This is a guest post from Aby Moore of You Baby Me Mummy.
Instagram can inspire us. Its visual impact transports us to far-flung places. We can escape the rain on the school run, to feel just for a moment, the warmth of the sun on our faces. It can help us remember special times in our lives and share them with the world.
It’s this ability to transport us which holds huge power for those who know how to use it properly and who are prepared to put the effort in to make it work.
Besides the visual nature of the platform, its pull for me, and many others, is community. As with most of the other social media platforms, friends are made, collaborations ignited, and communities are built.
An Instagram community is a network of engaged followers, collaborating accounts and invested users who believe in your brand and support your efforts.
It’s much more than a follower count! In fact, you can have well under 10,000 followers on Instagram and have a thriving Instagram community.
That makes the whole process of how to grow a community on Instagram a little more complex than just gaining followers.
This development of a strong Instagram community is such a vital part of growing your blog and your business. Without community you might attract readers, but you won’t develop fans.
So how do you build a community on Instagram that engages with your content?
Let’s break it down into the five main areas you need to nail in order to build a killer community on Instagram.
Most important of all, it has to be beautiful/attractive/striking (insert any positive adjective related to aesthetics!). While some accounts succeed with less-than-brilliant images, these are the exception – so do yourself a favor and concentrate on the look and theme of your Instagram feed first.
To attract the right Instagram community, your feed should look cohesive. It should be consistent with your brand. Whether that means always using an accent colour, a style of photography, or even a feeling that all the images evoke; there has to be something to hold all of them together. The last thing you want is for it to look like 20 different people are posting to your feed.
When people first land on your Instagram profile they will only take a few seconds to decide whether to follow you or not. Remember you’re only as good as your last nine pictures!
Spend some time improving your photo-taking skills with our iPhone photography tips!
Don’t feel you need to spend a fortune on equipment, however. There are some incredible accounts featuring iPhone only photos!
Pay attention to the lighting, finding interesting angles, getting the focus right, using the rule of thirds and you will be well on your way to an aesthetically pleasing, cohesive feed that appeals to your Instagram community page.
Bonus Tip: Use Tailwind’s 9-grid preview to see how your images will look together before you even schedule them.
Among all of your tips on how to build a community on Instagram, this one’s a big one.
Being real is becoming increasingly important on social media.
People want to follow authentic people online, as this ‘realness’ allows them to feel connected.
Your message is more likely to resonate with them and in turn, this will help you to develop the all-important know, like, and trust factor.
Don’t be afraid to share emotion, both positive and negative in your captions.
Shared emotion helps people connect with you. I always see a greater engagement rate when I share things that are from the heart.
People want to feel less alone and sharing your experiences helps them feel just that.
They want to be entertained, connected, feel better about themselves, and share their views, so tap into these emotional needs.
This exchange builds a connection that Instagram communities thrive on.
Share your story, give value and community will follow.
For an example of how to grow an Instagram community through authenticity, look to Jenna Kutcher!
Jenna has built a thriving community with her raw, honest realness. She tackles topics her community cares about – like body image, motherhood and how to set goals and chase dreams.
Her honest, truthful perspective is so relatable to her following, and it shows!
Who do you want in your Instagram community? Hipsters, mamas, millennials? Where do they hang out on Instagram? Which hashtags do they use?
Understanding this means that you will be able to go where they are and make connections.
Use hashtags to find ‘your’ people, comment on their photos, and use these hashtags to get your pictures alongside theirs.
Use these pre-existing communities on Instagram to make genuine connections and to help you start building your own community and followers.
It takes more than a few comments to create a thriving Instagram community which is invested in your brand. You need to drive the engagement yourself.
Asking people to double tap your picture if they agree with your statement is a very quick way for them to engage with you and feel connected.
You may also ask them to tag someone who…X, Y or Z. This then gives them an opportunity to shout out to a friend (which we all love to do!) and introduces their friend to your brand too. Winner winner chicken dinner!
In addition, make sure you ask your audience questions and encourage the engagement they offer by responding to comments from your Instagram community – all comments.
Lastly, a wonderful way of building an invested Instagram community is to share the stage with your audience.
There are many ways to do this. You could use a unique hashtag for your community, to foster a sense of belonging in those joining in.
To strengthen this you could then feature some members of the community on your feed. Or maybe give them some coverage via Instagram Stories.
A custom hashtag can bring more exposure to your account when other people use it in their captions – and it can also encourage your audience to use it to tag you.
Whether you have a digital or physical product will have some impact on how you use this tactic – but it can work for both!
For example, Cult Beauty the United Kingdom beauty retailer asks their customers to share their #CultBeauties moments when posting images using the Cult Beauty products.
This benefits both parties, the customers get greater exposure for their pictures when they appear in that hashtag feed and the brand gets more attention, exposure, and potentially a greater number of future customers as their customers do some of their marketing for them!
Perfect!
The most important thing to remember about growing an Instagram community is that there is no magic bullet, no shortcut, and no quick fix.
What works for one person might not for the next person.
It’s about giving value, being genuine, and trying new things and the results (and community!) will follow. Now go have fun!
Remember that creating an engaged Instagram community starts with the content on your feed!
Curating a unique, authentic, and engagement-worthy feed is crucial to finding the people who will become your core audience. For a tool that helps you easily and quickly build a stunning grid, look to Tailwind’s Instagram scheduler.
It helps you visually plan your entire feed, schedules photos, and videos at peak engagement times, and suggests hashtags specific to your posts.
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