How To Grow Your Instagram Account
Come and join me for a guided 🏃🏻♀️Growth Sprint🏃🏻♀️
How does that title make you feel?
I ask because, in my experience, writers and authors often feel conflicted about the idea of growing your Instagram account.
On the one hand many of you want to find more ‘followers’ because you can see it increases the number of potential readers for your book or work.
Some of you want to go viral and gain ‘followers’ very quickly as you assume it will mean you can reduce the amount of marketing you do.
BUT at the same time, many of you don’t feel comfortable with it being all about the numbers because you suspect that approach breeds dissatisfaction and inadequacy.
AND some of you may feel embarrassed to admit you even want to grow your Instagram account as, isn’t that what influencers do?, and aren’t you - an artist - supposed to be above such callow goals?
Usually, I too am wary of account growth being the main objective of time spent on Instagram, and the model I advocate for is ‘community-first’.
I prioritise engagement, being of service to your community, and building connections over driving transactions.
This is my approach for several reasons, including:
it makes Instagram a more enjoyable place to spend time (which means you’re more likely to show up - there is nothing more certain to kill your marketing efforts than failing to turn up!)
a challenge to the assumption that you need more ‘followers’ - is it possible you need to do a better job of engaging and connecting with the ones you already have?
it’s more sustainable long-term to work within your capacity - optimising what you can do, rather than trying to do everything - so you don’t burnout
Now, it’s important to acknowledge that working within writers’ capacities and willingness to jump through Instagram’s hoops, means there is often a compromise in how quickly an account can grow, BUT it doesn’t mean growth can’t happen at all.
Community-first Instagram is not anti-growth Instagram.
Case Study: Dr Emma Svanberg, mumologist
When I started work with Emma in January 2024 she’d grown an audience of almost 43k over several years.
In 2023 she published her (excellent) book Parenting For Humans: how to parent the child you have, as the person you are and had been very active on the platform.
By the end of 2023, when I spoke with her, she felt jaded and as though she’d lost the community feel that she’d always loved about Instagram. She was also concerned that she’d started to show up in ways that she wasn’t comfortable with, that did not align with her beliefs and values.
Together, we worked on turning the focus of her content explicitly towards connection with her community. We also started tracking comments and saves in order to determine whether being on Instagram was giving Emma what she wanted: conversation, and to be useful.
Over six months, these changes meant that we increased Content Interactions (likes, comments, saves, sends) by 100%, BUT what is more relevant to this essay was the by-product of our efforts.
Accidental growth
While working with Emma I found that using her content to increase opportunities for community engagement and connection also led to increased Reach (+117.8% compared to the previous six months) and an acceleration in the number of new followers that Emma’s account gained:
in the 6 month period prior to starting working with me (July-Dec 2023) the follower growth was +829 new followers
in the first 6 months of working with me (Jan-Jun 2024) the follower growth was +4,300 new followers, a x5 increase in the rate of gaining new followers
By turning our focus back to what Emma’s audience cared about, were interested in, and were struggling with, Emma achieved the increase in community engagement that she was looking for AND, because of the way the algorithms work, she also - sort of accidentally - accelerated the growth of her account.
This emphasis on engagement and community acts of service is what typically characterises my approach to Instagram, BUT there are times when growing your following might be a priority for you so there are other levers you might also want to pull.
When might growth become a priority?
Even if you prefer a community-first approach account growth may sometimes be a priority because:
your account is new, or very small, and you want to quickly increase the size of the pool of people to speak with about your work
you’re writing a proposal for non-fiction or memoir and you’ve been told you need to grow your platform before publishers will be interested*
your book is coming out and you want to grow the pool of potential readers
If any - or a combination - of those sounds familiar, this GROWTH SPRINT is for you.
* I’ve written about this before:
Four ways to grow your Instagram account
Tried and tested methods to grow your Instagram account include:
reels - this is the content placement via which the algorithms are most likely to recommend to new audiences to you. There are ways to optimise your reels to increase the likelihood they will bring you new followers.
anchor content - these are often Reels and are the kinds of posts that will introduce you to your ideal reader, while reassuring your existing audience that they’re in the right place. You have to work out what the key messages are that will attract the people who will be interested in your book.
shareable content - this is a double-weighted tactic as if your content is shareable, you benefit from your audience members sharing it to their own networks, but also, sends (either to Stories, or to DMs) act as a signal to the algorithms to show your post to people who don’t already follow you. To leverage this tactic, you have to work out what your target audience member/ ideal reader will be inclined to send to their Stories or directly to friends in their DMs.
collaboration - ‘piggy-backing’ on other peoples’ audiences (and giving them access to your audience in return) is an important tactic for growth. There are several forms of collaboration available on Instagram that can bring you more audience members who are interested in what you write about.
The relationship between how much you post, and account growth
Instagram can be a very hungry beast and it will gobble up whatever you feed it and still be hungry, so it’s important to be considered with how much content you create and post when growth is your objective.
Volume alone will not deliver results, you also have to make sure your content is relevant to the people you want to reach, AND it will probably be likely that you will have to increase the volume of posts you publish.
This is why I do not advocate that growth should be a long-term objective for writers and authors. Instead you should dial up and down the intensity of the effort you’re expending.
I’ve written more about this method of adjusting posting volumes according to your needs and capacity in this free-to-read post:
In a GROWTH SPRINT there is is a period of preparation, or ‘training’, followed by a contained period of time - in this case, 4 weeks - of heightened activity.
Think of it as the difference between running a marathon - steady pace, longer time - vs running a 100m race - faster pace, shorter time.
How the GROWTH SPRINT will work
The Growth Sprint is split into three phases:
Phase One: Concept and Planning
Phase Two: Execution
Phase Three: Reflection
💭 Phase One: Concept and Planning
Starting this Thursday 13th February, I’ll be publishing one training per week for TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM members, for four weeks.
Each training will focus on one of the four main types of posts you need for growth:
Week 1: Anchor Content
Week 2: Reels
Week 3: Shareable Content
Week 4: Collaboration
Each week I’ll guide you through the job each post type does and I’ll lead you through exercises so you can decide how you’ll use each type of post in your own GROWTH SPRINT content mix.
🏃🏻♀️ Phase Two: Execution - the actual sprint
On Thursday 6th March I’ll host a LIVE (replay will be available) planning session where you’ll pull together what you’ve learned in the trainings, and you’ll also record some baseline data so you can track the impact of the GROWTH SPRINT.
This will give you a clear idea of what you’ve got to do for four weeks - importantly, this level of intensity is NOT FOREVER!
PLEASE NOTE: I’ll be presenting an idealised plan - it might be that this is not realistic for you, in which case we can discuss how you might adjust it accordingly, and how this might affect the results of the Growth Sprint.
Starting on Monday 10th March you’ll implement your four week GROWTH SPRINT content plan with weekly check-ins during our Monday WHAT ARE YOU POSTING chats.
🪞 Phase Three: Reflection
The end of the GROWTH SPRINT coincides with the beginning of the Easter school holiday so I’ll invite you all to take a breather over Easter.
On Thursday 24th April you will be invited to a LIVE reflection session (a replay will be available) during which we will look at the results of the GROWTH SPRINT to see what worked, what didn’t, and how you might use this information to make decisions in the future.
If you’re excited by the thought of being guided through your efforts to grow your Instagram account, and you’d like to take part in the GROWTH SPRINT, upgrade your subscription to become a member of TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM.
Becoming a member will give you access to all of the GROWTH SPRINT resources and sessions, as well as access to the other benefits of the membership:
weekly WHAT ARE YOU POSTING? check-in chats to share ideas and receive advice from me about your Instagram plans for the week
Ask Me Anything advice clinics
useful, interesting, insightful guest speakers
invitations to regular Create-along accountability/ body-doubling/ co-working sessions so you make space to create some Instagram content
content inspiration round up posts focused purely on writers and book marketing
how-to guides so you can continue to develop your skills
exclusive discounts for workshops and courses
You can enjoy all of these benefits for £12/month (£120/ year) or approx $15/ month ($150/ year) ❤️
This sounds great, I’ve dipped out a bit these last few months, ill kiddo, and my own health stuff taking centre stage, but I think this will be good timing for me 😊
I am EXCITED!