Today I want to talk Instagram, and strategies for growing your personal brand on the platform.
Now, before I go any further, full disclosure—I am not Dan Bilzerian by any means. In fact, at present I only have 540 followers (!!). I’m pretty new to it (in any serious way) and so this is just me sharing my journey with you. I’m NOT claiming mastery in any way, but hopefully what I’ve learned recently will help you.
Having said that, given my follow account just a few days ago was 150, I’ve seen an increase of 260% in just a few days, which isn’t bad by any measure.
I should also mention that I’m getting some help on my social media from Craig, a friend who originally made contact with me on Twitter and who’s been giving me some great advice on social media strategy.
Watch this space if this is a topic that interests you as I’ll lbe doing an interview with him soon to discuss ways in which you can increase your presence online.
Anyway, a few tweaks I’ve made to my Instagram feed account for the recent surge in follows. I’ll run through them now.
1. I’ve niched down my content. Whereas my feed was pretty random—a few pictures of me sitting in cafes and . . .that’s about it really—now I’ve concentrated wholly on my ‘personal brand’ messaging. This has enabled me to reach a new audience of influencers and people interested in online business.
Rather than going for a scattergun approach, I’ve streamlined my content to good effect.
2. Improved the visuals. As you can see if you look at my recent ‘grams, I’ve really improved the look and feel of my feed. This has been courtesy of a couple of apps, namely Canva (for design) and a free photo app called Unsplash.
These have enabled me to create high-quality memes which get my message across.
3. Repurposed my written content. If you look at the text in each of my recent posts you’ll see that each is quote from the great works of . . . me! Basically all I’ve done is taken some of my best article quotes and Tweets and turned them into visual memes.
Given that I’m a better writer than anything else, it makes sense for me to do that. After all, I’m not a graphic designer or fitness model—and it’s far better to play to your strengths than not.
4 Used relevant hashtags. I have begun using up to 30 hashtags per ‘gram to ensure that each post is seen by as many of the types of people I’m hoping to attract as possible.
I have also started to follow the followers of popular influencers in my field. Given that ‘following’ is frequently a reciprocal act this has resulted in a good number of follow-backs for me.
At some point I will prune back on the number of people that I’m following in order to shape up my ratio somewhat, but at the moment, growth is my key priority.
5. Interspersed with personal pics. In order to maintain the ‘personal brand’ side of things I’ve also continued to put in the occasional picture of myself. Not because I’m vain, but because I think it’s important for me to show myself from time to time.
For the same reason I’ve also been posting daily video clips as Stories—nothing groundbreaking, but just for me to get more experience talking to camera and to increase that slightly more ‘intimate’ connection with people following me.
I hope you’ve found these tips interesting – please do hit reply and let me know what you think.
By the way, if you want to learn more about personal branding you really should follow Craig on Instagram where he posts as PersonalBrandingGuru. His techniques work. He’s in the spiritual niche and has grown followers to his account @daily.prophetic by 800-1000 in a week taking ten minutes to post twice a day!
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