How to grow your Instagram account & things you need to stop doing

Unsah Malik, leading social media and influencer expert and author of the No.1 best selling ebook Slashed It shares her advice for growing your social media platforms and tips on what not to do.

Anyone who works in social media in a business capacity will tell you it’s not as rainbows and unicorns as the content looks — be it influencers, brands or publishers.

There are days everything goes to plan, your content picks up in 5x the engagement you had expected, and your followers grow 10x more than normal *major dancing emojis* — and there are other days when nothing goes to plan, the content which should have ‘blown up’ actually flopped, and you’re losing more followers than you’re gaining *major eye roll emojis*.

The downside? I’ve been there, done that twenty times over, and it doesn’t get any easier, irrespective of the platform or whether we’re in the year 2012 or 2020. The plus side? I’ve been there, done that twenty times over, and I’ve finally learnt enough to share how people like you can combat the daily struggles of growing your social media. Below, you’ll find my top 5 points — and on @unsahmalik you’l find a few gazillion more.

It’s social media, not a life support machine.

It’s not uncommon to feel as if the energy has been sucked out of you when you spend hours on end scrolling through feeds and switching between platforms. Fancy taking a week off? Go ahead and do it. Health is wealth. Your social feeds can wait, I promise. It’s also a great idea to clutter the mess on your personal feeds — unfollow all accounts which make you feel less than or take you to a negative space.

Being consistent doesn’t mean you have to post every single day.

In fact, some people deter their followers instead of attracting new followers because they’re mindlessly posting daily content to “keep up with the algorithm” (which is untrue, FYI). Instead, focus on posting content in a consistent manner that suits both you and your audience. If you can only publish three quality posts every three days, then stick to publishing every three days.

Your engagement rate will only increase if the engagement per post is high — and your engagement per post will only be high if your followers are genuinely interested in the context of what you’re sharing. This is also why I never recommend ‘content fillers’ such as random sunset pictures to ‘fit the aesthetic’. If you’re talking about organic food and your followers are there for that specific topic, why would they care to engage with a generic sunset landscape found on Pinterest?

It doesn’t matter how cool your feeds look — if the context isn’t resonating with anyone, you won’t grow into a long-term brand. 

I know, all those ‘experts’ told you to keep an aesthetically pleasing feed to increase your followers. But, truth be told, if it were as easy as that, we’d all be millionaires by now. As mentioned in the above point, the context of the content weighs far more importance than the look of it.

Aim to share advice or to entertain those within your specific niche — and create content which appeals to the particular demographic that follows you. By doing this, you’ll build credibility and reliability, and will therefore be able to convert your followers into loyal customers or subscribers eventually.

Read: Our favourite Instagram Trends of 2020 so far.

Stop aiming for 10,000+ followers before you start selling — and don’t use ‘likes’ as an indicator of sales. Vanity metrics doesn’t always equal real growth.

Some brands and influencers make good money from as little as 3,000 followers because they’ve nailed point three above. Likewise, some brands and influencers nearing the 1M mark struggle to make 100 sales! You don’t need a hefty amount of followers to become a business. You just need people who genuinely love and engage with your content and believe in what you share.

Even if you had 250 followers and 50 of those engaged with you — that’s enough to get started! Take the stats you see plastered over social feeds with a pinch of salt and don’t let it stop you from aiming for those high figures.

Why compete when you can join forces and still grow?

Build a community of those within your niche by connecting to people with similar content and level of following as you. Not only will this help you grow authentically (pro tip: please never join an engagement pod), but it’s always nice to share tips and tricks to those who are on the same path as you! Competition shouldn’t eat you up — we can all learn from one other, and different brands will always be for different customers/followers anyway.

Success is subjective is general, but especially within social media.

For example, influencers will almost always have double the engagement than brand accounts because, generally speaking, we find influencers somewhat relatable while we expect brands to sell and boast about their own product/services. On top of that, the niche of the influencer or brand and the platform it exists on is also a varying factor. We can expect fashion and beauty influencers to gain more traction on Instagram, purely because this is the platform they dominate within social media.

Engagement trumps follower count — but the context of engagement is equally important. 

A high engagement rate isn’t valuable if 70% of your comments are from bot followers and likers! In the same way, if Person A has a higher engagement rate than Person B but Person A’s comments are only emojis while Person B’s comments are thought-driven and a response to a caption or what the content is about, Person B is still better off even if the engagement rate is slightly lower.

If brand awareness is your aim then, yes, TikTok is for you.

The people who benefit most from new social platforms (which doesn’t happen very often!) are the people who are quick to jump to it. Remember: Everyone thought Facebook and then Instagram was ‘just for kids’ once upon a time, too. 

Finally, and above all because this is what everyone seemingly complains about: Algorithm changes happen all the time, get used to it. Such is the nature of social media! It’s an ever-evolving industry, so changes are to be expected. Work with the new features and functionalities and switch up how you strategise your content instead of sticking to what once worked nine months ago. 

Keep up to date with Unsah @unsahmalik for more tips on how to grow your instagram and brand.