7 Quick and Easy Steps to Improve Your Instagram

I’ve always had a strong love for Instagram, but it hasn’t been until this past year that I’ve really got the hang of it. As a blogger, Instagram is key to your growth, building your community and working with brands you love, so it’s important to constantly improve your Instagram any way you can!

I’ve come to love so many amazing Instagram accounts that I aspire to be like one day! Having inspiration helps me plan out my feed and take photos with my ideal aesthetic in mind. Without direction, your Instagram feed can start looking muddled and all over the place, but if you have a vision for what you want it to look like, it can help improve your feed so much.

Whether you’re new to Instagram or have been working at it for a while, you might have realized there are some sleazy ways to grow your account. People are buying followers, buying ‘likes’ and comments, and commenting on other users’ photos using bots, rather than doing it themselves.

But brands notice. Companies notice. Other bloggers notice. If you have 25K followers and 100 likes on your photos, it’s pretty clear that those followers aren’t all real. And if all the comments coming from your account are “love it” and “nice one” it doesn’t seem genuine.

I attended an Instagram workshop last week and there was a boss babe there who works in marketing and PR, so she is the one who looks for and communicates with bloggers to grow the brand. She said that people in her position are taught to look out for this kind of thing, and they’re all aware that anyone can buy followers these days.

The best way to improve your Instagram is to be genuine and figure out what works best for you. But it’s not always easy to know exactly what to do to grow your account. So I’m laying out 7 quick and easy steps to improve your Instagram and grow your followers authentically! Even if it takes some time, you’ll feel so fulfilled when you see your followers grow day after day and know you did it yourself!

1. Make Your Profile Public

First thing’s first. If you want to grow your following, people are going to need to see your Instagram feed, and they can’t do that if your profile is set to private. If your profile is private, people can’t see your photos, they can’t see your Stories, and your hashtags won’t show up, meaning people really have no way of finding your profile unless they know you or you tell them about it.

But if you want to really extend your reach and grow your Instagram followers, set your profile to public. If you don’t feel comfortable because you post pictures of your kids or some other reason, create a separate account for your blog/biz! There’s really no point trying to grow it if you’re not going to let people see what you’re working on!

2. Update Your Profile Picture

I can usually tell by someone’s profile picture whether I’m going to like their feed or not. This isn’t ALWAYS the case, but if you have a killer profile photo, it’s likely your other photos are awesome too!

And make sure your profile photo is branded! If your brand is minimalistic, you can use a photo of you wearing white with a black background. If your brand is loud and colourful, find a bright colourful wall and take a fun photo in front of it!

3. Use Instagram Stories

I was SO excited when Instagram Stories launched a while back! It offers another way to connect with your followers on a more intimate level. If you post multiple photos to your feed it can be a little overkill, but you can pretty much post as many Stories as you like and people can choose whether or not they want to watch them!

When you post your Instagram Stories, keep your branding in mind. As a blogger, you’re creating a visual aesthetic wherever you post and Stories are just another way to extend your brand! They give your followers an inside look to what you do on the daily that’s not as curated as your Instagram photos. They’re so much fun and can really help you build a relationship with your followers!

4. Choose a Theme

One of the best ways to improve your Instagram is to stick to a theme! This could be a color theme, a topic theme or all of the above. If you focus a lot on beauty, your posts will likely be beauty-focused. So choose a color scheme you want to stick to so all your photos look great together. Do you want your feed to be colourful and pastel? Do you want the clean white look with muted colors here and there? Do you want bold and bright colours?

Whatever you choose, stick to it! It will make your feed look amazing!

5. Post Consistently

If you want to improve your Instagram and grow your following, you should be posting (either photos, Stories or both) consistently. I try to post at least 1 photo a day to my feed and multiple stories if I can! 1 to 3 photos is ideal for Instagram. More than three can be Insta-overload and you don’t want to annoy your followers.

6. Engage with Others

Engagement is key if you want to grow your Instagram. Otherwise you’re just posting photos waiting for people to find them. If you don’t engage with others, it’s unlikely that they’ll engage with you, so get out there and comment and ‘like’ photos that you truly love!

Just make sure you’re genuine! Don’t leave comments like ‘cool’ and ‘nice’. Instagram might mistake you with a bot and penalize your account. Leave genuine comments that people can engage back with so you start a conversation. You never know who you’ll meet – I met my business partner who has grown into a best friend on Instagram!

7. Use the Right Hashtags

You must use hashtags on Instagram, otherwise, how will anyone find you? Using hashtags gets your posts in front of hundreds and thousands of people, which can help you grow like crazy.

You can use up to 30 hashtags and I recommend using them all! But use the right hashtags. If you’re posting a flat lay photo of a delicious brunch you’re about to eat, don’t use hashtags like #ootd or #beautyblogger. It’s irrelevant and people will likely be annoyed when they’re looking for beauty photos and a picture of your brunch pops up.

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