What is up everyone? I'm actually going to show you exactly how to grow your Instagram account organically. No bots, no cheating, nobody followers, no nothing in 2019. 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's 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 the five top hacks that I've used to grow my Instagram organically to almost8,000 followers.
And also before I forget, make sure you keep on watching because, in 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. You definitely don't want to miss that. And as a fun bonus, this video is actually made in collaboration with my girl Natasha [Solei 00:01:51]. I'm actually going to teach you the organic growth strategies and Natasha is going to help you make your feed look bomb. Because the truth is told, your feed is actually the first impression that someone has when they go onto your account. And you want to make sure that you make the best impression possible so that it increases the chances of them following you and engaging with you.
Now the first tip that I have that I feel a lot of people gloss over or don't mention at all, is to actually change your name on Instagram 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 my screen right over here so you can follow along. But basically what you'll notice is that on my 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, what I see a lot of people not doing it because when you actually go into search and let us say 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 you have a business, or you're a service-based business, is that capitalize the name section that's on your bio because that's going to allow you to rank higher in SEO. Realistically, no one is searching for 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 search for that on the 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 a fitness coach as your name and someone in the area is looking for a fitness coach to work with, guess who's going to pop up in the search? You. Definitely make sure you're leveraging that key aspect of that bio section, and you're not putting it to waste. Because that isn't precious real estate to help you rank higher in Instagram search.
The second tip that I have for you is to write captions that convert. I know it's really easy to want to post a meaningless emoji or a song lyric, but really add depth to your Instagram accounts. Something that I love to teach my clients when we're talking about their Instagram strategy is, yes, the post itself, the picture has to be nice because it's going to allow someone to stop the scroll and actually pay attention to what you have to say.
But it's the caption that allows those conversations to happen and that actually allows that engagement. Think of it like dating, usually, you want to date someone because first off you were attracted to their looks maybe, but you decided to actually date them and to actually keep in touch with them, and stay connected because of their personality. Literally use this analogy and apply it to Instagram. Now for me, I actually write a lot of long-form captions into my posts. And I actually kind of treat my Instagram account like a micro-blog.
And what I've found is that I've actually been able to spark a lot of one on one private conversations since doing this. Now I know a lot of people care about vanity metrics like likes, comments, so on and so forth. But for me, I've really changed my perspective and I actually measure my success on Instagram on the number of private conversations in DMs that I have with other people. Because especially if you have a business and you're using Instagram for your business, the people who are actually engaging with you privately are your warmest leads.
My clients already have found me through Instagram DM because I took the time to actually cultivate those strong relationships with them. In order for me to actually get to that point though I've written vulnerable, deep caption so that they can connect with. And that's what's really contributed to my success, 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 Instagram like a true business and create those long-form relationships and those warm leads, then definitely having micro-blog-like captions ... That's kind of weird. Micro-blog-like captions, yeah I guess, is actually the way to go. Because yes, not everyone is going to resonate, but the people who do, they become a potential client, 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 third piece of advice, I'm actually going to explain what know, like, and trust is. Know, like, and trust is so crucial for your business. Know, you want people to actually know who you are. Then eventually you want them to like you because of what you're posting or whatever. And lastly, you want them to trust you. That's kind of the level that you want to get at with all of your potential clients, or even if you don't have a business, your audience. Know, like, and trust is so important in actually funneling 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 social media platform, really ask yourself, "I'm I building the know, like, and trust with my audience?" Now the third piece of advice that I also don't see often when I'm researching about Instagram hacks is actually mixing the size of hashtags that you use. Yes, I know everyone cringes when they hear the word hashtag, but it's still a relevant piece if you want to grow on Instagram. Because hashtags allow people to actually find you and it allows you to increase your reach. However, the problem that I see is a lot of people use very big generic hashtags, like #makeup, #business, #success. Those hashtags are actually massive and guarantee you by the time that you post it, you're going to disappear from the hashtag explore page in five seconds. Because everyone is literally using that hashtag, and it is way too big.
What I actually recommend, and it's going to take a little bit more work from you, but I promise that it's worth it, is to actually mix up your hashtag sizes and do hashtag research to find the small to medium hashtags that exist in your niche, or in your category or whatever. I'm going to actually put up my rule of thumb in terms of hashtag sizes to help you out. If you want more information, it's going to be in the Instagram checklist that I'm going to link in the description box, and in the comments 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 small to medium-size tags. The reason why you want to do this is that those are the tags that are actually kind of the more niche ones, and the ones where a lot of communities are inside.
There's a lot of local people, or a lot of people that are actually loyal to those tags, and are more likely to search for them and follow them on Instagram. And it's also going to increase the chances of you actually staying on that explore page for hashtags a lot longer, versus if you use really large tags. And again, if you need more help, definitely just download the checklist, it has all of the information that you need and more. Don't sleep out on that, I'll link in the description box and the comments section below, but what you need to know for the purpose of this video is you need to actually switch up your hashtag sizes because that's going to help you increase your reach, and also help to make sure that you're actually teaching people that care about your content.
Because the more niche that you are, and the more tailored and segmented that you are, the more chances that people are going to want to follow your content because you're speaking to the right audiences. Now on the topic of hashtags, this is my fourth piece of advice for you, and that is to actually rotate between your hashtags. A big, big, big mistake that I see a lot of people do is that they use the same hashtags over and over and over again. But the problem is, is that if you use it too many times, Instagram is going to think that you are spam and actually decrease your reach, and actually kind of ... I don't want to say the word shadow ban because I'm not sure if it's true that the shadowban even exists. Because apparently, Instagram says that it doesn't exist.
But if you are using the same hashtags in every single post that you're doing, you are going to be flagged for spam, and that's going to increase the chances of you not showing up on the feed for your followers or for whoever else. Just be careful that you are actually making a 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 over here, 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 terms of 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 hashtag groups. I have group number one, then group number-two, then group number three, group number four.
And I kind of have multiple groups that I rotate between. Every time I post something I kind of keep track of the groups that I'm using, and I copy and paste it, and then I put it in my caption. And I don't really have to stress because it'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 post for each post. But at the same time, I'm also making a conscious effort 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 mix between small, medium, and large to make sure that my reach is maximized.
Those are some hacks that I wanted to share with you in terms of hashtags that have really helped me, and that I think will really help you, especially if you want to grow on Instagram organically. Now, the last and final tip that I have for you 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 grow organically on Instagram, you need to put that energy back and you actually need to engage with other people. And there are a couple of reasons for this, the first one is an algorithm. The more that people engage with you, and let's say you actually take some time out of your day to engage with others, and they engage back, that's going to show Instagram that, that's the content that they want to see.
And it's going to increase your chances of your post showing up on their feed. That's why community engagement is important. Another reason why community engagement is important is that the more you actually interact with other people, especially if there 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 engage with 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 and you're like, "Wait for 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 this to someone else, or use a bot, you are going to lose that genuine connection. And then the reason why I'm saying this is that if you are using Instagram for business, and you want to attract clients and potential business opportunities, it's really helpful that the message comes from you, and that you are the one that's actually actively liking other people's posts, or commenting on other people'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 this video, I'm actually going to show you a hack I guess, or something that I use to make community engagement a lot easier. A great feature that Instagram has is the ability to follow hashtags. I'm going to throw out my screen right over here, but what I want to show you is that throughout my feed I've actually followed up key hashtags that are within my niche. And that allows posts to automatically show up on my feed.
And these posts are from people that I actually don't know. And it allows it to be easier for me to engaged because it's already on my feed, and I don't have to actively go out there and search for people. It's already going to show up, and at the same time, I'm able to engage with my existing audience as well. That's just something really important to note, that you are able to actually follow hashtags. Let's say ... For me, I'm a business coach, maybe I'll follow the hashtag business babe, go to tags, there is one it has 125k, I followed.
And eventually, those posts that are random posts from people that are using the same hashtag, are going to show up in my feed. And that's what makes it a lot easier for community engagement, and actually kind of takes off the edge, and it makes it a lot more enjoyable because I'm already scrolling through the feed engaging with my followers anyway. Guys you've reached the end of the video. Those are my five install hacks on how to grow your Instagram organically in 2019.