My Simple Strategy: How I Organically Grew My Instagram Account (Part 1)

 

 
On a Friday afternoon right after lunch, I sat in an overcrowded lecture hall, surrounded by budding chemists on the path to highly successful careers. In front of the blackboard, a man from a well-known biotech company presented his research and the steps he took to propel his own career, secretly hoping to recruit some of us in the audience.

While half of the audience sat upright and hung on to his every word, the other half slumped in their seats, very close to nodding off due to the Friday post-lunch lull. Since I secretly planned on leaving the chemistry world to start blogging full-time, I did neither…

I grabbed my phone and created an Instagram account instead.

Over the next couple of weeks, I learned everything I could about Instagram. I figured out how to post photos and write engaging captions. I learned how to use hashtags and leave comments. I started following my high school and college friends, as well as my favorite food bloggers.

And then, something crazy happened.

People started to follow me.

Complete strangers, people I had never met before, started following my account. They liked my photos, left kind comments, and shared my account with their own friends.

Day after day… Week after week… Month after month… My account continued to grow. I hit 100 followers, then 200, then 500, then 1,000. I passed 2,000, then 5,000, then 10,000.

At the moment I typed this, my Instagram account has grown to over 48,648 followers!

And not only did my followers increase… So did the likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement I saw on my photos. Whoa!

As my account continued to grow, countless friends and strangers started asking me the same question. “How did you grow your Instagram??”

When I talked with them, I heard the same things over and over.

“It’s so hard to grow my account.”

“I’ve been stuck at ___ followers for FOREVER.”

“I just seem to lose followers every day. I gain a couple but lose a few more. I don’t get it!”

“I literally get NO likes anymore.”

“I wish I knew the secret sauce or how to crack the code.”

“Nothing is working. I don’t know why I even bother trying.”

“I’m SO frustrated!!”

Does that sound familiar?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing the methods that I use to consistently grow my Instagram account. They’re totally doable and easy to apply to your own Instagram account!

These methods do not require…

+  spending 10 hours a day on Instagram
+  posting 6 times a day
+  paying for a commenting service or comment bot
+  playing the follow-for-follow or follow/unfollow game
+  paying to boost photos
+  paying for Instagram ads

These methods are simple, straight forward, and most importantly… They work!

Tip: If you want to learn even more, then you can join my Instagram VIP List here! In addition to what I’m about to share with you below, I give my special VIPs even more of my proven strategies about how to grow their accounts and get more followers on Instagram. If that sounds like something you’d like to know, then consider this your exclusive invitation to join my Instagram VIP List here!

Now let’s dive into Part 1 of my Instagram growth strategy! And that is…
 

 
Consistency.

Yup. Consistency. I told you my methods are simple!

There are two main forms of consistency that I apply to grow my Instagram account, so let’s go over both of those.

Consistency in Posting
I post one photo every day. That’s totally doable, right?? One photo. Once a day. Not three photos, not six photos, not fifteen memes or cute cat videos… Just one photo, once a day.

I’ve experimented with posting two or more photos each day. After a few months of gathering the data and analyzing the results, I realized that (a) extra photos were not converting to extra followers {or likes, comments, and traffic to my blog} and (b) I felt totally burned out by posting that often. Finding 3x the photos, writing 3x the captions, tracking 3x the data… Not exactly fun, especially when I wasn’t seeing 3x the results!

So I switched back to posting one photo every day, and I continued to see strong consistent growth… Without feeling completely frazzled or burned out. Total win-win!
 

 
“But Amy!” I hear you exclaim. “How do you post every day?”

“I don’t know what to share!”

“My life is too busy!” (I’ve also heard the flip side… “My life is too boring! I have nothing to share!”)

“I forget when the photos aren’t on my phone!”

“I forget to even take pictures in the first place!”

“My photos never get any likes anyway!”

I get it. I totally get it. When I first started my account, I only remembered to share a photo when I posted a new recipe on my blog… Or when I went to my favorite local bakery for dessert. (I’ve got a big sweet tooth; what can I say??)

To keep me on track, I use an Instagram content calendar. That’s just a fancy way of saying… I write down what recipe I’m going to share on my calendar in advance. Like I said, my methods are super simple—I promise!

You can see a screenshot of my May 2018 Instagram content calendar below. Every two weeks, I sit down and plan another two weeks’ worth of posts.
 

 
For example… On May 4^th, I wrote down the posts I wanted to share on Instagram from May 14^th to May 27^th.

Notice that I had already planned out the posts from May 5^th to May 13^th in a previous planning session! I do that on purpose because it gives me an extra week of buffer space… Just in case real life gets in the way (emergency vet appointment, sick kid home from school, whatever the case may be in your life!) and you can’t sit down to plan on that particular day you set aside.

After picking the recipes for each day, I also (a) selected each photo I wanted to share on Instagram, (b) cropped the photos to the correct size {more on that in Instagram Growth Strategy Part 3!}, and (c) edited the photos to really pop on Instagram {more on than in Instagram Growth Strategy Part 3 as well!}.

Then to finish my Instagram planning session, I also wrote a caption and typed out the best hashtags for each photo.

Want my template? I’ll give it to you for FREE here!

So… Consistency in posting. Which leads to consistency in planning. And now it’s time to move on to our next form of consistency…
 

 
Consistency of Your Content
Imagine there are two donut shops in your neighborhood. When you walk inside the first donut shop, their glass display cases are full of every time of donut imaginable: glazed, old fashioneds, twists, maple bars, jelly-filled, crumb coated, kid-sized donuts with chocolate glaze and rainbow sprinkles (my personal favorite!), and even glazed donut holes. They don’t sell any other type of food, but the line always stretches out the door because their donuts are sweet, tender, melt-in-your-mouth oh-so-irresistibly good.

When you enter the second donut shop, you see donuts filling half of their display cases… But the other half contains sandwiches, wraps, sushi, salads, jars of peanut butter and jam, and even hand-painted dishes and silverware for purchase. Because they try to offer so many different options, they all taste mediocre, and you rarely see more than a couple of people in the shop… If that.
 

 
When I first started my Instagram account, I was the second donut shop. Half of my photos were the recipes on my blog… But I also shared pictures of dining out, baseball games, selfies with my family, and vacations to places like Kauai and Lake Tahoe. Those non-recipe photos still looked beautiful with great lighting, stunning colors, and strong composition…

But I eventually decided to try an experiment. I stopped posting all non-blog-recipe photos. I only shared images of recipes from my blog.
 

 
And I turned into the first donut shop.

(Metaphorically, of course!)

When I stopped sharing “regular life” photos and only posted my blog’s recipe photos on my Instagram account, I saw an immediate increase in the number of followers, likes, comments, and engagement.

So I thought about why that might be… And when I thought about the accounts that I loved following, I had my light bulb moment.

I followed certain accounts because they were predictable; those accounts always shared a certain genre of photos. Although I followed an assortment of genres, like baseball teams, inspirational quotes, and golden retrievers… If the golden retriever accounts started posting about cars or sailboats or scary movies, I would’ve unfollowed them in a heartbeat.

And if I, as a follower of other accounts, liked the predictability… Then why would people following my Instagram account be any different?

So I made my account even more specific.

I knew my genre = food.

And within that broad genre, my niche = healthy baking.

That sounds really obvious in hindsight, knowing the name of my blog is Amy’s Healthy Baking… But deciding to post exclusively niche-related content was a key turning point in my Instagram account’s growth.
 

 
“But Amy!” I hear you say again. “I want to post about everything!”

“I love posting pictures of my family, my dog, my outfits, my house, my vacations… Even sweaty post-workout selfies!”

“How in the world do I figure out my niche, let alone my genre??”

“I don’t like feeling confined to one topic!”

Been there, felt that. Trust me. I loved posting those baseball and vacation and family photos… But when I realized that my followers didn’t like those photos as much as I did, I started a separate account (here!) for those behind-the-scenes / real-life photos instead.

Then this is how I figured out the exact genre and niche of some of my friends’ Instagram accounts…

1) Look at your latest 12-18 photos. (Fewer than 9 typically isn’t enough, while more than 18 can feel overwhelming!)

2) On a piece of paper, write down the number of likes for each of those photos.

3) Pick out the top 3-5 photos with the highest number of likes. What do they have in common? Is there a theme tying them together?

Example 1: I looked at a friend’s Instagram account. She’s also a food blogger, and she uses her Instagram account to grow her blog’s audience and get people to visit her blog by clicking the link in her profile. She posted three main types of photos: quick and easy recipes from her blog, grocery shopping and meal prepping, and funny food quotes.

When I looked at her account, I immediately noticed a few things. Although the quotes definitely made me laugh, they received very few likes and comments. Her pictures of grocery hauls and meal prepping received slightly more likes; they were poorly lit with hazy-looking filters.

But most importantly… Her high-quality recipe photos from her blog received triple the number of likes as the quotes and grocery pictures! It became really obvious that (a) quick and easy recipes were her niche and (b) that’s what her audience loved.

When we talked, she decided to start a second account to share the quotes and meal prepping pictures, and she started exclusively posting her food blog’s recipe photos to her original Instagram account. As a result, she saw her followers, likes, comments, and engagement all increase!

Example 2: I looked at a different friend’s account. She’s a Beach Body coach and uses her Instagram account to interact with her current clients, as well as attract potential clients. She also posted three main types of photos: herself, food, and quotes.

In looking at her Instagram feed, I immediately noticed that the quotes, although incredibly inspirational, received less than half the likes as her other photos. And while the food photos (meal prepping, healthy options while eating out, and that sort of thing!) still had a few more likes than the quotes… The photos of her always received the highest number of likes—at least double the amount!

That made a lot of sense. In the fitness industry, people want to see results. They want to see that they can achieve their goals and get that “dream body.”

So my friend also started a second account where she could share those other photos, as well as her family and travels, while narrowing down her genre and niche with her Beach Body Instagram account.

And… She saw the same results that I did with my Instagram account when I narrowed down to “food blogging” and even further to “healthy baking.” Her followers, likes, comments, and engagement all grew—far more than she imagined!

So let’s recap! The first method I use to grow my Instagram account is consistency.

+  consistency in posting
+  consistency in planning
+  consistency in photos’ genre and niche

I use an Instagram content calendar (you can get it here!) to plan my Instagram posts 2+ weeks in advance (which means I never miss a post!), and I analyze my top performing posts to determine my exact genre and niche.
 

 
In Part 2 and Part 3, I’m sharing the second and third methods I use to grow my Instagram account. But in the meantime… I’d love to invite you to join my special Instagram VIP List here! If you’re on my VIP List, then you’ll receive more bonus strategies on how to grow your Instagram!