Top 10 Secrets to Instagram Success
Instagram used to be so easy: post a photo, get seen, get likes, become an influencer. Photos were listed on the feed in the order in which they were posted and shown to followers relatively equally. Thanks to Instagram’s somewhat ridiculous algorithms limiting all sorts of content deemed “morally questionable” by said algorithm as well as a general over-saturation of content, times have changed. So how do you stand out in the world of billions of photos and videos? Here are our top 10 tips to make you successful on Instagram.
1- It’s a business — treat it like one
If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you are looking at ways to either grow a business using instagram or start a business with instagram. The number one tip we have for you is to remember that instagram is a business and starting a business costs time and money. Instagram, like many things, is not a “get rich quick” scheme. It may have been that way in the past, but building your business takes time and commitment.
Just like with any other business, consider your brand. What do you want the world to think of you when they see your account? Does your instagram brand align with your website or other content streams?
2-Pick a niche and stick to it
It doesn’t matter if you want to post about cliff diving, gourmet cooking, puppies or your cat, Thomas. All that matters is that you pick a niche and stick to it. The more specific you can get, the better. For example, rather than “travel blogger”, which has upwards of hundreds of thousands of accounts dedicated to it, try getting more specific — what makes you unique? Do you travel exclusively in off-grid cabins? Great. You are the “Off-grid B&B Expert”.
Now, imagine you were an instagram user and you started following an off-grid B&B expert. You are digging their epic content focused on homes with solar power and cool energy efficient features. Then all of a sudden one day, you see a photo of a puppy. Maybe a few photos of puppies. If those puppies are not directly connected to the off-grid B&B niche, you may wonder, why are there photos of puppies? Maybe you don’t like dogs…maybe you just simply didn’t follow this person to see anything other than their cool travels. You might even unfollow them. This is the unfortunate issue of straying from your niche. That user may think their puppy, baby, or cute new purse is all instagrammable, but they should save it for their personal account. If their goal is to be the Off-Grid Travel Expert, then that is their sole responsibility to their followers and other people interested in the same thing.
Before we started our own luxury and adventure travel account, we had our personal account focused primarily on our Tiny House on Wheels, Voyager Guru Offroad. Take a look at our feed from a few years ago:
Does this look a tinyhouse-centric feed to you? No. It doesn’t.
Now take a look at the feed today:
These 9 photos adequately represent the type of account we promise: a married, travel-blogging couple that lives in an off-grid tiny house on wheels.
Now take a look at our travel account:
Scrolling back to the very first image, you will see nothing but luxury hotels and adventure content. We have never strayed from what we promised to our followers, our “customers”. They come to our feed to day dream, to feel like they are somewhere else, to get inspired and that’s what we want to provide every single time we post something new. One photo that strays, for example a photo of my parent’s dog or a picture of our tiny house, could cost us hundreds of followers.
Take this article for example — this is not being published on our blog because it does not fit in with our brand. Medium is a brand new tool for us and it’s a much more appropriate place for this specific content. Had I published this on our blog, I would likely get much less engagement and potentially alienate people because it’s simply not what people come to our blog for. People follow us to plan trips and learn about luxury hotels — not how to grow their instagram account.
3-Produce quality content
It sounds simple, but the better your content, the more likely you are to get engagement and grow your account. In practice, it can be harder than you think because quality content not only take time and vision but it takes the right equipment. Slapping a mega-saturation filter on your photo is not going to cut it. Take the time to get your aesthetic in order, learn how to edit photos the way you like them and test out what works for you. It’s easy to see why certain influencers have such engaging content. Look at Alen Palander, for example:
His aesthetic is clear: moody, dark, sexy, artistic. It’s his brand — and it comes off very authentic and professional. You don’t have to be the best photographer in the world, or the best artist, you just have to nail your aesthetic and practice your craft.
For every 1 photo Max and I post on instagram, there’s probably a solid 20–60 mediocre or straight up bad ones. Take this recent shot for a swimwear campaign, for example:
We have about 50 that look more like this:
You’ll hear influencers tell you over and over again that they spend 6 hours waiting for the sun to come out in the right spot so they can get the “shot” and while that seems dramatic, the point is that producing quality content is hard and it’s time consuming. At every single hotel that we work with, we spend about 2 hours photographing the room — just the room — before ever even unpacking or touching doors, bathrooms, etc. If we have an idea for a shoot, we’ll plan it out beforehand, pick the optimal time with lighting and try and get “the shot” in about 20 frames. Sometimes it takes more, sometimes it takes less.
Sometimes, you just get really lucky and find the perfect spot at the perfect time to shoot your campaign:
The biggest advice I can give you here is that while the photo itself is critical, just as important, arguably more important, is the entire feed. How do your photos interact with each other? Do they look like Alen’s feed? Or do they look disjointed? We use a free app called Preview that helps us plan out our feed in advance. We’ll mix and match photos on the feed planner to ensure they don’t clash.
Think about how someone who comes across your account will assess whether or not they are going to follow you? How do you assess someone else? My guess is that you quickly scroll through the feed to get a sense for their content. Your brain decides if that feed looks aesthetically pleasing. You may not even click into a single photo before you decide their account is good. Remember that as you start posting!
4-Be consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to instagram. Truth be told, we used to post once a day, every single day — even Sundays. We relied heavily on instagram back when we would get explosive likes on every photo. Since things have changed a bit, as have our priorities, we have scaled back our posting but we still maintain our consistency. We post 1–2 times per week without fail on the feed. While we only post on the feed once or twice a week, we are in instagram daily constantly updating our stories and engaging with others. In the beginning, it is my recommendation that you get 9–12 photos posted as quickly as possible to “fill” the feed. It’s much more exciting to stumble upon someone’s account who has more than a couple of photos. Even if you post 9–12 photos in one day, you are still better off since for much of instagram, the like button is no longer the most important feature.
Along with your actual feed, consistently utilize the story functionality. My best practice is to always have a story, even if it’s just one 15-second frame. Every time you post a new story, your little icon pops up on someone’s instagram home screen and if they have notifications enabled, they’ll get one too. It’s incredibly helpful to boost your engagement using stories.
5- Be patient
First and foremost: Do. not. buy. followers. I am going to say that again: do not buy followers. This is the biggest breach of the instagram terms and conditions and they WILL penalize you. Buying followers not only can get your account shut down, but it simply doesn’t help your engagement metrics. At this point in instagram’s history, you have to be in it for the long haul. No longer are they overnight influencers — those days are done. Expect instagram growth to take time and a lot of patience.
Giveaways have long been a successful tactic to get momentary jumps in followers and likes. They aren’t against instagram terms and conditions, but just keep in mind who the audience is for the giveaway and be sure the giveaway is not a scam. Most giveaway accounts today do show the previous winners on their story highlights, so if you are wondering if the account is legit, check the highlights.
If you choose to do a giveaway, make sure what they’re offering matches your niche. Don’t do a giveaway for free pet food if you’re a luxury beauty blogger. That’s a silly example, but it happens more often than you might think. For example, we are approached constantly with requests to join giveaways for beauty products. I don’t even really wear makeup and I certainly don’t sell makeup to my followers, so that’s not the audience that’s best for my niche. However, I would be more likely to sign up for a giveaway offering 6 nights in the Maldives.
Just like anything on social media or in business, success takes time, patience and commitment to your goals.
6- Have a goal in mind
When you launch your account, it’s important to think about your ultimate goal or objective. Are you using instagram to sell a product/service/thing? Or is instagram what you are selling?
“Influencer” and “insta-famous” are both frequently used words tossed around by hundreds of instagrammers today. They make promises to show you how to be an influencer yourself by following simple steps and programs, but it’s HARD!
Just like any other business, instagram is incredibly time consuming and if you don’t have a goal or outcome in mind, it can be relentlessly disappointing and challenging. When we started our account, our ultimate goal was to showcase luxury hotels and experiences around the world and help people discover the hidden gems. In fact, our account started as a way of sharing photos of gorgeous hotels and providing helpful information like our favorite room types, price point and things to do:
We have since pivoted a bit from the original content we posted by expanding into YouTube and our blog, but the goal remains the same: throughout our journey, we aim to showcase luxury hotels and experiences and help people make informed decisions about where to stay and what to do. Instagram is one key part of our strategy and we never stray from that goal.
7-Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
That leads me to my next point: if you are really trying to build a business around instagram, my recommendation is to expand your reach beyond just instagram. In fact, doing so can direct traffic and engagement back to your account. Not to mention, many blog templates offer creative ways to showcase your instagram account on your site:
Besides the fact that broadening your reach creates more content across more channels, relying solely on one platform could lead to an undesirable end. What happens if instagram shuts down tomorrow? If all you focus your energy on is this one channel, you may find yourself stuck in a tough spot if something happens to it in the future.
Take our case, for example. We used to get thousands of likes on every single photo — our engagement was killer. One day, out of seemingly nowhere, our engagement dropped considerably. Blame it on the algorithms, blame it on saturation in the market, blame it on instagram’s strange “moral” compass, but you can’t blame it on content because nothing on our end changed. The only thing that changed with our content was that it was consistently improving. However, we had already built up a solid YouTube channel with much more significant engagement and our blog and photography business so we instead started focusing more effort on other channels. Had we relied solely on instagram for our growth, we would not be as successful.
8- Authentic engagement is key
We’ve all seen the mediocre comments “great!”, “amazing” “nice shot” — those kind of suck, right? Who wants to put hours into a photo to get a generic “wow”. Much less, who wants to craft a thoughtful caption asking a question only to be met with “cool photo”? No one. Authentic engagement is key! Whether you are reaching out to others via comments and messages or if you’re crafting a clever caption, being authentic really helps you grow on instagram.
Our best practice is to reply to every comment, to the extent that it is humanly possible. I certainly try to respond to every private message and I 100% reply with my full, authentic self.
Being met with generic canned responses disappoints your followers and really ultimately doesn’t bring you additional engagement from that person, or others who see the comment. People love to interact with others who care.
9- Keep up with the ever-changing features
I’m not going to harp on when to comment, how to comment, what to do to get new followers — there are thousands of articles about new algorithm changes. What I would recommend keeping up with is the slew of new features that instagram is constantly releasing. For example, they recently launched a “Guides” feature that allows users to create simple, very basic PDF-looking guides using photos from your feed:
Now, to this day, I still have no idea how many people view the guides, what the analytics are etc, but by engaging with instagram’s new features, you end up on the forefront of what could be the “next big thing”, like reels. Also, engaging with the new features shows instagram that you are a real human interested in growing your account with them.
10- Love what you do
Now, one of the critical things to remember is that your chances of success if you LOVE what you do is significantly higher than those who are trying to build an instagram business around something they are not passionate about. We have seen time and time again fellow travel bloggers who suddenly drop off the face of the earth because they simply give up.
The reality is, if you don’t love what you’re doing and aren’t willing to invest the time and the money into making it happen long term, it will be almost impossible. Max and I are obsessed with travel, with photography, with critiquing the best hotels around the world and that passion is what keeps us moving forward. It is very easy to see how people who don’t feel that intense passion burn out. Our countless late nights, early flights, red-eyes, 3 nights here, 2 nights there routine is invigorating, but it’s certainly not for everyone. If you love what you do and commit to that passion, you are already five steps ahead.
That’s not to say every niche is the same — some passions and businesses take much less time and money than travel. What stays the same, however, is the passion to keep going when you feel stuck or like you’re not moving forward — if things are not happening as fast as you want them to. Only true passion and love for your brand is what will help propel you forward in the rough patches.
In conclusion…
Instagram, like all social media platforms can change in an instant. Algorithms change, content changes, brand strategies change — if this is something you are looking to get into, know that it is a constant learning experience and even once you think you’ve figured it all out, often you realize you haven’t.
If you take nothing else away from this article, understand this: the single most important thing is quality content and here’s why. Someone with a million followers and mediocre iPhone selfies will not get the same brand campaigns or the same opportunities as the instagrammer in the same space with 10,000 followers who takes amazing photos or videos and has perfected their craft. For most brands, content is KING. There will always be the brand who chooses to go with follower count over quality of content and that’s ok. But the best brands that we have worked with and continue to work with have seen the value that high quality content gets them. They have seen beyond the instagram world of our 4x5 shots and we have developed incredible partnerships selling photos, video content and services, all thanks to our little instagram account.
Our earliest campaign was when we had only 3,000 followers. While that might surprise you, I realize two years later that it’s because we followed our own advice that we are giving you now: be consistent. Be patient. Post quality content. Commit to your craft and you will be successful.
