I N S T A G R A M
Do you want to know some tips on how to optimise your Instagram?
This could take a while. But by the end of this you will know all my tips on how to gain followers, likes, comments, active followers and you may even be tempted to open a second Instagram page.
I get asked on a daily basis... how did you gain so many followers.. did you buy them?
1. NO I DIDNT BUY THEM... if you buy followers you would have to buy the likes every time too.. i do not have that much money.. when you buy followers it doesn't come with likes on every photo... when you buy them these pages are not active they don't exist. If i had 26,000 followers and was only getting 22 likes then yes i could understand.
2. I will show you how right here:
Being active.
No i do not mean going for a jog because lets face it who wants to do that ;D
I know so many people who upload a photo and just leave it to get likes, they kind of expect everyone to be looking at their page 24/7. I'm going to be honest thats never going to happen unless you have millions of followers and even then you look at pages that have millions of followers and they're only getting 100,000 likes on every photo so the ratio of followers to likes is quite low.
So when i upload a picture i really think about what I'm going to # so say i hashtag the photo with 10 hashtags i click on those hashtags and like 20 of the most recent posts on every hashtag.
Not the top posts because they could have been posted 4,5,6 hours ago and those users may not be active anymore. However the people who have just used that hashtag are online and active.
When these people see you have liked their image they wonder why, they don't know your name, your not a friend, what they then do is check out your page and the first picture they see is similar to the picture they have just posted, meaning you have something in common and they then follow you hoping that you will post more things that they also like.
It's a long process but before you know it you've gained 40 followers that like similar things to you and you have some active followers.
If someone likes your photo like one of theirs back. If someone comments on your post either just give the comment a like or reply to them. Its very quick and easy and then they know you are there and you are active. Go ahead and comment on one of my photos you will get a response very quickly.
3.2.1
This is a technique you will hear a lot of the top Instagram bloggers using. When you want someone to follow you that you really like the look of their work or posts or blogs etc. use this technique
Three Likes
Two Comments
One follow
So you like three of their images, comment on two of them and then follow them. This is proven to make you appear on their notifications a lot more then just liking a photo every so often. Try it @cameronbeames ;D
Choose your follows wisely
Choosing who you follow is not about not following your friends but more about the other people you follow e.g. random followers.
But first.
Follow your friends... Follow them!
There is an option on instagram to follow your friends from Facebook. Now my guess is you probably have a lot of friends from your childhood, people you have met along the journey of life...these people will probably be your most active followers as they have an interest in you and the things you do. You will probably have a minimum of 400 people you can follow from Facebook thats an extra 400 people that are likely to follow you back.
But on to the wiser:
So one thing that i want out of my Instagram is to travel so i follow travel pages. I am Gay so i follow gay pages. I like fashion so i follow fashion pages. You get me?
But the best thing to do is then to go to these big pages that only follow maybe 100 people and follow their followers because they are going to be people of interest that have millions of followers.
A massive example of this is i follow @Doyoutravel they have millions of followers and they only follow 115 people so i followed them and their 115 follows and i gained 400 followers. This means i gained active users. They then liked my travel pictures and i got a few re-grams out of this and through that i gained more followers.
Quality & Quantity
Quality of photos makes a massive difference. Go through and delete old photos that were taken on your old Nokia or even on your first iPhone. Its more impressive to have 10 good quality photos and 1,000 followers then it is to have 1,170 ok photos and 1,000 followers. If you can get a decent camera then all the better.
Quantity: ideally whilst trying to gain followers try post an image a day around the same time of day everyday.
Time of day
The time of day is really important. If you wake up at 5am in the morning there are probably not going to be that many people awake in this country. If you post at 7pm people are probably getting home from work sitting on the sofa enjoying a cup of tea and flicking through instagram. OPTIMAL TIME! Normally you will find your perfect time through trial and error.
Lie
Who cares if you post a photo from 9 months ago and say that you are in Mexico Sipping Mojitos and doing shots of tequila.
Only the friends who you are with that day will know you aren't really there. But i hate that word 'throwback'! no one needs to know your still living in the past when you had that sexy beach bod ;P
Trial and error page
So on Instagram you can have a few pages. I have a secret page that no one will ever find filled with shit pictures that i trial all together and see if they work next to each other before i upload them. It is set to private and i follow no one and no one follows it and you never will :P haha. But try it, it really helps.
The second page
Have a second page please.. don't fill your page with so much that it is over compensating. I have a friend who got a dog and her Instagram went from being sexy as fuck to really confusing because of it.
It went from beautiful layouts to selfies with a dog. I told her to get an instagram just for her dog and now both pages look beautiful and her dog now has so many followers and so does her normal page.
I also know someone that dedicates one page to re-posting other peoples gym pictures and workouts. They gained so many followers from just sharing other peoples posts that then people started to pay them to re-post their images. They had 48k followers and then decided to stop doing the re-posts and started sharing their own images on that page, they now have a book coming out and a potential fitness dvd because they have so many people following them just because of how the page started.
I created a second page for mine and my boyfriends pictures as i could tell people would start to get annoyed with seeing them and that page gained 1,000 followers in 1 month and now that page has its own kind of followers and its own little niche and we get our photos shared from that page. Then people follow us because they want to see our personal accounts.
Bank of images
The bank of images: Have a folder on your iPhone dedicated to photos that are ready to upload. Don't upload 6 photos from one night out, save some!. So when you have an off day and look/ feel like shit or have a massive pimple thats ruining all your pictures... we all have those days...go to the bank of images and pull out that photo that you are looking FIT in.
Image check
It takes a while to do all this and it is a lot of effort. But if you work hard on it, it really pays off. So with that folder on your phone you have full of images that are ready to post. Sometimes its easier to edit them before you put them in the folder
So what you do is go into your settings and click 'Save Original photo' and then when you upload a photo it will save to your gallery on your phone. But then the clever thing you can do is edit the photo turn your phone on to flight mode, upload the image and it will come up with a message saying "we will try again when theres a better connection" you then press x and cancel the upload and then you have the edited version on your phone with out even uploading it.
This means you don't have to do that awful screen shot that looses the quality of the image.
Colour, Theme, Layout, Filters.
Colour: So it is proven you get more likes if you upload pictures with blue in... so fill your Instagram with blue.
Theme: There is nothing better then seeing an Instagram with a theme. This is something i really struggle with as i find it difficult to stick to a colour or a layout or a certain style or filter.
Layout: i see a lot of people that have interesting ways of uploading their photos and making it their own. By using apps to edit the shape of every photo and make borders and make them more spread out on their Instagram. Again something i don't do but its nice to see on other peoples pages.
Filters: one thing a lot of people don't know about instagram is it has more then the 8 filters you see when you edit your photos. If you scroll across the filters to the end theirs a 'Manage' option. click that and you can add more filters, take some away, arrange them so your favourite is right at the beginning.
Stalking
We all do it... but next time you do... get smart, load up all the images on their page and then put flight mode on and then even if you do accidentally like a picture from 3 years ago right at the bottom of their page it won't actually like it.
Hashtags
Keep your hashtags relevant. No one and i repeat no one clicks on the hashtag 'like 4 like' any more! Use hashtags that make sense that you would click on to find an image like yours.
You have two options;
1. Hashtag next to the caption when you are uploading.
2. Hashtag after in the comments, your photo is still seen under these hashtags, it doesn't look as messy or as desperate and you can delete the hashtags later on with out having to delete the caption.
NEW AND EXCITING WAY TO GAIN FOLLOWERS
STORIES:
Not everyone was keen on stories because of snapchat etc. but honestly they help me gain so many followers now.
So if you tag a location you will show up on that destinations story. If you hashtag on a story you will also show up on that hashtags story. So those top hashtags where you used to blend in to the images as they are used so many times a minute you can now appear right at the top for 24hr. This has meant some of my stories have gained an extra 3,000 views just from a single hashtag.
Honestly use this you will see the difference.
But also don't be one of these people that upload 60 stories a day as its so annoying when you want to watch other peoples stories and have to sit and watch your 60 stories. Of course you can swipe left and move on if you want but its still annoying that you keep appearing on the front of my stories everyone you upload one... i genuinely have unfollowed people because of this.
Tags and Locations
Tag your photos with pages that share peoples images.
Honestly there will be a page to tag for everything and if there isn't... make one. Some of these pages pay to share your images and some of these pages have 100,000s of followers and this will gain you follows.
Locations
Add a location... this allows people to see where the photo was taken. If you take it from your bed make it more generic like London, Bristol, Scotland etc. But this makes it easier for people to find your photos and you get 100s of people follow you that are in your area. I put one of my locations on a photo in oxford street once and i got so many more likes just because their are so many people looking at what to do in oxford street.
WOW THAT TURNED INTO A LONG BLOG BUT HOPEFULLY IT WILL HELP.
Please feel free to ask me any questions below. Or on my Instagram.
Follow @cameronbeames and @boystraveldiary to see my pages grow.
Please share and like to show your support. If this helped you please spread the word and help others. I love how powerful Instagram is and how well it works for people once you know how.
