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Any Instagram gurus can lend some advice on how to break through 1.3k plateau?
Posted by on March 20, 2021 at 11:36 pmI am fairly new to instagram and using my profile as a kind of joint personal account and business account: the former around some travel/fashion content and the latter around my job as a doctor and some media projects I am working on, namely a podcast and series of YouTube videos.
I am growing ok I think, 1300 followers since starting about 4-5 months ago, my engagement rate is good at around 18%, but I am starting to plateau and I’m not sure which areas to focus on to grow. To be specific:
* Some of my reels do fairly well and get multiple thousands of views but this translates to essentially zero engagement from anyone other than my followers
* How about I doing at balancing the “medical content” theme with the “personal brand” theme? I feel I am too light on the former, but I worry about alienating the majority of people who follow me for the latter
* How is my growth rate actually? I get around 200-250 followers per month and I’m not sure if that is about right for my kind of profile or notIG drciarandoherty
I am open to ideas re collaboration if anyone here is interested by the way.
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2 Replies
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byu/JonODonovan insocialmedia -
Hey Doctor! Think I can give you some advice that would help you out although should note what you are experiencing is completely normal, when growing an account there are naturally slower times of growth and engagement, so don’t be too hard on yourself.
**Some immediate changes that could help your account be more discoverable:**
Your Bio and name are searchable so whilst what you have is awesome I would try and get some keywords that people might search to stumble across your profile. An example would be right now if I typed “doctor” into my search you wouldn’t come up because you only have the abbreviated form in your username and name. I think your current bio is more suited for LinkedIn. Try and add some personality to it and say a bit more about yourself. Like I think you have a podcast why not have that in your bio and link people to it.
I don’t know if you are using hashtags but if you aren’t you should be. Try to use all 30 hashtags on image posts and if you don’t want your followers to see them then comment and emoji under each image post and reply to that emoji with your 30 hashtags.
Consider adding some IGTV, it would make your account looked more established and seems like you can deliver long-form content so why not utilise that on IG
Cross-post and use all available socials. Your posts are very easy to post and generate traffic on other places, I would definitely recommend you post on Pinterest, TikTok and Twitter and consider adding something like a link tree to your profile so followers can see your internet presence elsewhere
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**Some strategy stuff:**
Try a theme, your posts at a glance are not very aesthetically consistent. By theme, I don’t necessarily mean make sure every photo looks exactly the same and like preplan a photoshoot, what I do mean is either put the same filter or preset on every image or at least pick warm tones only or cool tones only. This will make your account appear a bit more cohesive.
Reels aren’t known for their engagement but often to get something out of your audience all you need to do is ask. Tell the viewers to engage, ask them a question related to the content and ask them to leave their answers below. Assume followers are dumb and unless you tell them to do something they won’t. That’s why you see phrases like “follow me for….”, “like, save and share ….” “comment an emoji” thrown around so much.
I think your question about your content is you being too much in your head. Your profile is essentially based on your personality and so I would treat it more like an influencer account than a brand and in light of this I would recommend you stay genuine and authentic and if you are worried about your audience response you could just ask them. Under 5k I would recommend not worrying about audience reaction as you audience just isn’t big enough yet to gage that properly.
In regards to your growth rate it’s hard to tell. If you are spending 5 hours researching and posting and engaging on Instagram every day then that growth rate is not as expected if you are only doing the odd thing here and there then I would say as long as your growth is increasing week on week then you are on the right track. I really recommend that you look into the $1.80 method by Gary Vee to see how you could utilise engagement to grow organically and best utilise the time you are spending online.
I hope that helps you out, if you want to ask more questions feel free. I give free advice over on my Instagram @ meganstephensofficial so feel free to drop me a DM if you need any more help 🙂
Good luck!
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