Lately often I’ve been asked how did I grow my Instagram from zero to where I am now – which is nearly 44K. I definitely haven’t done it fast and I know that compare to other bloggers I am still very small, but turning this hobby into my full-time job was one of my biggest achievements and I feel very happy and proud that I can be an inspiration for some of you! ☺️

Here are few tips I can give you based on my own experience:

1) FIND YOUR OWN NICHE.

Once you realise that you want to be a blogger you also need to decide what will be your topic. It can be really anything, as long as it’s something you’re passionate about. Music, painting, cooking, photography? Marshmallows :P?

2) CREATE GOOD CONTENT.

To gain followers your pictures have to be eye-catching. Think what would make them stand out from the rest. Work on your frames, edits and quality. Try to make them all match. Be creative. Some of my best photos were taken in my garden or some totally not insta worthy place. Use your talent! 🙂 If someone would show you your feed – would you follow yourself?

3) POST REGULARLY.

No one will ever remember about you if you will be posting once a month. I can understand that sometimes you might run out of content (so do I) but ideally would be to post once a day. Be consistent also with stories – daily talks to your audience will help to create a better relationship with your followers. Finally, they’re almost like your friends right?  Also – IG’s algorithm will affect your visibility if you stop posting for a while – and trust me – is hard to come back on track!

4) ENGAGE.

This one is probably the most important! IG works like karma – you get back what you give. So like, comment, follow, reply for comments and DM’s. For you it’s the easiest way to get noticed by other accounts and from the other hand interracting with your followers shows that you care about them. I am always replying for all the comments and I am so happy that I am getting more and more of them!

5) USE HASHTAGS.

Hashtags – key words describing your picture. IG currently allows you to add up to 30 hashtags under your photo. The best is the mix of the „big” and „small” hashtags. Why? Big hashtgs (one to few millions) make your posts reach bigger audience, but – sometimes it might be visible on the main page only for few seconds. Smaller hashatgs have smaller audience but you have a better chance to be noticed or even become one of the top 9. Do a research first which hashtags are currently hot and double check if they’re not blocked!

On the hashtags below you can see that for example “#bali” is one of the big hashtags and applies to everything somehow connected with Bali, but ‘#lempuyangtemple” is a small one which talks about the place in particular, so people who will look for exactly that temple will probably see your post.

6) CHOOSE THE BEST TIMING.

Post when your followers are the most active. You can easily see this using IG statistics or other apps. There are not big chances people will engage with your post if you upload it in the middle of the night, right? Post at the right time and spend an hour after posting for „catching” new followers. That’s when you’re bringing the biggest traffic to your site and when you should use it to the maximum! So engage, engage, engage!

7) ADD TAGS.

Are you tagging other acconuts or brands on your posts? If not maybe it’s time to start! Let’s be honest, if you are a small account and only starting your blogging journey the chances that you will be on the top of explore page aren’t that big. But! If you tag accounts on your pic who are reposting other peoples posts and they see it and like it – they will give you a share! Is also good to be tagging brands you’re wearing. Never know, maybe they will love your style and offer you a collaboration in the future?

Real story: I’ve got a share from @beautifulhotels (3.1M) when I was only having 3K followers! My pic went up to 33K on their profile, made me super proud and gave me a lot of confidence – so much needed at this time!

Why shares are so good? They show your picture to a targeted audience. Imagine if a page has 100K followers who are interested in travels and they share your picture – what happens? Everything who liked the pic will have a look at your profile and if they really love it – they’ll follow you! The other things is that big reposting accounts are followed by other big reposting accounts…Which means if you get shared by one, the changes are pretty good that someone else will do it too ;).

8) BE YOURSELF.

Be original, be unique, be yourself! Nothing is more attractive than just being real you! Don’t try to copy anyone else, create your own style and stick to it! 🙂

These are very general tips but I hope will be helpful for some of you! 🙂 There is obviously soo much stuff I could talk about! I am thinking to prepare a separate post about – How to  interact with your followers? Let me know in comments if would you be interested in it!

PS. All these pinky pictures were taken in The Sweet Art Museum in Lisbon! Such a candy paradise, isn’t ?!

Peace & Love,

Agnieszka