INSTAGRAM MONEY THREAD DAY 8/10: Growth Strategies

Welcome to my 8th of 10 threads posted on 10 consecutive days all about growing an Instagram business!

Topics:

Explore Page
Comments
Using Stories
Shoutouts
Collaborations

Let’s go!

Before you continue, make sure you’re caught up on all the previous threads! You can find them here https://twitter.com/macbookmilli/status/1293836829699997696

The explore page

The explore page is the holy grail of Instagram growth

One of your main goals when it comes to Instagram growth should be to enhance explore page presence

That’s also what you’re trying to do whenever you try to boost engagement on your content

Ranking high on specific hashtags can serve as a “mini explore page” as well

But don’t expect to rank well on big hashtags when you’re young

Now that we understand the explore page a bit, let’s talk about engaging with others content

Commenting on other users posts

This is just like engaging with other accounts to grow on Twitter

Commenting on other pages in your niche gets eyes on your profile

Commenting also establishes you as a player in your community

How to engage

Like posts often
Leave good comments*

*Leave good comments by making the original post relatable, finding the main point of the topic and addressing it, or asking a question

Try to become the pinned comment *

The new pinned comment feature (cont)

(Cont) lets you pin a comment to your post for everyone to see.

If you can become the pinned comment on a big accounts post, you’ll get a LOT of exposure

How to find content to comment on

You can find big accounts/hashtags in your niche and comment on the most recent posts

But, this is less efficient since popular posts get a TON of comments and you’ll be competing for eyes

Instead, turn on post notifications and try to be one of the first comments

This will allow your comment to generate a lot of likes and rank higher

Final point about comments:

Remember that you are generally not speaking to the account when you are commenting

They are too big to notice you

Instead, gear your comments to the other people browsing the comments section - that’s your audience

Using stories

Using the story feature well is critical to a good account

Most people associate the story feature with promoting products or services

This is because the story feature makes it easy to direct your followers to links

But the story feature actually serves a lot of growth functions:

Engage with your audience
Direct engagement to a post
Conduct shoutouts

Engage with your audience by conducting polls and QnA

Direct engagement by linking a new post in your story

Shoutouts

And this brings us to my favorite growth strategy: conducting shoutouts

There are two types of shoutouts:

Mutual shoutouts (free)
Paid shoutouts

I prefer mutual shoutouts because you can do them more often, and I’ve found they help you grow faster

How to conduct mutual shoutouts:

Contact pages in your niche around your size
Ask to exchange shoutouts
Create a shout-out story post for yourself
Send the other account your shout out post and receive theirs
Both of you shout each other out on your stories

An alternative option is to have the other page feature one of your best posts in their story

Either way, one this is very important:

It must include a short call to action

I see a lot of posts saying “I highly recommend you follow _______” which I really don’t like

The CTA should be

Firm
Not overused
Not a suggestion but a command

Something like:

“If you’re a fan of (topic), you need to follow _______”

Or

“Go follow my friend ______ right now if you’re a fan of (topic)!”

Paid shoutouts

Paid shoutouts are pretty simple.

Instead of doing a mutual shoutouts with a similarly sized page, you just pay a big account to shout you out on their story.

This is also a good growth idea, and if you have some money to spend, can help you grow.

Shoutout group

A shoutout group is similar to a retweet group on twitter

Related accounts choose which account gets a shout out on each day, and every account shouts that account out on their given day

This is another really great way to grow

However, I personally still prefer negotiating shoutouts with accounts individually so you can handpick how often to shoutout, and who to do it with

Lastly, do NOT do feed shoutouts

This is spammy and will hurt the aesthetic of your account

Stick to stories for shoutouts

Collaborations

This is another growth strategy that can work well, but it can be annoying to your followers

Basically, a collaboration is when you split a post “in half” with another account and each of you feature your half on your page

For example, if you run an art page, you could have a post about “The 6 best color schemes for a painting”

You feature 3 on your page and tell your audience to visit the other account for the remaining 3

The account you are collaborating with does the same

This way, followers have to visit each other’s pages, and they may end up following

You can upgrade this idea by making the post a carousel, and telling your followers that the remaining content is on your friends page on the second slide

But remember, this idea can be annoying to your followers, and because of that, I personally don’t recommend it much

That’ll be all for this thread!

Recap:

Your goal with every post should be to get on the explore page
Engage with other accounts content to get noticed

Comments are not to the creator, but to the people browsing the comments
Use the story feature to engage with your followers, promote your content, and conduct shout outs
Use shoutouts to grow faster
Use paid promos to grow extra fast if you can afford them

Collaborated posts can help, but they can also be annoying

Tomorrow, we will finally get to the best part: MONETIZATION

In the meantime, make sure you are following my friend @PascalGrosz. He’s a master of Instagram growth and has an excellent book too

See you guys tomorrow! And just in case you missed it, here’s where you can find all the threads so far: https://twitter.com/macbookmilli/status/1293836829699997696