This is about to be a jam-packed episode you do not wanna miss out on. Today we’re going to chat all about Instagram and how we grew our very own Heart University account from 6k to 22k followers in just ONE year. Seems wild, right?! Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Trust us, we KNOW how stressful and time-consuming social media can be. This is why we want to share EVERYTHING we did to grow our Instagram. We’re spilling ALL the beans on the strategies and tools we implemented to grow our following and our business. Don’t go anywhere, because your mind is about to be BLOWN!

We wanted to do this episode, because especially in the beginning when you are first growing. Those numbers are the hardest. It’s hardest to get to 1,000 and then it is really hard to get to 10k. The beginning is such slow growth once you hit 50k or 100k it’s still hard, but it compounds. 

We’re giving you a full glimpse into our strategies, processes, and tools. 

Foundational Principles

Here are some foundational principles, tips, and hacks for Instagram that don’t work if you don’t know the foundation of where they’re coming from.

• Understand your ideal client. Create a client avatar. What are their pain points? What are their struggles? What’s their thought process? Put yourself in their shoes. This is the first and most important step. If you don’t do this, then the rest doesn’t matter and it’s all a waste of time, it might work but you will be swimming. Check out Episode 138 “How to find your ideal client and market to them”. 

• Understand your product. How can it serve your audience? How does it fill the gap and fix their problems? Speak to their heart? Make their lives easier? Why do they NEED your product?! What makes your product different from ALL the others out there? That gives you such clarity not just on who you are speaking to but why you are speaking it. It gives you that foundational understanding, clarity, clear direction of who you are speaking to, what you need to say, how to say it, and why you’re saying any of it, to begin with. Which gives you so much freedom to create value online. 

• Give good quality content. Focus SOLELY on serving your ideal client. Get laser specific and then go crazy on content creation. Brain-dump everything you can think of. All ideas. Even the bad ones. Think of all the ideas that would serve that potential client or person you want to follow you. Starting posting content that you want to serve the people who would follow you. 

• Batch content ideas. Creating that content ahead of time so you are creating space for yourself where you’re in that creative mood and mindset. You’re not sitting down every day stressed. Creating and carving out time for you. 

Some of these ideas look like:

• • Show their audience how to do something unique that’s relevant to their industry.
  • Share a funny story people can relate to. Humor is HUGE on social media.
  • Share a story of transformation. Share a story of where you started and where you are now. Or a product business shows how your product is made. 
  • Create shareable graphics with helpful information or a powerful quote you’ve said or written before. 

• Batch captions. Write as many as you can in one sitting. Rid yourself of all distractions. Start a google document. Start dumping all your ideas. Even the bad ones. Find someone to bounce ideas off of or to talk through a concept if you are feeling stuck. 

• Stay committed to learning and growing. KT didn’t know anything about business when she started running The Heart’s Instagram. It requires love and desire to continue learning. To seek out knowledge. You need to do the same. Don’t pretend like you know it all. We should ALWAYS be learning and growing. There is also something to be said for intentionally putting inspiration in front of our faces. Expanding your mind about learning more about your client avatar. With social media you are constantly creating and pouring out, if you are not refilling that cup with more knowledge or inspiration, you’re going to burn out. You’ll end up empty and dry. 

• Do NOT use automated publishing. We know it’s tempting. But it will hurt you in the long run. Publish in real-time so you can respond immediately. We recommend lingering on the app 20 minutes after you post to respond to comments, DM’s, and post something on your story. Show up and create that connection, do not post and ghost. 

• Write good captions: hook, body, call to action. They are so important and there is a lot that goes into them. Captions are one of the things that can forward propel your account. Consistently posting quality content. CTA is HUGE! Do not forget. If you are never inviting people into the conversation, into feedback and engagement then they are not going to engage with you. Which will not help grow your platform nearly as fast, if at all. 

• Create something that makes people want to share it in their stories. Inspiration or education. This can be a cool graphic or Reels. Something that you know is going to be shareable. Pay attention when you are creating content, that you are intending to be shareable, able to go viral. 

• Reply to direct messages and comments. You want to create that relationship. You want to invite people into a community. Not just a screen in front of their face. You want to create that belonging and relationship with your people. Invite them into a conversation and converse with them. 

There is no one magical thing that grows your Instagram, it is consistently showing up, serving your people with quality content day in and day out. That is how we grew our Instagram. There are a lot of little things that add up to that, but it boils down to serving your audience with quality content consistently. 

 

 

Show notes 

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