How To Grow Your Instagram Account Organically

This is Part 1 on How To Grow Your Instagram Account Organically!

Did you know that I started my Instagram page 17 months ago? One year ago I had 10K insta friends, and today I have 109K. That’s almost 100K in one year! I’m not the one to throw my numbers out there, but I get asked every day for tips on how to grow your Instagram account organically. While I don’t know every single tip, I do know enough to share a few with you. I’m sharing tips that worked for me and, hopefully, they will work for you too!

This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are my own.

What are you passionate about?

The first thing you need to do is figure out what your passion is! Do you spend most of your day thinking about this passion? Do you see yourself doing this for a long time? Do you spend a lot of you time researching trends? Do you follow Instagram accounts that shares the same passion as you do? These are just a few questions to ask yourself before thinking about starting a business page. The last thing you want to do is jump into something you’re not passionate about. I’ve seen so many people come and go because it’s so easy for their audience to see that they’re are not passionate or genuine about what they’re doing. Once your audience figures that out, your engagement will start to go down and some will even click that unfollow button. So, it’s very important to figure out what you’re passionate about and stick to it.

Open a Business Page

So you know what you are passionate about and now it’s time to start a business page on Instagram! The hardest part is overcoming your fears of thinking you don’t have what it takes to open up your own Instagram page. The passion and drive that you have is enough, trust me! Once you start and become consistent with your content, everything will fall into place. One of the main reasons for using a business page versus a personal page is that you get access to your insights. More to come on insights. Make sure your profile has a picture, your name, your business category, your email address, website address, and a short description of what your page is about. 

Design Aesthetic 

I am talking about your Instagram feed design aesthetic. Starting out, you want to be consistent with the type of pictures you post. If you open a Home Decor page, your audience is going to expect to see home decor content. If you open a Life Style page, then your audience will expect to see a little bit of everything. Do not confuse your audience! So many people have made this mistake and it’s sad to see their engagement decline as a result :(. Please note, as your audience gets bigger, you’ll have much more flexibility to post pictures outside your norm. Assuming that you might not get collaborations until you hit 1K or so, all your pictures should be closely edited the same to give your feed that uniformed look. Find an editing app that works for you and stick to the same editing styles. 

Pictures

OK, here’s one thing you can’t slack off on. Quality pictures are EVERYTHING on Instagram! Have you ever seen a post of someone wearing a cute outfit or post of a cute powder room, but the picture is blurry and/or dark? You don’t want to be that person! You can take great pictures with your iPhone. I actually find it easier to take pictures with my iPhone than with my professional camera. Take a look at the pictures in my Spring/Summer Living Room Design post. All of the pictures were taken with my iPhone XS Max. Starting out, I used my old Nikon P600, but eventually upgraded to a Nikon D3400 because I knew I needed to start taking better pictures. By the way, I didn’t know anything about angles and editing and this is something I learned over time. Lighting is key to taking quality pictures. Try to shoot in natural light as much as possible. If you are having trouble with proper lighting in your home, you should invest in a Ring Light. It’s amazing! Your pictures will get more engagement and features if they are bright and crisp versus dark and blurry. You should post a picture everyday, especially when you are first starting out. You can even post twice if you have lots of content. 

I hope you find these tips on how to grow your Instagram account organically helpful! Make sure to have fun doing this and don’t lose yourself during the process. It’s easy to compare yourself to others, but just focus on being your authentic self. Numbers aren’t everything, but it surely helps when brands are looking to work with you. On part 2, I’ll be talking about ENGAGEMENT, Insights and Hashtags! Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to my blog!