5 Quick Tips to Grow your Instagram

If you’re a small business, content creator, or brilliant meme maker who wants to grow your following on Instagram, these brief tips are just for you! As a content creator myself, I spend time talking to clients about how they can show up authentically on social media, and grow their brand.

Let’s dive in!

Here are 5 quick tips to grow your Instagram

1. Caption everything — and use complete sentences!

This might seem like a no-brainer, but in order for people to come to hang out on your page — they need stuff to look at! Caption your grid authentically, including a few emojis (I’m limiting you to 2–3), a question for people to respond to, and something brief about yourself!

A quick example of an easy caption:

“Holy cats, it’s snowing like crazy outside my office window today! I love to see the soft flakes coat my window, but I’m not prepared for the shoveling and winter weather driving!

In the winter it can be easy for me to want to hibernate and avoid going outside at all costs, one way I work around this is by going for short walks on my local bike trail! I also make sure to spend time in the sun even if it’s just sitting by my window, or in front of my SAD lamp — a tool specifically designed to help people with depression when it gets dark and cold outside so early.

I’m looking forward to cozying up with a book and some hot chocolate today and watching the snowfall!

Do you get snow where you live?”

2. Post often, even if it’s not perfect.

Instagram is about content — images, videos, etc. If you want to grow your page, you need more of these out there for people to discover, in Reels, hashtags, the discover page, and beyond. Post it if it’s not perfect, if it’s an unbalanced shot, if it’s unedited, if it doesn’t “fit” the brand — content creation should take precedence over perfection in this case.

pro tip: using a content calendar isn’t for everyone but I highly recommend creating a type of chart or table at the very least to track the type of content you want to post.

Examples of Content calendars

The classic weekly planner:

this is probably the most common type of content calendar I see — with color coded blocks for each channel and notes about content subjects

Content Calendar: By Social Media Channel

This is a type of strategy document I might work on for a client (with fleshed out captions, details and links) if they need to think by channel, instead of by day.

Content Calendar: by Topic

This is an example of a social media calendar sorted by topic or caption first, and then broken down by channel, link and repost location

3. Show up often, and do it authentically.

This one can be the most time consuming because it requires something important — you! Show your face on your grid every so often, a selfie, headshot, and shoulders or full body look. Introduce yourself and remind people there’s a face behind the brand. The same goes for your IG stories. Post-real-time videos of you doing boring stuff, or exciting stuff- the choice is yours! Don’t forget to caption your videos in your stories to increase the accessibility of your content.

4. Plan ahead — you’ll thank me later.

Posting to social media can feel like a spur of the moment act, and sometimes it is. But if you’re in things for the long game, planning ahead on what you want to talk about is going to be way easier on your mind, as a creative, than if you’re pressuring yourself — nay — bullying yourself into posting regularly but you don’t know where to start.

I brainstorm a few topics I want to post about, and then usually over the weekend, or on Mondays, I write out my captions. This spurns me on to either shoot a few looks to coincide with the topics, or look through my archives for a shot that fits the vibe, and sometimes I create an easy to read graphic that summarizes the caption depending on if I think this post may go viral or not.

5. Find your platform

This might seem like a no brainer, but depending on your content style and how you like to engage with people, Instagram might not be the best place for all your time and energy. What about Pinterest or Twitter? If you like either of those more and feel more comfortable creating content on them first — then do it! We live in a day and age when we’ve got to work faster and smarter than we did yesterday. So use a snippy tweet or an inspired thread or that vision board and recreate them for Instagram. Not every post has to be an original thought.

If you found these tips helpful, I’d love it if you left a comment!

Work with me!

If you read through this post and would like to learn more about social media strategy you can visit me at www.itsjustliz.com and book me for a personal coaching session or media consult!