Welcome back, friends! Today we are continuing with our Behind the Design series and chatting about all things Instagram. Over the past year, we’ve gotten lots of emails/direct messages about how we grew our following and today we’re sharing our secrets!

When we started our Instagram back in 2015, we had no idea where it would take us. Back then, Instagram wasn’t really used for businesses and was more of a casual, social platform to connect with your family and friends. Boy, have things changed! Flash forward to today, we’re on the cusp of hitting 90,000 followers and Instagram has become a source of inspiration, lead generation, and a beautiful community for us.

When it comes to conquering Instagram (which can feel like a beast sometimes!), we’ve developed 4 main practices to live by. Through much trial and error over the years, these are the things we’ve found that work for us. Despite all of Instagram’s changes (we’re looking at you, mind-boggling, unexplainable algorithm!) we’ve never strayed away from these core practices and, we think, it has helped us in the long run.

1. Consistency is KEY

If you’re looking to amp up your IG game, our first, and maybe most important, tip is to be consistent.
This doesn’t even necessarily mean you have to post every single day (but if you have the content to do so, we highly recommend it), but more so posting on the same days/times every week. For us, we post 2x a day – once in the morning, once in the afternoon. At this point, our followers know when to expect new posts from us and encourages them to come back to check it out!

We use this practice for our blog as well! If you’ve been following us along you might have noticed that we blog at least 2x/week and always on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We love that our readers know when to check back in on the blog and it also keeps us accountable and organized when creating our own content calendar.

2. Quality over quantity

We subtly mentioned this above, but only post if you have the content to do. We’re strong believers in quality over quantity and prefer to only post something to our feed that brings us pride. When planning out our feed, we ask ourselves “would we want someone to hire us to do exactly this?”. If the photo is outdated or not a great representation of our abilities/services, we won’t post it. Our thoughts is that if someone is coming to our profile for the first time we want them to know who we are, what our style is, and what they can expect from following us immediately.

3. Reap what you sow

AKA what comes around, goes around. This is such a simple part of the platform, but extremely important. We always try to interact to our followers and let them know what we are happy they’re here and taking the time to engage with us! What does this mean? Responding to direct messages, answering their questions in our comments, and reaching out to our followers for THEIR input! This is the core of what Instagram was made for – bringing people together! Never forget it’s purpose and you will see a beautiful, kind community grow around you.

4. Use all of it’s features

It’s a little known fact that Instagram will reward you for using all of it’s features. Feeling frustrated and afraid that people aren’t seeing your posts on their feed? Try ramping up how you’re using Instagram. Simple ways you can do this:
• Hashtags: you can use up to 30 – use them!
• Location tags
• Product/User tags on images
• Instagram stories
• IGTV – we’re starting to dive into this soon and we’re so excited! 😊

Whew, that was a lot of information! But, we hope, it’s been useful for you! Are there any Instagram strategies that you swear by? We’d love to know what is/isn’t working for you in the comments below!

And, of course, if you’re not following us on Instagram click here to follow!

Header Photo by: Julia Engel