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Curated feed

These days attention spans are short. It takes someone 3 seconds to decide if they will give you a follow when they land on your Instagram so let’s give the goods.

My favourite apps for planning out an aesthetic looking feed are preview and plan. 

With these two apps, you can drag and drop and arrange your content until your heart’s content.

I try to stick to a theme- for example, if I post a heap of close up headshots next to one other my feed is going to start to look busy and cluttered. So between close-ups shots, I will sprinkle those with more negative space or colour contrasts, for example, a black and white and then a colour picture.

Play around till you have a feed that looks balanced and easy on the eye.

It could also be good to try and stick to a colour theme. Maybe only post photos with green, blue and whites. This will keep it nice and consistent looking.

Don’t just throw in a random highlighter pink that will throw it off.

High-Quality Content 

You are probably aware that unless your Selena Gomez, it’s going to take more than a few selfies to grow an account these days.

Making sure you post high-quality content is important. I’m not suggesting you need to wait until your a pro photographer in fact I’m all about faking it till you make it. 

We all have to start somewhere. If you’re serious about fast-tracking your photography skills, I would suggest the following.

1. Get lessons with a local photographer. 
2. Watch tons of Youtube videos. Some channels I’m subscribed to are Omar Eltakrori, Adorama, Julia Trotti, Jessica Kobeissi, and Mango Street.
3. This one is obvious but practice makes perfect. Practice with your cat, your neighbor’s kids, your best friend, and her part
4. Shooting anything and everything will also help you discover what kind of photography floats your boat.

Remember that saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Time waits for no man, so best you get started 😉

Be a guide, not a hero

This one’s more about the captions. Even if your images aren’t award-winning you can still win over people with engaging captions.

A good tip is to think of yourself as the guide for your product or service. 

Give the people lots of advice, tips, and ticks as well as inspiration.

If your a service-based business and all you write about are the sales your having people will get bored pretty quickly. Instead write stories about how you personally use those products, how they have impacted your life, what you can use them for etc If you are your brand think about how you can provide value to your audience. Maybe you are knowledgeable in one subject, travel tips, or packing advice. Think more about how you can serve your audience. 

A good way to do this is to ask what they would like to learn more/see more off by using Instagram polls.

Show yourself 

People want to do business with real people so work on showing up as your authentic honest self and you will build trust, connection, and genuine friendships! Some of my best friends are people I have meet over Instagram. 

It’s such a great place to make like-minded friends.

There’s never been a better time in history than to just show up and be yourself. People are over salesy, add like marketing. Establishing real relationships and growing + learning from each other is where it’s at.

That also goes for your Instagram stories. Show behind the scenes, family life, what you made for lunch, holidays, share inspirational quotes, or funny memes.

Give your followers a reason to stay on your account and keep coming back for me.

If your profile picture is a logo rather than a picture of you make sure to show your lovely face on your Instagram stories/feed and write your name in your bio to personalize it.

Interact

I’m gonna give it to you straight. If you don’t sow you don’t grow. I just made that up but sow your seed lol

Actually engage with your audience. Reply to every DM (ok maybe not the dodgy ones) and every comment on your post. 

Reply to people’s stories and leave authentic comments for others. Instagram rewards you for being social and the more social you can be the more you will show up in people’s newsfeeds.

No one wants to spend hours glued to their phone so I suggest just popping on there every spare 5 minutes you have. Waiting for the kettle to boil, pop on insta, at the doctor office pop on, 

Running a bath pop on. I think you get the point.

I hope these five tips on growing your Instagram following have been helpful. I hope you feel inspired to go out there and be your beautiful self and build authentic connections and friendships. Remember to show yourself, be relatable, keep learning new skills to propel yourself forward engage, and be active on Instagram.

I know you can do this and I’m always here for you.

Go get it, friend!!!

Love Kate