My Organic Instagram Growth Strategy

a lot of social media strategists i noticed recently are telling their clients tell everyone to save stuff tell everyone to save stuff and i'm not going to say that that's a bad thing necessarily i'm not here to rain on anyone's parade however i think that people should want to save your stuff because it's good stuff hello everyone welcome back to another episode of the freelance friday podcast i'm your host latasha james or at the latasha james if you'd like to find me on instagram or twitter and today i am talking about just that i'm talking about instagram and you know instagram has always been a little bit of a stressful platform for me i'm gonna be honest the algorithm is one that i just for a long time couldn't feel like i could really crack and i didn't really know that i had found my place on there and so i want to talk about how i grew my instagram following by over 45 just this year alone which equals out to be about 2500 followers now i know to some of you watching 2500 followers is like nothing you're like that is so small but it's funny because i hear from a lot of my clients a lot of businesses i work with that they are losing followers or that they are completely stagnant so even though that number is not huge uh i want to talk about how to have consistent growth on that platform which can be a little bit troubling and challenging nowadays for a lot of people so the first way that i have been able to find a little bit of growth on the platform this year has been by incorporating instagram into a greater content marketing strategy and what i mean by that is a couple of things number one i've made sure to really stay true to my content pillars across all of my platforms i've talked about content pillars before in different episodes of the podcast i talk about it a lot in my courses in my coaching program but basically what a content pillar is is a particular topic that your audience knows that they can go to you for and previously when i first started instagram i was posting really just sort of a diary of my life i would post about my life in the study i live in i'd post about my travels i'd post some about family and then i'd like throw in stuff about my business and all that too and i mean i know that this sounds very kind of no duh but it it really is a big part of growth people want to know exactly who you are and why they should follow you they don't want to just follow another random person so my content pillars really revolve around marketing and business and a little bit of social media tips and tricks here and there but particularly online business and particularly this year i've been even more focused on digital products and things like that so people know that they can find me they can find resources on those types of things they can find inspiration all that good stuff now another way that i've been incorporating it a little bit better into my more holistic content marketing strategy is by simplifying kind of the infrastructure of my instagram i changed my username i used to have a really weird username that was the name of an old blog i used to have changed it to my name latasha james wasn't available so i went with the latasha james and i went with the latasha james because it was something that was available on every single other platform for the most part as well so i changed my twitter name i changed my facebook page username and that way i can add calls to action in my biggest content marketing platform which is youtube and it's just super easy you guys noticed at the beginning of this episode i said hey or at the latasha james on instagram or twitter super easy as opposed to saying at a journey east underscore on instagram and then on twitter it's at a journey east and like you're kind of driving people all over so making sure that you have those kind of infrastructure pieces put together is really important and this is something that i see a lot for clients i work with like small businesses is their websites are often not reflecting that so make sure that if you do change your instagram that you change it on your website as well or that you change it in general because a lot of clients come to me and they still have you know the wix instagram linked or the squarespace instagram linked kind of the default for their websites don't do that you're missing so many opportunities now maybe instagram is your largest platform but for me it's not youtube really is my largest platform so i've been really trying to make sure that the content is aligned with my youtube content and then i am using some of those visual cues as well like on youtube i have a little end card that pops up not on my podcast episodes i should probably start doing that but on my regular youtube videos i have an end card that pops up that has my instagram name i link it in the description box i share calls to actions when it makes sense in a video so making sure to leverage your existing platforms is huge as well but not just that you're telling people follow me follow me follow me you want people to be taking away so much value from your content that they want to follow me i'm not begging people to follow me on instagram but people have found value in my content i've been very intentional about my youtube content this year and people want to follow me and they want to follow me because the content is aligned right they go to my instagram and they see my stories highlights they see oh she did a course challenge she's teaching us how to make income through digital products she's sharing interesting tips or behind the scenes of her business every day that kind of thing so it's actually lined and and makes sense with the rest of the content all right the second tip is kind of another obvious one but it's that i've started to actually pay attention to my instagram insights so your instagram insights are your analytics and they help you understand exactly how your content is performing and for a long time i don't know i was really afraid of my insights i didn't want to make instagram this big scary thing but the old adage really is true what gets measured gets changed i think that's what it is what gets measured something like that whatever when you measure it you actually can have an impact on it you don't know how big of an impact you're having or what kind of change you're making if you're not measuring things so going in just you know every week every month seeing how your content is performing been a game changer for me i started to pick up on little trends on my personal instagram like the obvious one that everybody likes faces right so i kind of started as much as it pains me to some extent i stopped posting a lot of my flat lays and like coffee picks even though i love those and i still do throw those in once in a while just because i don't want to be this completely self-centered account either where i'm just showing my face all the time but you know just being more intentional with that i was also noticing that people really liked faces when they were outside so i noticed my photos outside almost always got you know hundreds more likes comments engagements things like that so guess what i'm gonna do is start investing more in outside photo shoots and that's nice because they're easier there's less lighting and stuff to set up they're actually a little bit um less high maintenance photo shoots to to do another thing that i noticed was that people were really liking long captions and i get asked about this all the time but it really does depend there's no like yes or no black or white kind of answer but my audience because they are very entrepreneurial they're very into self-development they're very into learning and bettering themselves and their businesses they tend to really like those long almost blog post type instagram captions and so i started to develop a system for myself which first started as my notes app on my phone just kind of writing out whenever i was inspired basically writing out little mini blog posts or you know long form instagram captions when i was inspired so that i always had a bank of them now i store them in evernote just for safer keeping whatever it is for you i really tried to lean into that content first value first kind of model i also noticed tip number three that shareable and savable content was really helping me out as well so i actually just did an instagram story kind of highlighting some of my most saved posts i was sharing this because a lot of social media strategists i noticed recently are telling their clients tell everyone to save stuff tell everyone to save stuff because it does help with the algorithm and i'm not going to say that that's a bad thing necessarily i'm not here to rain on anyone's parade however i think that people should want to save your stuff because it's good stuff and so i was like let me see what my audience is saving of my you know of my photos and it turns out they'd really like to save book recommendations people loved those it was a simple picture of me holding a book so many people saved that people say videos a lot because they might see a video come through their feed and not have time to watch and fully listen to it in a moment so that's something that people like to save desk inspiration that was one that was interesting for me is a picture of my desk a lot had a lot of saves because people like to see the setup i guess what were some other ones i've been posting some more kind of graphic type posts i'm not a designer or anything like that but taking screenshots of my tweets overlaying them putting a little a little uh light leak filter on it just to make it look a little fun and calling it a day people like to save those things to save that quote to share it that kind of thing so having posts on your feed that people like to save and share helps because it spreads your message further if they're sharing it and if they're saving it it's a signal to the instagram algorithm that they want to see more of your content and it's going to help you out in terms of engagement and all that stuff now another thing that i've noticed really does help with the algorithm is messages direct messages so i've been trying to use these a little bit more and just being creative with how i'm using them one of the biggest tips this is one of the biggest things that i've learned from my big influencer friends i noticed this trend that pretty much all of them dm'd me when they followed me they said hey latasha i'm coming over from youtube i saw your video this is who i am you really helped me out thanks and i was like that's interesting every single one of my large influencer friends introduced themselves when they followed me and so this is not to say you want to spam people it's not to say you want to dm everyone and follow everyone just to be cool they were people who genuinely you know they saw me on youtube they enjoyed my content and they wanted to say hi and thanks for the help and this is who i am and of course i followed all of them back because they gave me this warm introduction and it was just something that i took away and that i started to do myself i think i tried this out first i went to a virtual conference earlier in the summer and there were a ton of really great speakers and i followed pretty much all of them and some of them were larger influencers you know they had a good healthy following some of them were even you know real life famous if you will and again i want to make it very clear that i follow people who i want to follow and that i like their content and i'm not expecting anything in return but i did dm all of these people and say hey saw you at this conference you're really great can't wait to see more of your content or whatever just gave a very genuine introduction and like nine out of 10 of them followed me back and so i've just been keeping up with that if i see someone on youtube and i want to go ahead and follow them on instagram i shoot them over a dm and it's also just a nice way to like be a good person i think i know how those dms make me feel when someone says hey you really helped me out a lot so why not spread a little sunshine while you can and also maybe get yourself an extra follower too but the thing is i don't know this okay this is not rooted in science this is just my feelings but it's not just about getting that one single follower i have this theory that when you interact with a lot of bigger instagram accounts it pushes you up in the algorithm this is just something i've noticed when i'm dming back and forth with a larger influencer i am getting really good engagement the whole rest of that week it's really interesting so again you don't want to spam people you want to be forming genuine relationships with people but this is just something to keep in mind you know don't just rely on the like button to communicate with people that you enjoy send them a dm once in a while reply to their stories ask people to reply to yours there's a new message button now you can also just ask people hey uh send me a dm if you'd like a replay to this week's mastermind call or send me a dm if you like the link to this youtube video since i don't have the swipe up feature yet things like that really get people talking with you and you know generating that engagement that helps with the algorithm now the last thing speaking of stories is posting on stories every day give or take i've been really really focused on this and really doing good with this probably the past couple of months i've been on instagram stories almost every day i usually take like at least one or two days off usually the weekends i'm not posting so much but during the week i'm posting something almost every day and on top of that i'm also posting my face i am showing up on camera at least i would say four days a week uh maybe three to four days a week and then i might post you know designed stories or screenshots or share other people's posts two days so i'm posting my stories very very consistently and this is something that i wasn't always doing i just felt like i don't know i don't want to annoy people i don't have that much to say but i'm telling you this is probably responsible for a whole lot of this instagram growth why is that well i think that it gets people you know really thinking about you it keeps you top of mind for people feed posts just don't have the same impact that they used to and obviously i'm not saying that they're not important because they are you have to post good quality images and content you have to test out those new features i've tested igtv i've tested out one reel i want to do more reels you know doing things like that do help you out but stories are the things that keep me up at night right those are the things that i'm laying in bed at 3am maybe not that late but you know actually tapping and watching for people they're the things that i wake up in the morning and i'm watching i'm not scrolling my feet anymore and i don't think many people are i think the majority of users nowadays are really focused on watching stories and you know i think especially for what my goal is and where my business is headed i think this is kind of what i really want to hit home here with too is my goal in life is not to get a million instagram followers i'm not gonna say no to it but that's not my goal because a million instagram followers alone does nothing for you i've said this day in and day out having a loyal following who actually buys your services who actually books coaching calls with you who actually takes your courses who actually watches your youtube videos who actually contributes to your bottom line that's what i'm looking for so maybe that is 10 000 people maybe it's 10 million i don't know but i would rather have 10 000 dedicated followers than 10 million people who are just not doing anything and stories because my business is in the education space and i'm doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring and coaching because i'm doing a lot of courses because i'm on youtube people need to connect with my personality like people need to have some type of a relationship with me you don't just hire a coach because you hate their personality and you think they're a bad person you need to feel like you get to know them you need to feel like you understand what kind of person they are and understand that they're a good person understand that they practice what they preach understand that they're not a fraud and so stories kind of help give that inside look into my business and while this stuff is all great and it's you know produced that's all great and there's time and a place for that but there's also a time and place for the raw no makeup hair in a ponytail glasses on hanging out in a poorly lit room doing the work but people want to know that you're a real person and stories i think are really the place for that for me so to recap the things that i've been doing have been really focusing on my content marketing as a whole and making sure that instagram is set up correctly that it's linked correctly that the name is easy to remember and that i'm referencing it when it makes sense i have been paying attention to my analytics and looking at content trends such as taking more photos outside using longer captions and things like that i've been focusing on creating content that is not only shareable but also savable i've been using instagram dms so i have been reaching out to people via dm when i want to throw them a follow or introduce myself and i've been encouraging my followers to dm me as well for things like bonus links or just to say hello and just being really active in there and of course i've been posting on stories almost every day and i've been trying every opportunity that i can to actually show my face on camera as well and not just post reposts or graphics or things like that but really show up on camera these are all things that you can replicate for your own accounts or for clients accounts i have been following a very similar strategy for my clients accounts as well of course there are some things that are different there's different audiences i'm not necessarily showing my face on a camera for those accounts but you can take a lot away from you know all those things and apply them to different accounts as well so i hope that this episode was helpful that's how i've grown my account by over 2 500 in a year my goal low key is 10 000 for the year i am coming up a little bit short in the projections so if you haven't followed me yet go ahead and throw me a follow at the latasha james if you want to help me get there it's arbitrary i don't need it but the only reason that 10 000 is a little bit of a goal for me is because i want this stupid swipe up thing i can't lie i really want that feature so anyway if you haven't followed me yet i'd really appreciate it i do post content that is helpful that is uh hopefully gets you guys thinking and that's a good extension of the podcast in the youtube channel so thanks so much for tuning in i'll see you next week for a new one and uh yeah hope you enjoyed bye thanks for tuning in to today's episode show notes for this episode are available at latashajames.com podcast and contain all of the links i may have mentioned today as well as an invitation to join my private facebook group the freelance friday podcast community thanks so much we'll talk soon

Channel: Latasha James

Views: 32,324

Keywords: my organic instagram growth strategy, My Strategy for Organic Instagram Growth, How to Grow on Instagram Organically, How to Grow on Instagram Organically in 2020, How to Grow on Instagram in 2020, Organic Instagram Growth, Organic Instagram Growth in 2020, How I Gained 2500 Instagram Followers in One Year, How I Grew My Instagram Followers by 2500, How I Gained Instagram Followers, The Freelance Friday Podcast, Latasha James, How to Gain Instagram Followers Organically

Id: kkvQU90whZU

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020