If you look at your analytics, they will quite literally tell you which of your content is performing well and which content isn't. So in regards to growing, if you have found that recently your engagement rate's dropped or you've not been gaining any new followers, look at your analytics and look at which content has performed the best. The likelihood is that if you're experiencing a slow in your follower and follower count and your engagement is dropping, the likelihood is that it's your content from back in the day which performed the best for you. So have a look at that content and figure out, okay, so what's different about what that content was providing versus what I'm posting now? Also, another really useful part of your analytics is that it will tell you when your followers are online and it will tell you who your followers are, which will just help craft your content to make sure it's relevant to them. But it'll also help make sure that you're posting at times which are relevant to your audience so that people are available and they can engage with your content as well. So basically, it's just an incredibly useful and powerful tool which I feel like everyone should be leveraging more often.

Creating an Effective Hashtag Strategy for Instagram Growth

Another reason why your Instagram channel might not be growing is because you haven't defined a hashtag strategy. So a pitfall that people fall into quite often is they think, "All right, so I'm just gonna put a few hashtags which I like on my content and it's gonna drive my reach and it's gonna be great." Unfortunately, that's not really how it works. You'll see that when you go to type in hashtags on Instagram, it will actually tell you how popular those hashtags are. So you'll see these little numbers on the side which might say a million, 360,000, whatever. What you need to be doing is ensuring that you're using a mixture of hashtags in regards to how big they are. So you need to use the hashtags which have huge reach, and then you also need to use the hashtags where there's only a couple thousand. You've gotta think that if you are using a hashtag like "Outfit of the Day," where millions of people upload or use that hashtag every single day, what are the chances that your content is gonna appear at a decent level within that hashtag? Like, what are the chances if you're competing against millions of people? What are the chances? Compare that to your chances of appearing quite high on a hashtag which only has 10,000 followers or 10,000 pieces of content. Your chances are significantly higher. Like, it's less of a popular hashtag, so your reach will be lower, but the chances of you being seen at all is higher. So it's all about the balance between those two things. I always wanna make sure that the hashtags you're using actually have sets that people will search for. So try and put yourself in the mind of your ideal follower. So try to stop thinking like, what you would search and think about what they would search, right? Because that's going to be the key to figuring out which hashtags they're actually going to be looking for.

The Impact of Consistency on Instagram Growth

Another reason, and this is one of the ones which bugs me, this is the one which I'm actually guilty of, is consistency. So the reason why you might not be growing is because you're not posting enough. And unfortunately, people get bored, and they just take their following elsewhere. And the reason why I say I'm guilty of this is because, at the minutes, on our channel, Orange Collective, we are not being as consistent as we normally are. And we have a reason for it. It's not like I'm just not listening to my own advice. The reason is because that niche is all about travel and food. And if you're in England, and you'll know that we have been in lockdown for months and no restaurants are open and we've not actually been able to travel for a year. So our ability to capture content has massively reduced. And whilst we're still sharing throwback content, there's nothing new or fresh there. And therefore, it's stunting our growth. But that's okay. We know the reason for it. Everyone else in our niche is having a similar issue. We're not crying over it. But it's a good example of me having exact experience of how lack of consistency can impact your following and your growth. So ways to combat this is to do things like batch create content. I'll do a whole video on that at some point. So keep an eye on my channel if that's of interest to you. But batch creating content will massively help. It's only possible for some niches. Again, you can't really do that for travel and food. But you can do that for things like fashion or beauty, right? So when you batch create content, you basically dedicate a day or two to creating multiple posts. And you then edit them all in batches. And you use a program like Later or Planally, which will allow you to pre-schedule your content. And that basically means that you'll be consistently posting content on a regular basis for the foreseeable future, or for however long you schedule your content. I do that for my businesses, For Real London and Ray and Lilo London. And I literally have my content scheduled until like June. I'll go in there like on a weekly basis and like update things and make sure it's still relevant. But I like, I batch create like, I take that seriously. That is my life. So that very much works. And that's a really good tip for you. Being inconsistent and not showing up on your page, like maybe you might think to yourself, oh, it's fine, no one's going to notice. But people do. People notice. And a lot of the time, they'll unfollow you for it. So that might be hurting your growth.

Evaluating Your Content Strategy for Instagram Growth

The last thing that I want to mention, which is a tough one to talk about, is maybe your content just isn't landing. So if it's not a case of like, you were growing before and now you're not, it's more of a case that you've never really, you know, hit that growth train. So that's that phrase, I don't think it's a phrase. Um, if you've never really experienced that growth and you've kind of been stuck on Instagram for a while, it is probably time to review your, if you don't have a content strategy, then that could be a huge part of the problem and which deserves its own video. But you really need to know what type of content you're producing. You should have a few content pillars, which are basically like groups of content that you consistently push out. For example, on "Hey, In London," one of my content pillars will be quotes or aspirational graphics. Another one will be products. Another one will be user-generated content. Another one will be ambassador photos. So you can kind of see that those are my content pillars. So that's whatever I'm posting, my post falls in within one of those kind of content pillars. I digress a bit there. You really want to make sure that you have complete clarity on the type of content that you want to be producing. But you also need to be flexible. If you have a content strategy, you've been posting, and it's just not getting traction, think about whether or not it's time to review your content strategy. One thing which works well for me is just asking my friends and asking the friends who are like brutally honest, because we all have those friends. And ask them, just be like, look, what do you think of my content? Like, is it strong enough? Tell me the truth. If not, how can I improve it? Just give me some honest feedback. DM me. I sometimes can provide really top-line feedback. I also have various different coaching programs and training programs or resources where I can help you and provide you something a lot more detailed. Like, I offer audits where I will literally produce a document similar to the ones which brands produce when they're reviewing whether or not to work with different influencers. So I can produce a document like that which will pinpoint the exact areas of your page which need help and the exact areas of your page which are kind of limiting your growth. So if you're interested, link in bio or email me, DM me, whatever. Okay, so that's it for me. As I mentioned, this is going to be a two-part series. My second video is going to be about the things which are quite literally hurting your growth. So it's going to be things which are actually going to stop you from growing. It's potentially going to get you shadow banned. It's going to get you on Instagram's naughty list, that kind of stuff. So if you're interested, which I'm assuming you are because you watch this video, then please turn on the notifications and subscribe so that you don't miss out on my.

FAQ

Q: What is the importance of having a niche and direction on your Instagram page?
A: Having a niche and direction on your Instagram page is crucial as it helps visitors understand what your content is about immediately. Without a clear niche, people may be confused and less likely to follow your page, resulting in stagnant growth.
Q: How does value offering impact Instagram growth?
A: Value offering plays a significant role in Instagram growth as the platform is value-based. Offering valuable content to your audience increases the chances of engagement and growth. Comparing different Instagram channels, stronger value offerings typically lead to quicker growth.
Q: Why is utilizing analytics effectively important for Instagram growth?
A: Using analytics effectively helps in understanding which content performs well and which doesn't. By analyzing these insights, you can tailor your content strategy to attract more engagement and followers. Analytics also provide information about your audience's online behavior, aiding in posting content at optimal times.
Q: How does creating an effective hashtag strategy contribute to Instagram growth?
A: Having a solid hashtag strategy is essential for Instagram growth as it enhances the discoverability of your posts. Using a mix of hashtags with different levels of popularity increases the chances of your content being seen. It is important to use relevant hashtags that your target audience is likely to search for.
Q: What is the impact of consistency on Instagram growth?
A: Consistency is key to Instagram growth as it helps maintain audience engagement and loyalty. By posting regularly and consistently, you keep your followers interested and prevent them from losing interest or unfollowing. Being consistent in posting content ensures that your page remains active and attracts new followers.
Q: How does evaluating your content strategy contribute to Instagram growth?
A: Evaluating your content strategy is crucial for Instagram growth, especially if you have been stagnant in terms of follower growth. By reviewing your content pillars and types of posts, you can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to attract a larger audience. Seeking feedback from honest friends or professionals can also help in refining your content strategy.