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What is up everyone. Welcome back . Now , I'm actually going to show you exactly how to grow your Instagram account organically. No bots, no cheating, no body followers, no nothing in 2020. Now I've had my Instagram account for a while,and since then I've grown it to over 7,000 followers, almost 8,000 followers using only purely organic strategies. Now I know nowadays it's really easy to buy your way into Instagram success. You can buy followers, you can buy likes,you can buy anything that you want. But for me personally, I've always favored the organic approach, especially if you are using Instagram for your business. And I really say this for multiple reasons. First of all, if you're spending money automating your account or spending money buying likes and buying followers, you're going to need to financially keep that up for a long period of time.
If you suddenly stop the financial investment of growing your account, it's going to be very obvious that your past success was all fake, and it was something that you purchased and now you can't keep up with it. I've seen a lot of influencers and I've seen a lot of people have huge accounts and huge success all of a sudden, and then you see a sudden crazy drop off because suddenly maybe they decided it wasn't worth their investment anymore, or they couldn't keep up with the prices. That's a really dangerous spiral to find yourself in. The second reason why it's important to stick to organic strategies, especially again for your business, is you want to engage with real people, with real audiences, real potential customers, real potential clients. If all of them are fake or if all of them are ghost followers, you're really only talking to yourself. If you agree with my points at all or you are actually down for learning all of this, then keep on watching because I'm going to share with you my five top hacks that I've used to grow my Instagram organically to almost 8,000 followers. And also before I forget, make sure you keep on watching because at the end I'm going to share a resource that you can download with my full checklist of things to look at when growing your Instagram organically. Because truth be told, your feed is actuallythe first impression that someone has when they go onto your account. And you want to make sure that you make thebest impression possible, so that it increases the chances of them following you and engagingwith you. Definitely check out Natasha's video. I'm going to link it in the description boxand the comment section below.
Now the first tip that I have that I feela lot of people gloss over or don't mention at all, is to actually change your name onInstagram so that you can optimize your SEO. And what SEO means is search engine optimization. Let me explain. All right, I'm actually going to share myscreen right over here so you can follow along. But basically what you'll notice is that onmy page you'll see that instead of just putting my name on the front, I actually put MillennialBiz Coach because that's what I am. And the reason why this is important, whatI see a lot of people not doing is because when you actually go into search and let'ssay I type in a millennial, even though the person is typing millennial and not necessarilyVanessa, I'm still going to show up on the page, which is awesome. What I recommend to you, especially if youhave a business, or you're a service based business, is that capitalize the name sectionthat's on your bio because that's going to allow you to rank higher in SEO. Realistically, no one is searching of Vanessa,especially people who don't know me. And people are looking for millennial content,or they want to look for a business coach, or something like that, they're going to searchfor that on search and I'm going to pop up. The same thing is let's say for example you'rea fitness coach, if you actually put fitness coach as your name and someone in the areais looking for a fitness coach to work with, guess who's going to pop up in search? You. Definitely make sure you're leveraging thatkey aspect of that bio section, and you're not putting it to waste.
Because that isn't precious real estate tohelp you rank higher in Instagram search. The second tip that I have for you is to writecaptions that convert. I know it's really easy to want to post ameaningless emoji or a song lyric, but really add depth to your Instagram accounts. Something that I love to teach my clientswhen we're talking about their Instagram strategy is, yes, the post itself, the picture hasto be nice, because it's going to allow someone to stop the scroll and actually pay attentionto what you have to say. But it's the caption that allows those conversationsto happen and that actually allows that engagement. Think of it like dating, usually you wantto date someone because first off you were attracted to their looks maybe, but you decidedto actually date them and to actually keep in touch with them, and stay connected becauseof their personality. Literally use this analogy and apply it toInstagram. Now for me, I actually write a lot of longform captions into my posts.
And I actually kind of treat my Instagramaccount like a micro-blog. And what I've found is that I've actuallybeen able to spark a lot of one on one private conversations since doing this. Now I know a lot of people care about vanitymetrics like likes, comments, so on and so forth. But for me, I've really changed my perspectiveand I actually measure my success on Instagram on the amount of private conversations inDMs that I have with other people. Because especially if you have a businessand you're using Instagram for your business, the people who are actually engaging withyou privately are your warmest leads. My clients already have found me through InstagramDM because I took the time to actually cultivate those strong relationships with them.
In order for me to actually get to that pointthough I've written vulnerable, deep caption so that they can connect with. And that's what's really contributed to mysuccess, and how I've been able to find a lot of my clients online. Actually I'm going to change my vocabulary,I don't find my clients, they find me. If you actually want to treat your Instagramlike a true business and create those long form relationships and those warm leads, thendefinitely having micro-blog-like captions ... That's kind of weird. Micro-blog-like captions, yeah I guess, isactually the way to go. Because yes, not everyone is going to resonate,but the people who do, they become a potential clients, or they become your biggest fans,because they feel a stronger connection with you and they feel know, like, and trust. And really quickly before I hop onto my thirdpiece of advice, I'm actually going to explain what know, like, and trust is. Know, like, and trust is so crucial for yourbusiness.
Know, you want people to actually know whoyou are. Then eventually you want them to like youbecause of what you're posting or whatever. And lastly, you want them to trust you. That's kind of the level that you want toget at with all of your potential clients, or even if you don't have a business, youraudience. Know, like, and trust is so important in actuallyfunneling sales into your business and actually creating a very strong tribe and community. I don't want to skip out on that. Definitely every time they're using a socialmedia platform, really ask yourself, "I'm I building know, like, and trust with my audience?" Now the third piece of advice that I alsodon't see often when I'm researching about Instagram hacks is actually mixing the sizeof hashtags that you use. Yes, I know everyone cringes when they hearthe word hashtag, but it's still a relevant piece if you want to grow on Instagram. Because hashtags allow people to actuallyfind you and it allows you to increase your reach. However, the problem that I see is a lot ofpeople use very big generic hashtags, like #makeup, #business, #success. Those hashtags are actually massive and guaranteeyou by the time that you post it, you're going to disappear from the hashtag explore pagein five seconds. Because everyone is literally using that hashtag,and it is way too big.
What I actually recommend, and it's goingto take a little bit more work from you, but I promise that it's worth it, is to actuallymix up your hashtag sizes and do hashtag research to find the small to medium hashtags thatexist in your niche, or in your category or whatever. I'm going to actually put up my rule of thumbin terms of hashtag sizes to help you out. If you want more information, it's going tobe in the Instagram checklist that I'm going to link in the description box, and in thecomment section below. But essentially what you want to know is that,you want to focus your effort on 80% of the hashtags that you use on either the smallto medium size tags. The reason why you want to do this is becausethose are the tags that are actually kind of the more niche ones, and the ones wherea lot of communities are inside. There's a lot of loyal people, or a lot ofpeople that are actually loyal to those tags, and are more likely to search for them andfollow them on Instagram. And it's also going to increase the chancesof you actually staying on that explore page for hashtags a lot longer, versus if you usereally large tags. And again, if you need more help, definitelyjust download the checklist, it has all of the information that you need and more.
Don't sleep out on that, I'll link in thedescription box and the comments section below, but what you need to know for the purposeof this video is you need to actually switch up your hashtag sizes because that's goingto help you increase your reach, and also help to make sure that you're actually reachingpeople that care about your content. Because the more niche that you are, and themore tailored and segmented that you are, the more chances that people are going towant to follow your content because you're speaking to the right audiences. Now on the topic of hashtags, this is my fourthpiece of advice for you, and that is to actually rotate between your hashtags. A big, big, big mistake that I see a lot ofpeople do is that they use the same hashtags over and over and over again. But the problem is, is that if you use ittoo many times, Instagram is going to think that you are spam and actually decrease yourreach, and actually kind of ... I don't want to say the word shadow ban because I'm notsure if it's true that shadow ban even exist. Because apparently Instagram says that itdoesn't exist. But if you are using the same hashtags inevery single post that you're doing, you are going to be flagged for spam, and that's goingto increase the chances of you not showing up on the feed for your followers or for whoeverelse. Just be careful that you are actually makinga conscious effort of rotating the hashtags that you're using and mixing it up every time.
Now I'm going to share my screen right overhere, but I'm going to show you exactly what I do in terms of how I rotate my hashtags. After I've kind of done my research in termsof the hashtags that I want to use, and I mix it up between small, to medium, to large,I actually have a notepad in my Apple phone or in my iPhone and I have different hashtaggroups. I have group number one, then group numbertwo, then group number three, group number four. And I kind of have multiple groups that Irotate between. Every time I post something I kind of keeptrack of the groups that I'm using, and I copy and paste it, and then I put it in mycaption. And I don't really have to stress becauseit's things that I've already done in the past, that I've already kind of in a way automated. I'm not stressing about what hashtag to postfor each post. But at the same time I'm also making a consciouseffort to make sure that I'm not using the same ones over and over again. On top of this following advice number three,I am also making sure that all my hashtag sizes are kind of varied, and there is a mixbetween small, medium, and large to make sure that my reach is maximized. Those are some hacks that I wanted to sharewith you in terms of hashtags that have really helped me, and that I think will really helpyou, especially if you want to grow on Instagram organically. Now, the last and final tip that I have foryou is community engagement. Now, before you click out of this video, Iknow, I know community engagement is something that everyone dreads. It takes so much time, it is so time consuming,and it's also very exhausting. But trust me, if you want to actually groworganically on Instagram, you need to put that energy back and you actually need toengage with other people. And there are a couple of reasons for this,the first one is algorithm.
The more that people engage with you, andlet's say you actually take some time out of your day to engage with others, and theyengage back, that's going to show Instagram that, that's the content that they want tosee. And it's going to increase your chances ofyour post showing up on their feed. That's why community engagement is important. Another reason why community engagement isimportant, is because the more you actually interact with other people, especially ifthey're aren't following you yet, it's actually going to increase your reach organically,and people are going to be able to be curious about you and want to click on your page. That's why community engagement is so important. And yes, you can technically automate it,or hire someone, or even by a bot that's going to allow you to kind of automatically engagewith other people. But it's kind of awkward when someone DMsyou and they're like, "Hey, thank you for engaging with my posts." And they kind of start talking to you andyou're like, "Wait a second, I don't remember liking your posts at all away. Oh wait it was my bot." Just know that if you actually outsource thisto someone else, or use a bot, you are going to lose that genuine connection. And then the reason why I'm saying this isthat if you are using Instagram for business, and you want to attract clients and potentialbusiness opportunities, it's really helpful that the message comes from you, and thatyou are the one that's actually actively liking other people's posts, or commenting on otherpeople's posts and engaging.
Because if it's actually not that genuine,and it's actually really awkward when someone replies back to you and you're like, "Oh,who is this person?" Right? That's just something to keep in mind. But what I'm going to share with you in thisvideo, I'm actually going to show you a hack I guess, or something that I use to make communityengagement a lot easier. A great feature that Instagram has is theability to follow hashtags. I'm going to throw out my screen right overhere, but what I want to show you is that throughout my feed I've actually followedup key hashtags that are within my niche. And that allows posts to automatically showup on my feed.
