How to Grow on Instagram in 2021 + Create an Engaged Audience

Hello there! Welcome back to my Blog Tips for Style Bloggers series. Today we’re going to be focusing on how to grow your Instagram following.

And, ahem, speaking of: make sure to give me a follow @karinemilyblog

Shameless plugs aside…

Now, first things first:

I purposely didn’t start my series out with this post even though this seems to be the thing everyone wants to know for a couple of reasons:

a. if you’re going to have a style blog then your number one focus should be on growing your blog because that’s how you set yourself up for long term growth and continuous passive income.

b. while Instagram is the most “glamourous” social media outlet, Pinterest is the most effective for garnering passive income. And while sponsored posts can play a big part in your overall financial strategy, it’s important to have “guaranteed” income coming in through older posts… Pinterest does that for you. If you need a refresher I did a deep dive into Pinterest in my last post.

Okay so now onto Instagram.

I’ll be honest with you guys:

this is not going to be a how to grow quickly on Instagram post because, quite frankly, that hasn’t been my journey. Rather it’s going to be a how to grow an invested audience, or in other words: how to create a community around a shared passion.

If you create community and connection on Instagram, you won’t need a massive audience to be successful as a style blogger (more in a future post on why I prefer affiliate links to sponsored posts).

So with all of that said here are my top tips for growing an invested/engaged audience on Instagram:

1. Be a real person. I haven’t always done this perfectly, and there was a season of my Instagram “life” where I overshared more than I feel comfortable with now, but it’s important to find that balance between being too open while also being true to who you are. There’s a lot of advice on what you should be sharing, but I think the most important thing is that you share who YOU are. Not necessarily every detail, but your followers should feel like they are getting to know you. And one of the best parts of that is that you can truly form relationships with followers and other creators on Instagram when you are offering up your real personality. So whether it’s your stories, your captions, how you film your reels… do what feels natural to you, and the right kind of people will find you (a.k.a. the people who resonate with what you are doing).
2. Don’t get caught up in “grow quick” schemes such as follow/unfollow methods, paying bots to comment for you, paying for followers, blindly commenting on peoples posts with no intention of ever engaging with them again… those kinds of methods may grow your following quick, but you’ll end up with low engagement because those followers either don’t care about what you’re posting OR they aren’t even real people. It’s way better to have true engaged followers than a lot of followers who don’t care about what you’re doing (also brands look at engagement when considering you for a sponsorship!).
3. Do genuinely care for people and be a resource for them. Lots of people are too busy or exhausted to think about style or what might work for them in the wardrobe department so I’m there to help! I provide suggestions, sizing info, and styling tips to make everything easier. I truly enjoy using my passion for style to help other women find joy in it as well, and it’s so fun to connect over that shared enjoyment.
4. Engage with your audience. Comment on their posts when you can, talk with them in DM’s to the best of your ability… get to know them and they’ll get to know you. It’s a win win! And the more Instagram sees you genuinely interacting with other accounts and using the app in a normal person way (instead of in a spammy way) the more it will favor you in the algorithm.
5. Niche down. I know there’s a lot of debate on this topic, but in my opinion, in the current age of Instagram you have to have a niche in order to grow. Your followers need to know that they are going to get the content they followed you for, and Instagram needs to know who to show your content to for potential new followers. To give you some anecdotal evidence, I was all over the place my first four years of blogging and I grew to 10K followers during that time. In the last two years, I niched down to style (which is what I really wanted to do in the first place) only and I’ve now grown to just about 30K followers… and they’re much more engaged followers.

Okay. Those are my big picture tips. Now onto the practical, boring, everyday tips. 😉

1. Use hashtags! I’ve heard so many debates on what the perfect number of hashtags is, but I use the entire 30 that are allotted by Instagram. But which hashtags you use are important. If you’re a style blogger, ALL 30 of those hashtags should be related to style. And recently Instagram changed their algorithm to be more like a regular search engine so it’s important to sprinkle in keyword hashtags into that group of 30 (i.e. #jeanshorts #summerdress etc.). You can figure out which hashtags to use by looking at what other people in your niche are using and then using the ones that fit your content.
2. Use keywords in your caption. Like I said, Instagram is now configured to be more like a search engine so if you have a picture of yourself wearing a white shirt and jeans, then make sure to include the words white shirt and jeans in your caption. You basically want to tell Instagram what’s in your picture so they can show it to potential followers.
3. Include an alt text for each image. An alt text is basically just a text description that you make available to search engines, and you can now add an alt text in your Instagram photos! When you are creating an in feed post in Instagram just click on “Advanced Settings” at the bottom of your “New Post” and under the Accessibility section you’ll see the option to write an Alt Text.
4. Tag brands! You want brands to share your content so that a. you can form a relationship with them, and b. so that they’ll potentially share your content on their feeds. Getting your content shared is a great way to build an engaged audience!
5. Build a landing page to place in your profile (more on this later) so that your audience can easily find links that they need or want. My landing page has links to my product recommendations, my current blog posts, my Like to Know it profile, popular posts, etc.
6. Use your profile section to let potential followers know exactly what type of content they’ll be getting if they follow you. Mine says: “Daily Outfits | Mom of 4 #twinmom | #style that lasts | quality at all prices” Then I include a prompt to shop my Instagram so followers know where they can find details on my looks and I include my e-mail address for any potential brand partnerships. I make sure to include the Mom of 4 detail in my profile because even though I don’t include my kids in my in feed posts that often, they show up in my stories a lot!
7. Use ALL of the Instagram features. Instagram likes when you are using all of their tools which means: in feed posts, stories, reels, guides, and IGTV. This doesn’t mean you have to be doing all of these every day, or even every week (although the more frequently you can utilize these things, the more opportunity you have for growth), but I try to do an in feed post at least 5-6 times a week, stories every day, and then an IGTV and/or reel 1-2 times per month. I’d love to do more of the latter, but this season of life with 4 kids at home, it’s just not going to happen.
8. Create content your followers want to see (and if you’re doing it right it will be content YOU like to create as well!). The more you niche down, the more you figure out what you like creating and what resonates with your audience the more engagement you will get. But what’s really important is that the more engagement you get, the more quickly Instagram will show your content to your audience (since Instagram is no longer a chronological feed, your audience may not see your content until days later), and the quicker your audience will see your content, the more front end engagement you get, the more likely your content will hit the explore page (the explore page is the page you land on when you hit the search button) and THAT’s where real growth seems to happen.
9. And speaking of hitting the explore page, Instagram is really favoring Reels at the moment, so if you DO have the time to make Reels that are relevant to your overall content then definitely do so as they seem to be a “quicker” way to grow.

Phew! That was a ton of content to throw at you all at once. Growing on Instagram is definitely not as easy as it used to be, but it IS possible! My biggest tip is just to remember that your followers are real people and not “tools” for you to get somewhere, and the more you exist (or should I say desire) to be of service to your followers the more you will connect with likeminded people who are eager to engage with your content.

Key takeaways:

1. Build a profile section that describes what kind of content potential followers can expect
2. Build a landing page that provides followers links to helpful content
3. Use keywords in your captions, alt text and hashtags
4. Utilize all of the tools that Instagram has available
5. Build trust with your followers

I hope this was helpful! Let me know if you feel like I missed anything or if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them! And make sure you subscribe to my newsletter so you can be notified when the next post in this series goes live! I’ll be talking about the benefits of self hosting in my next installment so stay tuned!

Until next time,

Karin