How To Gain An Engaged Following on Instagram
When I connect with newer content creators on Instagram, I often am asked the question: “What are your tips for growing my platform?” While I think that this is a great question, I believe that fledgling bloggers also should be asking themselves: “Who should I be growing my platform for?”
If your goal is to inspire and educate others, as well as attract quality brand partnerships, you should really be thinking about how to grow your following in a specific and focused manner. By this, I mean you should seeking to attract an audience that fits your particular niche and target demographic. (Obviously, you would need to nail down your niche and audience as well!)
Why Should I Care?
This realization only came to me recently as my organic reach dipped and I was obliged to grow my following by searching out new accounts with which to engage. Previously, I didn’t realize that I could impact my follower demographics by specifically engaging with certain types of accounts.
Now, why should you care about this? In terms of brand sponsorships, it’s often important that your followers’ demographic statistics mirror their target audience (i.e. gender, age, country, interests, etc.). Therefore, if your goal is to someday become a full-time content creator, you should be somewhat concerned about these details.
While the methods described below won’t gain you hundreds of new followers a day, I believe that these practices will ensure that you are growing your Instagram following a controlled manner and building organic relationships with your audience. In all honesty, I am okay with the slower growth as it means that my engagement rates remain quite high (about 9.5% - 11.91%) since I can authentically engage with my audience (as opposed to accounts that grow extremely fast but have relatively low engagement rates).
Personally, it’s important I maintain a genuine and authentic presence on this platform as I want to inspire and educate others in a natural manner— I would hate if my content seemed fake and solely for commercial purposes.
How To Follow
As mentioned above, I previously didn’t know that I could have any sort of control over my following in the recent past. I would often just accept that my demographic stats were fixed and that they couldn’t be altered in any way. For instance, I used to have an audience of 56% women and 44% men. Nowadays, I managed to change it to about 70% female and 30% male. If you are a female blogger, female-centric brands often prefer if you have a larger female following so that they know your promotional content will be directed at the right audience. The same applies to other factors such as age, city, and country.
How can you make these changes?
I personally start by making a mini-goal of following 6-10 new accounts a day within my target audience demographic.
At the moment, the accounts I search for look like this:
Gender — Female (since the brands I usually want to work with are usually selling female-centric products)
Country/Region — Canada or U.S.A. (since the brands which are most likely to pay you will be on the same continent as you)
Age — 25-34 years old (as these are audience members within my age bracket who will relate most to my content)
City — preferably Vancouver or a Canadian city (particularly important for collaborations with local businesses)
How do you find these accounts?
While I wrote about this topic in more detail in this post, I will briefly go over my favourite methods here:
Suggested Accounts on Similar Accounts: When you come across an account on Instagram that suits your niche, go to their “Following” list and select “Suggested.” Here the Instagram algorithm should show you an array of accounts similar to the one you were viewing.
Comments on Other Accounts: If I see anyone writing a particularly sweet comment on someone’s account, I will be curious enough to check out their page to see if they have an appealing aesthetic and interesting content. If so, I engage with their posts and follow that account.
How can you attract these accounts?
Once you have found an account that you wish to follow and engage with, I find that it’s best to attract their attention with the following steps:
1. Like at least 6-9 posts to get a feel of what their feed is like (I usually look at both the images and captions to understand their content creation style).
2. Comment on 3 posts that really impressed you— leave something thoughtful that shows that you care about the effort they put into their content.
3. Follow their account. I also like to comment that I love their feed and that I would appreciate if we supported each other on Instagram.
4. Optional: Check out their stories and comment/react to the ones that you especially like.
Note: While most accounts I follow are kind enough to follow back, I don’t take it personally if another content creator doesn’t follow me back— anyways, I only want to engage with individuals who really like my content.
How To Comment
A thoughtful comment can go a long way in both creating a genuine connection with someone online and building an engaged following. The following are my best tips on how to create meaningful comments (also covered in depth within this post):
1. Write something with four words or longer. In this way, Instagram will register your comment as actual engagement and your comment will stand out amongst other less thoughtful comments.
2. Look at the image and write something related to it— whether it be their outfit, scenery, etc.
3. Read the caption and see if you can add anything to your comment related to what they wrote.
4. If possible, reply to every comment you receive on your own posts. Also, don’t forget to go to their account to engage with their latest posts.
5. Whenever I open the app, I usually comment on the first post I see. As well, I try to comment on the posts of anyone who DMs me after replying to their message.
6. If I come across an account I haven’t engaged with in a while, I usually make sure to like 3-6 of their most recent posts and comment on at least one. Usually, this will result in that account returning the favour on my own account.
My Daily Commenting Schedule
After much experimentation, I have set for myself a minimum expectation of replying to at least 200 comments a day. Since my outfit posts usually receive about 600-800 comments and my filler posts receive around 300-400 comments, replying to 200 comments a day usually results in me being about 2 weeks behind in replying to comments.
While this seems very delayed, I usually am able to keep up with the most recent posts of my most engaged audience via stories or scrolling through my feed. In the past, I tried to reply to 300-400 comments a day— this usually resulted in me being on Instagram all day and feeling stressed over getting through more comments. As well, if I went over a certain limit, I would even get blocked for my hard efforts at engagement. As well, I have recently permitted myself to take a “rest day” on Sundays and reduce that number to 100 comments in a day.
My usual commenting schedule is as follows:
engage with my first 100 comments from 8:30 am - 10:30 am
I break this 100 comments into three groups (one of group 40 comments, a second group of 30 comments, and then one last group of 30 comments)
After finishing each group of comments, I take a mini break (and sometimes try to find new accounts to follow)
I then take a break until the early afternoon before beginning the second group of 100 comments (anywhere between 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm)
I try to finish the second group of 100 comments before it gets too late— so anytime before 8:00 pm is preferable
Although I would love to reply to every comment I receive, I know that this will not feasible as I continue to grow my following at a steady pace. Nevertheless, I will continue to try my best to reply as much as humanly possible (while maintaining healthy boundaries and giving myself regular breaks from social media).
Content Standards
Other than your engagement and following practices, ensure that your captions and content are as engaging and interesting as possible. While I plan to write another blog post about this in greater detail, I try to write captions that fall into any one of the following categories:
Inspire (share an inspiring quote and what it means to you, about meaningful things you have accomplished, or your future goals and intentions)
Educate (give tips or write informative captions that teach the audience something of value)
Promote (write about products or services that you truly love and value)
Share (allow your audience to get to know you better by sharing some interesting facts about yourself or what you’ve been up to lately)
Amuse (a lighthearted caption is always welcome-- just make sure that it’s not tone-deaf in light of current global circumstances or not a recycled joke that everyone and their mother has been posting)
Also, it goes without saying that your content images should also be as attractive as possible! If you are need of some tips, feel free to check out this post.
Summary
To conclude this post, the best advice I can give in terms of obtaining an engaged following is to be genuine and authentic in all of your actions on social media. My favourite messages, comments, and shoutouts are the ones in which other bloggers say they appreciate how genuine, kind, and honest I am. If you consider yourself to be a decent person in real life, don’t let your actions on social media be any different!
While I still don’t consider myself to be a top expert in the area of engagement and growth, I do believe that I have learned so much over the past three years in terms of being a positive influence on others within the Instagram world. While I may not have the biggest following or the most likes, I am proud of what I have accomplished and the person I am— both online and in real life.
Still have questions about the above topics? Be sure to shoot me a message or comment below!
Cheers,
Debbie (a.k.a. The Stylish Wordsmith)