Recently, I have run into a situation with instagram, where they disabled my ad account. [Different from my actual account]. It allows me to run promotions for my posts, a very integral part of my growth. From this experience, I have learned the hard way what NOT to do while running an IG account and I am offering you those tips here! TBH, my account got hacked and I think that’s what flagged me in their system…but just in case, after reading their policies, I am now, much more educated on the below!

The Do’s:

– Post regularly, sometimes more than once a day.

– Engage immediately, after posting, for about 10 minutes [Some say for 10 min before and 10 min after]. Reply to as many if not all of the comments, as close to the time they came in as possible. They say engagement within the first hour, sets the tone for the performance of the post. Your goal should be to get as many people seeing and engaging with your post as possible in that time frame and respond right away!

– Make note of different times that you post and the insights that follow, so you can identify the best times to post etc. If you don’t keep track of this, it’s like jumping on a hamster wheel. You could be spending months posting at a poor time for active followers and get nowhere.

– Get on stories. This is even sometimes difficult for me, because I feel like no one cares what I’m doing but then I remember that I get lost, for hours, watching my favorite bloggers just talk about their day. Feeling like they’re talking to you and getting to “know” them is part of the fun and certainly a driving force in being influenced. So, hop on, even just once a day, and say hi for a few slides!

– Focus on your content. Produce high quality, engaging, scroll stopping content. Make sure you know what the value is that you’re providing people with.

– Invest in a preset. Some say this isn’t a necessity. As an artist, the aesthetic is so important and trust me…it matters! You want people to feel at ease when scrolling through your feed and be attracted to your posts. If it’s all over the place, people won’t know where to look and it makes it very overwhelming. My personal opinion, use one that’s generic and easy on the eyes but gives a consistent feel to all of your photos. I truly am turned off by the feeds that have an all orange overlay or the extremely washed out presets. I want to know the true color of the outfit or furniture I’m seeing. I use light and airy.

– Reels are a great way to reach thousands of people quickly! I suggest dropping a post and later on that day, a reel. Using popular or trending songs, help the reach, I think.

– Promote your posts. This is a great way to reach more people and anyone who follows you, does so because they want to, ending up with more authentic engagement! You can keep it automatic or customize who you want to reach and set a daily budget. You can pause, resume and delete promotions at any time. [Just know, once you’ve promoted a post, you can’t ever edit the post!]

– Check out hashtags you’re using and engage with posts that you like, under those same hashtags. Engage on the explore page as well. This can help people discover you, engage back, possibly follow and ultimately get YOU on the explore page!

– Get personal! Obviously you don’t have to divulge everything going on in your life, but people love getting to know who you are and feeling more connected to you. If they have things in common with you, it will keep them interested and make you stand out from the very saturated influencer market right now!

– Make real connections and engage with accounts you truly like to see on your feed! Organic is key!

The Don’ts:

– Buy followers or engagement of any kind. Not only does instagram consider this going against their policies, but it won’t help you anyway. You want your engagement to be real and if you buy followers, they’re probably not going to comment/like etc, on your posts. This will hurt you more than help you.

– Participate in engagement groups or pods. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this because I saw them all over instagram! I loved them because I found so many accounts that I loved following and I made some really amazing connections. Unfortunately, once my ad account was disabled and my stories were deleted with a message saying I was violating policies, I read those policies and found out this is all a big NO NO! The story that got deleted was a giveaway for Belgard Pavers! So my question now is, do companies know it’s illegal and don’t care? Or don’t they realize? Another fun one is trying to evade IG by mispelling, truncating or using other words for ones that are a buzz word for the algorithm. This is actually written in the policies. “Obfuscation” is their word of choice. “Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language.” Thank you, Google. So this means, all of those G I V E A W A Y S and R33LS are exactly that, obfuscation. The other problem is, since the algorithm is a computer, once you’re flagged, there’s virtually nothing you can do about it. There’s no person you can reach, no chat, no phone. You’re done! So, you’ll just have to lay low and make sure you do everything by the book! My outlook on it now… if I question what I’m writing, I don’t write it!

These, of course, are just my experiences and opinions on the matter. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them the best I can! I’m no expert, but I do have good engagement for my following and have been lucky with brands wanting to partner with me, both paid and gifted product. From this point on, I will be sticking to the law of IG!

Thanks for reading!

XOXO

Kel