Blogging 101: How to Utilise Instagram

With Instagram’s changing algorithm and slow growth issues everyone’s a bit miffed on how to actually create content which grows your brand. At the time of writing this I’m thinking less on the growth of my followers, and more of the maintaining the followers I have.

Theme

If you’re aiming to be a brand on Instagram you have to pick a theme for your content. Are you going to be minimalist beauty or cosy ready nooks? Because being all over the place means that your followers aren’t sure of what content will be shown. If I’m following someone for fashion inspiration, I’m probably not going to care about content that’s based on their 5 year old kid because that’s not why I followed them.

You may also have a broad scope for you blog (I know I do!). So your theme may not be a specific topic, but your images usually match with one another in tone and style. A lot of people use filters to create this effect, although you don’t have to.

I also think being creative with the content you produce can also factor as a way to stand out. I’m personally playing around with creating different templates for Instagram to make my grid match up and be more integrated than separate images. I’m currently working on making up a unique one for my Bookstagram account to make it stand out from others.

Stories

Stories are becoming increasingly more important. When people watch your stories, this counts towards your engagement with them and Instagram will be more likely to show them your photos in the news feed. Also, it’s a lot more personal and you can share your everyday life more on a story than on your feed. It’s also okay to post multiple times a day, whereas on your feed apparently Instagram’s algorithm will end up burying one of your photos if you post two in a day.

Engage

Take time everyday to comment and like other people’s photos. Watch their stories and interact directly where possible. I’ve said this for every social media post, but you if you don’t engage with others, why would they engage with you?

A lot of people are in Instagram Pods – often these are made from Twitter and you share your posts in an Instagram DM group to create engagement for everyone. Make sure you go into a group that suits your own needs, as some are extremely strict rules (boo) and some are lenient and are more like a friends group chat. Also be careful that these aren’t the only people you’re engaging with as Instagram are also cracking down on activity like that and may shadowban you.

Make your own posts engaging. There’s only so many ways I can comment on a selfie – so why don’t you think of a caption that asks a question? That way people can compliment you but then respond to you as well – which makes the comment less of a ‘You look so good’ spamlike comment (Like ones that I’ve received on photo’s of food).

Hashtags

Use them. Follow them. Engage with them. Hashtags are such a vital part to Instagram, and it’s one of the many ways that people can find you.

Take some time to do some keyword/hashtag research related to your niche. For example I use #bbloggers and #bookbloggers because I focus on beauty and books and people searching these tags will be looking for this kind of content. I also use #nebloggers because I’m from the North East of England and this helps me to be discovered and also to discover bloggers which live near me. You can often find different location hashtags by searching in Instagram such as Bristol bloggers or UK as a whole is #UKBloggers.

Use hashtags related to your photo. You don’t want to hashtag dogs of Instagram on a photo of some lipstick as this is spamming a popular tag. If Instagram’s algorithm starts to think you’re spamming irrelevant hashtags you’ll start being shadow-banned which means you won’t show up at all, in any hashtag.

Avoid banned hashtags as this means you won’t show up again. You can tell if a hashtag has been banned if you search it and there’s no images or if there’s only top images to show.

Don’t Cheat

It’s quite telling that I need to put this in. There’s so many accounts which buy followers, likes and even pay to automate random comments on peoples photos. Don’t be this person. A lot of the time, people can tell when this is the case – and no one wants to follow people who are trying to cheat the system.

Also don’t spam. Engagement should be genuine comments, not random emojis and ‘great shot!’ – you will be seen as someone who is trying in the wrong ways. And most of the followers you gain probably won’t be engaged. Plus Instagram is actively flagging that comments under 3 words are often spam.