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Growing your Instagram account can seem overwhelming when you’re just starting out. But with a few Instagram tips and consistency, you can get great results in no time.
Today I’m here to share my best Instagram tips if you want to see consistent and real growth on your Instagram account.
What exactly should you post on your Instagram? When should you post it? And how should you post for best results?
We are walking through all these questions today to give you a better understanding on how you can take little steps to grow on Instagram.
If you are new to the Insta game, make sure you read this post first: How to Get your First 1000 Instagram Followers. These tips will also be applied throughout your journey, not just for the first 1000 followers, but it’s a good place to start.
Also, if you want an aesthetically looking feed, don’t forget to grab my free presets here, which will help you do just that.
When to Post
What is the best time to post on Instagram?
It will depend on your audience and your time zone. Think of the type of audience you have (or would like to have, if you are just starting out).
Try to figure out what their daily routine might be like and when they are most likely to check their Instagram.
That will be the ideal time to post to ensure that your content gets seen by more people.
For example, if your audience is mainly people who work in an office, they will likely check their Instagram at 5-6 pm when they leave work.
If you’ve got an audience of moms, they might be more likely to check their phones at noon during nap times or after their children’s bedtime.
You don’t need to be super precise, but having a rough timing of when is the best time to post for your audience will help immensely with your engagement within the first hour of posting.
If you’ve already got an audience, the simplest way to find out your best time to post is to look into your Instagram Analytics.
Go to your profile, tap on the upper-right corner (the three bars)>Insights>Total Followers and scroll to the bottom of the page.
This is where you will see Most Active Times. The daily and hourly bar chart shows you when your audience is most likely to be on Instagram.
As you can see from my analytics, my audience is usually most active at around 6 pm. So I will aim to post my content around that time.
Why is this important?
Because the more engagement you get on a photo within the first hour of posting, the more likely it is for your photo to appear in hashtag searches. And maybe on the Explore page. Engagement means likes, comments, shares and saves.
How to Post
The best thing you can do to grow your account is to stop posting aimlessly.
If you have a feed filled with purpose, a theme, a niche, something to offer to your audience (whether that’s inspiration, motivational content, a home improvement idea, etc.) – that is when you will start to see real growth.
Having a niche doesn’t mean you can only post content specifically in that niche. You can dabble here and there in other types of content, as long as your main theme stays the same. This will get people following and sticking around too.
Think about it this way.
Say you find a home decor account and you love their style. You follow them in order to get inspiration for your own home. What if the next day that person starts to only post pictures of their cat? Or their breakfasts?
You will likely unfollow or lose interest, because it is not what you signed up for.
That is why it’s so important to stick to your main niche as closely as possible.
A great way to keep posting random things you want, without ruining your audience’s interest in your feed, is to post that on your stories.
Your stories are a behind the scenes, so post there your lifestyle, daily routine etc. Or whatever you’d like in order to connect with your audience. But keep your feed mainly the same theme.
In my feed I have mainly fashion, outfit posts and I sometimes slip in a home decor photo. My niche is fashion, I would say, so I try to stick to that as much as possible.
Once I started doing that late last year, I started to notice a more consistent growth.
Post with a purpose and likeminded people will follow along.
Don’t forget hashtags!
Keep in mind that you need to use your 30 hashtags if you want to get discovered more easily.
I have a whole post about how to use hashtags and how to research them in order to grow your account.
Hashtags are IT! After content, of course.
If you’re not using hashtags, you are seriously missing out. Your post reach will be much higher when you use appropriate hashtags, of a good size for your account. All of this is explained in the hashtag post mentioned above.
I keep a running list of hashtags on my phone (for this I use Google Keep).
I basically do my research on hashtags and divide them into categories. For example: Fashion, Fashion with Primark (when I post items bought from Primark), Home etc.
Then I put 30 hashtags in each category. So when I go to post a photo, all I have to do is copy and paste one of the lists. I also rotate between lists, so that I don’t use exactly the same hashtags every single time.
As you can see from my analytics below, hashtags are the main source for my posts engagement and new followers. This is why hashtags are so important!
What to Post
We have already discussed within these Instagram tips: why it’s important to have a niche, a theme, an aesthetically pleasing feed and proper hashtags.
But what do you do when you are out of inspiration?
First of all, you might want to take a peek at these 45 Instagram Stories Ideas to get you out of a posting rut. I know these are for stories, but you can, of course, adapt them to your feed as well.
Related: FREE 30 Instagram Reels Prompts
A great way to keep consistent is to batch your content. Have a dedicated photography day (or hour) and take multiple photos that you would like to post throughout the week.
This helps you stay on top even if you don’t have time every single day to take beautiful photos.
Repost or repurpose old content. This is a great way to fill in the gaps if you’re unsure what to post next.
Reposting an older photo from time to time works great, especially since not all of your followers see all of your photos in their feed. Don’t overdo this though, so that it doesn’t get too repetitive.
These are my Instagram tips on: how to post, what to post and when to post in order to grow quickly. I hope these are helpful to you!
What are you currently doing to grow your account? Any Instagram tips you’d like to share? Let’s hype each other up in the comments!
Thanks for the tips! As a normal person I still find this very helpful to create an impressive IG account.
this was very informative.. and giving examples of ur own instagram handle was also very nice