Anyone who has met me knows that Instagram and LinkedIn are my two favorite social networks to market on. Here’s how I did it with the Instagram account @pitchbattles.
By the way, I’ve grown 4 others to 10k+ followers, and now I need to learn how to take it to 100k followers, so feel free to comment if you’re an expert of experts with tips.
My goal is to share actionable steps that we took to accomplish this, and I also interviewed two other Instagram marketers to bring even more tips for you to consider.
I picked Raymond Ahn, who has grown accounts to over 500,000 followers, and also Jaclyn Fu of Pepper Bra, who is catching traction with their 2 month old account.
Before we dig into their experience, let me give you the quick action items that worked for us to grow Pitch Battles to 10,000+.
And here’s a pic of Pitch Battles, give it a follow if you ever plan to pitch your startup (or startup idea) in a larger metro city.
1. Register an account.
Obviously… but a lot of people have writer’s block for instagram account creation. Register your account, upload at least 6 photos, a profile pic, a description and link.
Important: Use a bit.ly link so you can track how many clicks you’re getting to your website from Instagram. This is super important for us to show our clients with our Instagram Marketing service.
2. Put your growth on autopilot with an auto-like bot. We use Instagress.com
We use Instagress, but there’s lots of good ones. We actually like about 10,000 photos/videos per month and follow and unfollow about 6–7,000 accounts per month. We used hashtags to target people who were using #entrepreneur #startup #pitch and etc.
3. Use an automated direct message. We use Holr
We use Holr.co, and again, there’s lots of others. This sends a message to new followers to help you start more dialogues, and hopefully get them to click on the link.
I was surprised by how many different types of conversations I had. Of course, going into it, our original goal was to increase awareness and applications to pitch, but I found myself having a lot of conversations about partnerships. Those were underrated and important. I now have a guy ready to host the meetups in Bangkok when we decide to go international :)
4. Post regularly
This is probably where we could improve the most. If you look at the account, it only has 22 posts. I’d bet that most other accounts over 10,000 followers have way more than that, probably several hundred. More on improving here below.
5. Look at the data last month, and improve, use Bit.ly.
Like most online marketing, it’s important to look at what performed well. If you’re one of our clients, this is our job. The only one that’s your job is #4. We would look at what we targeted, the auto direct message, new followers, and clicks. Make sure you’re sending a message that is relevant to who you’re targeting.
Anyway, before we jump into the two interviews, here’s a fun screenshot of the overall stats of Pitch Battles. You can see where used automated comments, in addition to likes and follows. And yes, it’s a controversial topic: read more here. I’ll save my thoughts on that for another post — comment if you’d like to hear them.
My questions in bold, there responses in italic, and my comments as regular text.
First, Raymond Ahn, ladies and gentlemen
What is your goal with your Instagram profile?
“I want to drive traffic to my podcast and to any other links to make money off of shoutouts or in the future, my own courses and products.
I also want to inspire and motivate people as entrepreneurs with my page @themotivationteam.
As for @techvoyager and @bucketlistvoyager I want to use it to make money off of shoutouts or products I can offer to my audience.”
I found this interesting that Instagram Evangelists like Raymond use the profiles independently to make money, since I had always viewed it as an extension of a business.
What have you done with hashtags?
I researched hashtags that I can reach the top posts for so that I can get the most exposure. Hashtags used to be a powerful way to get a lot of eyeballs and traffic to your page but now after Instagram’s algorithm change, it’s harder to get as many followers that way.
I would just recommend finding two to three sets of relevant hashtags within your niche that you can get at the top and having different tiers of hashtags. For example, the first tier of hashtags (around 8–12) would be hashtags you would be able to get at the top posts for based on your average engagement per post and the second tier of hashtags (8–12) should be hashtags that you can sometimes get at the top posts for and lastly the third tier of hashtags should be the hashtags that you can sometimes but not often get at the top posts for.
Aha! The formula I’ve been waiting for!
This way, you are spreading out your hashtags and giving yourself the best options to reach the top posts for your hashtags.
How do you know what makes a good description?
A good description for your profile should be succinct and concise. You want to have it spaced (use a notepad to space your sentences) and have each line have a description of what your profile is all about.
I didn’t know you could use a notepad — nice!
Also you can include your email in the bio or switch your business to a business profile so you can have your email or contact linked that way. A good description also would include a way for people to know what your page will offer to them or know what your page is all about in a couple sentences or less.
Which is your most popular post and why do you think that is?
I run several different accounts like I shared before like @themotivationteam @socalgoodvibes @bucketlistvoyager @techvoyager and others but my most popular post hit 9 million views on @bucketlistvoyager and second most popular post hit 3 million views on @techvoyager.
The reasons these posts did so well was because I was able to boost them using what’s called like and comment groups where a group of pages will like and comment on each other’s posts but this needs to be in bulk and the bigger the pages, the more powerful the like and commenting will be. I also know that you need to boost posts that are viral or have gone viral before so it’s a combination of both engaging, viral content and engagement boosts that will help you get the maximum exposure for your posts.
Wow. There’s a lot to it! I’m almost overwhelmed at this point.
For our second interview, I interviewed Jaclyn Fu, who just started brand new Instagram account @pepperbra on February 1. It’s for her startup www.my-pepper.com. They have a kickstarter campaign coming up in April.
What is your goal with @pepperbra?
Pepper is a new bra designed specifically for women with small cup sizes. Since our plan is to launch on Kickstarter, we wanted to start identifying and growing an excited audience well before the campaign launch.
Instagram was the perfect platform to achieve that because it’s the platform of choice for our target audience, visual and allowed us to do some market research on what our audience cares about.
How do you know what makes a good description?
When we ace our content on Instagram, we get more comments on the post. A good description to us is one that our target buyer would think “YES, THAT’S HOW I FEEL!” And feel it enough where she would want to engage with us.
Oh that’s a great way to execute on the popular term: ‘engaging’ your audience.
How much do you edit your photos, or do you just use the built-in filters?
I rarely use just built-in Instagram filters now. I might use 2–3 apps at a time: VSCO, SquareSize, Enlight, Over. I’m still trying to figure out what aesthetic our following likes best.
Which is your most popular post and why do you think that is?
Defining “popular” as post with the most comments and the most email sign ups, our most popular post was a boomerang video of me dancing around wearing our product. I think it showed the benefits really clearly, and it was a little goofy. We ended up having a lot of people asking about when we were launching and sharing with us how excited they are about it.
How many Instagrammers are actually clicking through to your website?
Since February 1, we had about 170 clicks to our website from Instagram.
Not too shabby for being 2 months old!
What are you goals with Pepper Bra and Instagram 12 months into the future from now?
Our goal is to launch Pepper in a few weeks time, meet our campaign goal, and hopefully turn it into a real business! I think Instagram is going to play a huge role in our marketing strategy going forward. We’ve only just scratched the surface with content production — it’s going to get even better with more videos and more professional photography.
Check out Raymond here or Jaclyn’s startup here.
In conclusion, there’s many different ways to build an Instagram following. Raymond is part of ‘like and comment’ groups, and Jaclyn is editing her photos, giving a ton of thought into the description. At Handshakin’ we’re using automation and tools to boost our clients (and our) Instagram profiles.
Both our clients, and internally, we could all improve by implementing further hashtag research, more targeted descriptions, as well as joining groups that can help our boosts popularity.
If you’re ever looking for help to boost your Instagram profile, check out our Instagram services or if you know a secret hack, comment below!
Originally posted at www.handshakin.com.
