Hey y'all! This week the lovely Amber Dee is sharing 5 SUPER EASY strategies to really grow your Instagram in no time at all. This post has some seriously great information! Be sure to follow Amber Dee on social media using the links at the bottom of the post!

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There are a lot of people that complain about no growth on Instagram but they never understand exactly why. Some people think that they have to follow a ton of people to get followers while others think that you must be on Instagram for years to grow your following. Well, my friend, neither of these are actually true. What’s key is content when it comes to building your following. As soon as I implemented my content strategy, I immediately seen growth in my account and tripled my following. Here’s how you can do it too.

BE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

This is one of the major things that people tend to overlook when starting a business. Though there may be an ideal target audience in mind, such as women, you have to be more specific. Think about what type of women you want to target. Are you looking to sell to stay-at-home wives, full-time mothers, first time college students, or women making below $30,000 working a 9-5? Be clear about your ideal audience so that it’s easier to target them.

KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE

Once you understand who you are targeting, then it’s easier for you to understand what they like. For example, you can pretty much guarantee that a 17-year old high school student will not like the same thing as a 45-year old full-time working mother. Once again, this is why it’s important to know and understand your audience. Say for example, you have a product you are trying to sell to stay-at-home moms. You can imagine that a stay-at-home mother is working a full-time shift with cleaning the house, caring for the children, cooking, etc and would love a break. You can attract your ideal audience by posting things that spark their interest like “everyone needs a break” or “moms need quiet time too.” Knowing your audience and their pain points will make it easier to attract them as followers and future customers.

Knowing your audience will make it easier to attract them as future customers. [Tweet That!]

POST A VARIETY OF THINGS

Instagram is a platform for you to show your creativity. Though quotes are a great way to relate to your followers, every post should not be a quote. Posting the same thing everyday gets boring and eventually you will start losing follower rather than gaining them. Give your followers something to look forward to by using the element of surprise.

Get your content calendar here that takes out the guesswork out of what to post. Here are some examples of what to post.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Take your followers behind the scene of your work place. Show your audience how you do what you do. You can showcase your office, your workspace, your laptop, your camera or set up of your video recording. Let them feel as if they are apart of your process. Even showing that your life isn’t perfect is a great way to build a connect by relating to you.
QUOTES: Hands down the easiest, most useful posts that you can use to gain followers. Quotes are the most used method to create content for followers. Find things that relate to your audience to get the most impact. Are your followers trying to lose weight? Post motivational quotes about stick with it. Are your followers trying to start a business? Post inspirational quotes about how someone made it through though odds were against them.
FAQS: Posting frequently asked questions is a good way to overcome any uncertainty your followers may have about your product or service. Review some questions that you have received previously about what you are selling or ask yourself some questions about your product or service. If you’re still not sure, get a friend or a family member to give you some questions that they may ask. Use those questions as a post and answer them in the comments. It’s a great way to show your audience transparency and build trust.
TIPS: Regardless if you have coaching business, a fitness business, a make-up business, or a graphic design business, you can always give your audience tips on certain things that they wouldn’t know. If you’re a makeup artist, you can recommend certain products or how to best apply your favorite lipstick or mascara. This not only is helpful for your audience but sets yourself as the expert in this field which only increases your authority.
FILL IN THE BLANK: Questions such as fill-in-the-blank are great ways to increase your engagement with your followers and simply gain more followers by intriguing them with you question. Make sure to relate it to your business. For example, if you’re focused on weight lost then posting something such as “When I lost 10 lbs. I will_____”, to get your audience to engage and make it entertaining. If you’re not sure how to incorporate this in your feed, grab the FREE content calendar that tells you want to post each day of the week and make your life a lot easier.

BE CONSISTENT

This single-handedly is a major reason people will stop following you. Once you start a pattern, your audience begins to expect you to post around the same time each day. When you don’t adhere to that schedule, people tend to forget about you and you quickly become removed. Anyone in business as a solopreneur understands the multitude of things that has to be done to keep the business running so make it easy on yourself and plan your content in advance with the FREE content calendar. Once you know what you want to post use a scheduling program to keep you on track. I recommend Buffer, Hootsuite, or Later for posting.

HAVE FUN

Lastly understand that your post should be fun. When you have fun with your posts, your followers will as well. Enjoy your time on social media and be social. The more social you are, the more people will view you as a human instead of some random person behind the screen. Remember, humans like to connect so leave comments on some of your ideal follower’s accounts and engagement in conversation when your followers leave a comment on your post.

By implementing these simple steps, your account with be shining in no time, my friend. Happy planning!

Amber Dee is a business coach and consultant for hustling creatives, bloggers, and online entrepreneurs. She is the author of the book Girl, Get It Together and runs her own blog over at The Amber Dee where she shares the secrets to turning your passion into your profit. She also shares tips on growing your audience and how to effectively turn your audience into loyal customers.

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It’s not relevant to your industry

I used to work at a university that primarily has majors in engineering. There, I managed a department’s social media profiles (as well as all of the marketing efforts). If you don’t know, engineering and engineering topics are not as popular on Pinterest. Shocking, I know.

Are there businesses out there in the engineering industry that are rockin’ it on Pinterest? Maybe. But for the most part, the engineering industry isn’t sharing articles with “Pinterest-worthy” images. The time and effort to maintain a Pinterest profile for our department didn’t make sense, because the industry we primarily served wasn’t as relevant on Pinterest at the time.

If your industry doesn’t spend time on these platforms, why should you?

You’re limited on time

If you’re a small business or solopreneur, you only have so much time. And if you aren’t ready to outsource your social media, you need to be picky about where you spend your time.

We all only have 24 hours in a day. To effectively run a small business while also keeping up with the business tasks, marketing, customer service, AND social media, you need to be very selective with the time you spend on your business. You can’t do it all.

Pick the one or two platforms where 1) your audience spends the most time and 2) where you see the biggest ROI and engagement and stick with those.

This requires research. You will need to put in the time to discover where your audience spends time (don’t just guess) and pay attention to your current social media profiles to see which has the biggest ROI and engagement.

You ignore it

If your social media strategy is to create profiles and then never log back in again for another 6 months, it’s not time to start using that platform.

Seems like a logical suggestion right? Don’t start something you don’t plan on contributing to?

Well I see it all the time with small businesses. Someone told them they needed to be on Instagram, so they hurried up and created an account, stuck a few pictures up there and then never opened the app again.

I would rather see a small business truly master the social platforms that they choose to be on, and show up every day, instead of kinda sorta participating and then fall of the face of the earth.

Your audience will notice if you ignore your accounts, they won’t notice if you aren’t on the accounts in the first place.

Your audience/fans aren’t spending time there

If your target audience isn’t there, why should you spend time there? That isn’t to say you don’t routinely do research to see where your audience hangs out (because it can certainly change!) but if your target market isn’t on a platform you shouldn’t waste your time.

Big brands like Nike, Best Buy, and Delta are on all of the social platforms because their target audience is quite large. Nike sells sneakers, nearly everyone wears sneakers. Best Buy sells electronics, think of all of the people who buy electronics. Delta sells flights, thousands of people buy flights every day.

You get what I mean. As a small business, you are probably serving a much smaller portion of the population than Nike, Best Buy or Delta serves. Which means you need to have a true understanding of where your audience spends time before you jump on every single social platform.

By choosing to only be on the platforms where your audience hangs out, you won’t be missing out on customers, because you’ve done the research to find where your audience spends the most time.

You plan on sharing only your content

If you plan on only sharing your own content on any social platform, you might as well save your time and effort and not be on social media at all.

It’s called social media for a reason. You are supposed to be social. Which means not always talking about yourself and your business.

Think about when you go to a party. Do you waltz in and only talk about yourself? Or do you sit down, chat with someone and have an actual conversation (meaning more than one person is talking).

Of course you have an actual conversation (at least I hope that was your answer! :) ). Nobody wants to hear your message if all you do is talk about yourself.

The same goes for social media. Your audience will begin to tune you out if all you do is promote your products or services.

You need to share other people’s content to get the most engagement out of your audience.

Question: Are you on every social platform? Why or why not?

This guest post is from Brittney Lynn, who is a social media strategist who helps entrepreneurs and small business owners grow their audience, build engagement and get raving fans on social media. You can check out her blog, sign up for her free email course, or follow her on Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.