2020 is the year of everyone on Instagram being done with fake shit.
People are savvier than ever to your typical Instagram marketing tactics, and if you want to build a following that converts then it’s more important than ever to know the ONLY strategy that’s going to work.
And that is….
FOCUS ON BUILDING REAL AND AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS.
Yep, you heard right.
The times of normal people like us gaining mass amounts of followers for no reason other than having pretty pictures is over.
As technology has improved and access to information on how to make your Instagram feed aesthetic af has increased, so has the commonality of people putting out bomb content.
And what that means is more competition.
So how tf are we, normal people, supposed to stand out in this super oversaturated sea of v aesthetic Instagram feeds?
You guessed it, BY BUILDING REAL RELATIONSHIPS.
And just in case you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Okay great, Nicole, but how do I do that?”
Well, here are my top tips for doing just that!
1. FIND NEW, TARGETED ACCOUNTS THAT ARE YOUR EXACT IDEAL AUDIENCE
There are a lot of ways you can do this, but one of the easiest is hashtags. What hashtags might your ideal client be using?
Maybe you’re a fitness coach that helps busy moms. Search through #dailyparenting for pure gold.
Or maybe you’re trying to help creative entrepreneurs ditch the overwhelm. #creativeentrepreneur is where to go!
Now that you know where to find your ideal audience, you need to...
2. ENGAGE THEM!
Once you’ve found a new account that fits your ideal client profile, I want you to do 3 things:
Like 2-3 of their photos
Leave a thoughtful and engaging comment
If you genuinely like their account, give them a follow!
Easy enough, right? But wait, there’s more!
There’s actually a trick to leaving great comments…
3. ASK A QUESTION
So when somebody gets engaged, they were asked, “Will you marry me?”
They were asked a QUESTION to get engaged.
So there ya go, there’s the secret to engagement. Ask a question!
I like to think about it as if you were having an actual in-person conversation with someone. If you were face-to-face and they had just said what they wrote out in their caption, how would you reply? If you replied with a simple sentence like, “Oh wow, so cool!” or “That’s so cute!” that doesn’t really give much room for a conversation to begin, and then you’re both standing there in awkward silence, smiling, thinking, “Ok great now what….”
So engage them as if you would in a face-to-face conversation! Ask a question to give them an opening to reply back and keep the conversation going.
Basically just be interested in their life, and genuinely want to learn more!
BONUS TIP:
If you are doing this to try to expand the reach of your business, then I also recommend tracking this information in a Google Doc or spreadsheet of some sort. Then you can take it a step further and at the end of every week or month, depending on how frequently you want to do this, you can go back through the list of who you have engaged with and make sure you’re keeping up with their recent content and continuing to show them love and support!
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT.
If you want to learn more, make sure you check out my Instagram Playbook! It comes with tips on how to build real relationships with your followers, caption party starters, a hashtag strategy that will help you get in front of new clients, and so much more! Get immediate access to my IG Playbook here!
