5 Mistakes That Could be Costing You Instagram Followers

The digital world is changing fast and as it does different platforms rise and fall as primary places of advertisement. The current platform having a #moment is Instagram.

BILLIONS, yes BILLIONS of dollars are flooding this little app creating it the hot spot for companies and brands to do their advertising. With this influx of popularity, it can be hard to stand out or promote your product or brand!

Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar…

• You’ve been working on your Instagram game for months, or maybe even years and have seen little to no growth.
• You have you been working your butt off creating content, marketing yourself and your brand relentlessly but just seeing just a few new faces a month.
• You feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the amount of people on the platform and question how you can add value.

*raises both hands*

This was me not too long ago… heck, it still is me sometimes now! But a lot less often, because after YEARS I have figured out the mistakes that were inhibiting me from creating the community that I knew was out there on da gram’. Now i’ll share them with you!

Mistake #1: Posting inconsistently, with a lack of focus in your photos

Since Instagram is a photo-sharing app, photos play a huge role in how prospective friends and followers will react to your page! Getting super specific about what you are posting is key, and narrowing down your focus will help increase your reach.

Imagine that you stumbled across a gorgeous photo that was exactly what you liked, lets say it was a gorgeous avocado breakfast, but when you visited that account their page was all over the place, none of the photos resembles each other and there really was no clear focus. You loved that one brunch photo but there isn’t much else you can relate with. It’s likely that just the act of trying to figure out what this person and account are all about it too overwhelming and you will peace out.

But on the other hand… if you stumble across a beautiful avo toast photo which is from a local shop in your city, and when you visit that page it’s picture after picture, of awesome breakfasts from your town chances are you will click that follow button because you know exactly what to expect from your new Insta buddy! You will be glued to their feed and probably will have tons of new brunch spots and breakfast ideas!

We are all multifaceted beings with tons of interests and while it’s tempting to want to showcase all of them, just pick one and do it super well! This will attract the right community members to your page and make sure they stick around!

Mistake #2: Your bio is vague, wordy or confusing

I see this time and time again, and I too had a super confusing bio for a long time! Mine was something like live, wander, explore *world emoji* *star emoji* …. BARF. Right?! Like what does that even mean?! Do I take walks and like explore my soul?! Sigh, who knows.

Anyway – I changed it and if you also have a whimsical bio which doesn’t really make any sense, my advice would be to change it too! Just like how your feed should be super specific your bio should be too!

I like to highlight that super clear focus that is going to be present already in my photos, but do it in my bio. A simple formula is to say who you are, what you do, and why you do it! Easy, clean and simple but also it tells people exactly what to expect from you!

Mistake #3: You don’t have transparency in captions

Ahh, what to write, what to write!? This is a struggle for me always but what I found it that you get the most traction and engagement on posts when you put yourself out there, be vulnerable and transparent.

One liner captions are so boring aren’t they?! I mean don’t get me wrong there are definitely days where the caption inspo is not strong and I fall into the one-liner rut but for the majority of your captions, it’s important to add some value to peoples daily scroll, because if you aren’t then why are they following you right?!

It’s great to show your personality through your writing, share stories, or insight into the photo in your captions. Not everyone reads them but the people who do, don’t you want them to get to know you?!

Mistake #4: You aren’t interacting with other accounts

After being a photo-sharing platform Instagram is also a SOCIAL media site. This means in order to succeed in it one must be social. I have met so many truly awesome people through Instagram and some of which are friends that I speak to daily! There are real connections to be made especially between all yall’ who have the same interests.

Seek out people and accounts that have similar aesthetics to you, comment on their photos meaningfully and follow purposefully. I say that because the follow/unfollow game is annoying and it doesn’t work so just don’t do it.

Thank people who comment on your photos and respond to questions and messages. Building trust and relationships is the fastest way to grow a community authentically! 

Mistake #5: Your profile isn’t switched to business

This is one of the fundamental things that will help you reach wayyy more people! If your profile is private it is essentially telling people, “no thanks, not interested in you being apart of this.” And people will just navigate away from your profile.

Making it public will not only open you up to a world of people interested and ready to engage but it also shows them that you are ready and want them there!

By switching your profile to the business you get access to analytics! These insights will be able to show you how each of your photos is doing, how many people have saved it, how many people even saw it! You will get to know who your audience is, how many are women or men, how old they are, everything! All these things will help you create awesome content tailored to your audience!

These are just the top 5 mistakes that I see consistently on the ol’ gram but we haven’t even scratched the surface!