How to succeed on Instagram - Part 3 - Le Grande Boost (Patreon)

Part 3 – Le Grande Boost

Just to be clear before I start with the final part of this series.  Of course, you can and should just use social media for enjoyment and not stress about reach, likes and followers but…for some this is a business and drives income and well for others the ego needs to be fed.  That’s ok too.  I’ve had a few people tell me this is all sad, we are too obsessed with social media and people need to chill, that’s fine too, that’s your view.  I’m asked so often for this stuff I am just providing what I do.  I actively enjoy growing my following and working this stuff out, I get a kick out of it and have learnt a lot over the last 5 years so am just sharing what I know, use it, don’t use, it’s all good but just remember to keep everything in moderation and obsessing over something is never healthy.

Ok, so we’ve talked about how to maximise your own followers seeing your stuff but how in the hell do you grow your reach outside of your own followers.  It’s a big enough issue your own followers seeing your stuff, other people seems like an Everest to climb right?

Well not really, there are some really simple tactics you can use which are available to everyone but I’m always surprised people don’t use.  These will help grow your followers and increase your reach.

*Caveat, the more consistent you are with these and the more effort you put in the better the result, do one of these once on a rainy afternoon and never again, won’t achieve much.

The “oh, who’s that?” trick…

This is so simple it hurts me to type it out.  Find someone similar to you but more successful, that could be more followers, better engagement, whatever, - you define what you feel success looks like to you.  Go to their page, go to their latest post, see who’s left a comment, go to that persons page and (assuming it’s public) like a post or two. Yes, it’s that simple, that person will get a notification and go “oh, who’s that?” – they’ll come check you out and may then follow you or at least like a post in response (most of the time, like everything this isn’t guaranteed and you’ll have more success with people with active pages rather than just blank ones with 1 post of a free from 2019).

Follow me, follow you

Now I am definitely not a fan of randomly following people, but… I very often see a post, comment on it and go follow the other people involved, so if I see a great model shot I check out the photographer, follow them, like some stuff, leave a comment or two and 9/10 they will return the favour – it’s no surprise to learn that people like their egos to be stroked, especially us creatives!  Logic here as well is keep this within a similar niche, if I go like and follow a boudoir photographer shooting similar stuff to me then really there isn’t much of a reason not to follow me back, we’re shooting similar stuff ergo have similar interests.  Again none of this is guaranteed but all of this works way better than sitting and crying why you aren’t getting more followers and reach when you are doing nothing.

The Instagram algorithm will 100% not show you to new people if you do nothing.

Share me, I’m a Golden God

Instagram is chock full of sharing pages, I don’t know what the technical term is but those pages that generate nothing themselves but just reshare others images.  Now some are crap, they post my stuff, don’t credit me or the model and those deserve to burn the fiery pits of hell.  Others are amazing, they credit all the time, share in stories and those pages are incredibly useful to you as a creator. Ignore the good ones at your peril as they have an massive untapped audience just waiting for your juicy content.

Some will charge a fee for posting, I have done this once a while ago and it was actually pretty useful but I wouldn’t consider it for any page under 1m followers and with great reach and engagement – and how do you tell that?  I’m sure most know this but a page with 1m followers and each post is getting 100 likes and 3 comments has 100% purchased those followers.  Any page that isn’t pretty consistently getting 10k like per post and lots of (real not bot) comments on posts do not consider paying.

Under that I kinda have an ethical issue, as without the likes of you and me these pages would not exist, so apart from the above (which I would 100% treat as advertising) other pages should be clamouring to share your amazing content.  But you cannot rely on them just finding you, you need to be following them, be active on their page and liking and commenting on stuff.  One trick I use a lot is to leave a “love your stuff, would love to be featured” comment.  If they like that or leave a comment back then follow up with a direct message.  Do not be afraid to approach people, the very worst is they ignore you or say no.

And of course, pick pages in your niche, and there is a niche for everything.  If you only do black and white photography, there is zero point going after a share on a page who does colour tik tok style reels only.  So, research some good, solid pages with a solid following.  A page with 50k followers but with a great reach and solid engagement is the sweet spot here.

They share you on their page and instantly that another few thousand plus people seeing your work who didn’t know you existed.  Will they all follow you? Hell nah, I expect a 5%-conversion rate usually.  So 5k likes will usually net me around 250 followers as an average on a straight share.  One thing, if they share your stuff please please please make sure they credit everyone involved, it is 100% on you to follow that up and berate them if they do not.  I regularly block pages who share my stuff and never tag the model.

Another way to find pages is again go to someone in your niche, photographer, model whatever and see who is sharing their stuff (it’s the far right option on their profile page next to viewing their reels).  Any page regularly sharing people in your niche or with a similar aesthetic is (as mentioned above) way more likely to share you.

Now there is an even better option here…

Stop, collaborate and listen, Arrow is back with a brand new invention…

Collaborations are a literal goldmine for follows and reach and if you aren’t using them then go take a long hard look in the mirror.

So what’s a collaboration post anyway? I’m being a little lazy here but here is Instagrams definition which summarises it better than I could.

“You can use Instagram Collabs to co-author posts with other accounts. The creator of the original post can invite another account as a collaborator (and as of Dec 23 in most markets you can add up to 5 collaborators). If the account accepts the invitation, their username will be added to the post and the post will be shared with their followers. It will also appear on their profile. Accounts that accept a collaboration invitation can see all likes and comments on the post.

Note that the invited account can remove themselves at any time, and the creator of the original post can remove the collaborator at any time.

Who you can invite to collaborate follows your account's privacy settings:

·  Public accounts: Public accounts can invite both public or private accounts to be collaborators.

·  Private accounts: Private accounts can invite both private or public accounts to be collaborators, but only if the invited account follows the private account. If a public account accepts a private account's invitation, the post will be shared publicly through the public collaborator. Private accounts will see information explaining this in detail the first time they invite a collaborator. Once they acknowledge that they understand who can see collaborative posts, they can invite anyone who follows them to collaborate on future posts”

Ok so why is this important.

Example.

I share a post to my page with 1000 followers, that’s 1000 people potentially seeing and interacting with my post.

I add the model who also has 1000 followers as a collaborator, that’s now 2000 people potentially seeing and interacting with my post

Now…wait whatttttt….. you can add another 3 collaborators.

So I add 3 sharing pages with a combined following of 10k followers and…..you get my point.

If you aren’t using this seriously, I can’t help you….

A few rules with collabs…

·  Instagram can and do remove this feature if you’re on the naughty step too often, plus see the rules above around privacy settings etc…

·  I think the ability to add 5 should be rolled out everywhere now but if it isn’t available to you at the point of reading this it will be soon!

·  Make sure the page(s) you are inviting accept collabs, Look at their posts, are the regularly collabing with people…no? then don’t waste a spot.  I have probably 10-15 pages I collab with regularly who pretty much always accept my posts or at least most times.  I don’t get pissy about it if they don’t accept, it’s entirely their call but they know my stuff does well so it’s good for all of us.  Again (I’m boring with this I know) make sure it’s in your niche, blah blah blah….

·  Find pages that are generally 5-10x your following for the best return but if you have a page that will collab with you and they have millions of followers then awesome go for it.

·  For content moderation the person who sends the original post is the only one would be affected by a removal.  So if I post something that gets removed that “strike” ONLY appears as a strike for me and not the collaborators.

·  If you have multiple accounts collab with yourself! This is totally fine and another good idea to protect yourself for content strikes, if you have something you think may get flagged post it from your backup account and collab with your main account – instant protection!

My final section is around the hot topic of removals, strikes etc.

This is an absolute nightmare at the moment, some people get away with more than others, that is a fact, don’t cry about it.  The algorithm and the whole content moderation part of IG is broken as fuck, I can’t fix it, you can’t fix it and seemingly they don’t care about fixing it.

Can you get perfectly safe images removed – yep, can someone else post bare tits and get away with it – yep.  Is what it is and genuinely I have no advice here.  If everything you post gets flagged, then opening a new account can often be the only way to get ahead of it all but keep in mind new accounts are inherently at more risk for their first few months.  Also setting up a new account using the same phone… IG know it’s the same person and will know you’re trying to break out of whatever prison they have put your account in.  So for a truly new experience you should be on a new phone, new account, new email address and, if on wifi, through a VPN with a different physical location set.

If you get something removed then 100% appeal it, it’s definitely worth it, even if they keep it removed please do it as a matter of course.

I’ve had a few things removed recently but am generally ok with what I post but I am equally aware at a moments notice that may change and my account could get removed, nothing I can really do about it, it’s a fact of life for people like me (and I suspect you) on Instagram.

What can’t be recommended…. I love this section, the ever changing “these 5 things cant be recommended” – my answer to that is…”meh”.  Don’t worry about it, if you remove those posts they will just get replaced with another 5, following the rules around collabs kinda overrules this anyway.  The section is saying “we wont organically show your stuff to people via things like suggested posts or the explore page” – but if you’re using collabs effectively this doesn’t matter, as you are artificially over ruling that section! So don’t stress!

So that was the final part of my series which I hope you’ve found useful, if you’re reading this for free and you’ve found it informative, please do consider subscribing for a month for all my awesome content!