How to Grow on Instagram, 3 Step Guide for Beginners

Are you trying to build your online presence on Instagram? Increase your engagement, or you're a beginner and somehow your page isn't getting any visibility from Instagram.

At this point, some of you may be convinced that it is impossible to crack Instagram. Well, everything is confusing and hard, especially when you're starting from scratch.

But no worries, cause I'm here to tell you a small secret about Instagram in a nutshell, and that is- 'If you play by Instagram's rules and use their newest features and have a consist posting schedule getting visibility and gaining followers is just a piece of cake'.

Instagram

Introduced in 2012, Instagram has now become a huge platform for marketing, personal branding, and of course, social media.

It has become one of the most popular platforms on the planet now at user count of over 1 billion members and with the rising numbers; businesses, brands, and even creators are now putting more time to learn about how the algorithms work inside Instagram.

Because at the end of the day, if Instagram doesn't promote your post, it's gonna be left in the dark.

But with this article, I'll be sharing 7 tips that'll be divided into 3 categories that will help your IG page kickstart in the right way which will help you in the long run. So without any further ado, let's get started.

What does you and your brand stand for?

Now, this is a part where a lot of newbies don't give enough attention and care in the beginning.

You see, most of us set up an account and start pouring out content without a vision about how their brand is presented in the digital space. So before you even set up an account look at these 3 steps to plan things for the long run.

Self-Realization is the first step for forming an effective content strategy and creating a brand image,

So if you have a clear vision of what you are doing, Trust me, you are halfway all set and already ahead of those in your lane. but if that's not you, I need you to follow the steps given below, It will set you in a good direction in setting your account the right way.

Identify your Audience

As the first step, I want you to learn about your audience, and this is a very crucial step because users are the cornerstone for any digital platform and algorithms prioritize their enjoyment to decide whether to promote the post or not

So first ask yourself these questions-

What is the type of content that I'm putting out? What kind of age group is most likely to engage with these posts/products? What demographic would be generally interested in what I’m putting out?

These are questions that you gotta think to yourself and write them down if you wish, and when you’re done with that.

Shop for inspiration

Now when we have an idea of what we are, we now gotta look for what we want our page to look like.

For this lookup successful or popular accounts that are similar to your niche. For example, you plan to start an account for fitness and health look at well-established fitness brands, and examine how their content is laid out.

How do they put out content? What color scheme do they use? Check how their Bio and profile pic is designed there.

Take in what you like in there, and decide what you would do differently for your page and your audience.

Study or hire

Instagram is mainly a visual-oriented site, so in order to stand out among your competition.

We should be able to put out vibrant and catchy visuals that will hook your followers and would compel them to take some action after watching your post.

Whether it be in video format or an image I would advise you to maintain a standard quality, by this I do not mean “a professional quality” but it should be something pleasant to look at and feel positive about from a user's point of view.

You have two options, either you learn how to create and produce images and bit-sized videos which are easily available via YouTube and other learning platforms.

But if it’s not for you or you don’t have the time for it, you are left with the option of hiring someone, and you can always start off with hiring someone via freelancing sites and if they match up to your expectations you can also consider hiring them for contract-based periods.

You start the Grind

Well, you have set up you’re account and you have a clear idea of what you are and where you wanna be, but your feed is empty, and the only two followers you have are your mom and your best friend since elementary.

This is where we actually implement the ideas we have planned in the previous step and before we start,

I have to remind you- To get through this part You would have to stay consistent and motivated as this step will take you some months and you may not see any solid results in the first few weeks.

Content Strategy

In order to maximize your reach even in the first place you have to plan out your content, by this, I mean the ‘type of content’ that you are planning to put out.

Over the last few years, Instagram has been testing various formats of video and image features like Reels, IGTV, and new additions to the stories and posts section.

So if you want your posts shown to large audiences we have to try the new features.

But in order to do that, we'll have to figure out what works best with our audience and there’s only one way to find out what it is, and that is by testing.

Testing

Now for the first weeks until you get some kind of following you should try posting at different times and in all kind of formats.

For this I would advise posting at least 3 posts with one of them being a carousel, 1 to 3 reels, and stories every day for a week’s time; You can switch it up and try out different variations of this. After all, it is the testing period, so get creative.

Test out new hashtags (Which I will cover in another article) and hop onto new trends to find out your initial audience say two hundred followers, and then we enter into our final step.

Be an Instagram pro

This part is where we study the engagement we have received so far, and use them to form a new fresh content plan. By this, I mean looking into our insights and forming a consistent posting strategy.

This will not only help you get a good-looking feed but it also gets the algorithm to pick up your posts and show them to people who might be interested in your page and become potential followers.

Analyzing the results

Now that we have a small following, we can learn from them and apply those to our page so that we can attract more like-minded people.

So assuming that you have already switched to a business account, open up Insights and scour through it.

Instagram has divided this feature into three parts and they are:

1. Insights overview
2. Your audience
3. Content you Shared

Since we are at the early stages we are now only taking a look at two features:

• Which type of content works better with our audience?
• Our audience's demographics and the specific time they engage most with our posts.

Once we really understand these we have to tailor our new content plan according to these, also if you find any other useful observations include them too and mix them into this equation so that you get a tailored action plan.

Creating an action plan for Instagram

Now that we have talked about learning from our audience let's get down to mixing all of the observations into an effective content plan that works for us.

First of all, we'll set up a consistent posting calendar, for lookup insights and see what days and times your does our audience interacts with our posts the most and then post in that time frame.

Secondly, look at what type of content has performed great over the last weeks, it may be one of your images or one of your reels that went viral.

Figure out what people like about that and try to include it in your future posts. Nowadays Instagram favors video format content such as reels as we can see so many accounts just blowing up due to this feature, so I would advise you to take leverage of this opportunity.

Olivia's Bake hub

For a general understanding, We are gonna take Olivia's case. Olivia is a young entrepreneur in Sydney, she makes and distributes sweet cakes and other pastries upon order. One day she decides to open an Instagram account for her business.

Upon reading this article she puts out 4 usual feed posts with one carousel post, 2 reels, and also posts stories almost every day.

After two weeks of the testing period, she looks up insights and thinks- "oh, people love these reels and I've been getting a lot of positive responses but two of my normal posts didn't go as I expected. My audience interacts with my posts mostly in mornings and evenings, so I should also rework my posting schedule"

Conclusion

Hello there, thank you for staying till the end. This article is the first in the 4 part Instagram mastery and with this article, we have talked about how we can kickstart a professional Instagram account. It's the tip of the iceberg and there'll be more pointers and tactics that you can implement in order to set up your page the right way.

In this article, I have only specified the basic stuff that you have to care about when starting from scratch, I wanted to keep it this way so that any absolute beginner can understand and follow along with this Instagram mastery series.

Thanks.