I hope everyone is having an absolutely wonderful start to the new year! We are settling in with everybody happy and healthy and feeling in a giving mood as we embark on a killer 2021.
Reflecting back on the last 3 years and where I am today with my blog, I wanted to offer a little help to all the aspiring dog bloggers.
I get asked a lot, “how do (did) you grow your Instagram account and blog?”
Well, when I started 2 years ago, Instagram was a lot different. It was much easier to get exposure and grow your following, and in turn, grow your blog traffic. No doubt there has been a lot of changes, making it harder for smaller aspiring dog bloggers to get seen.
So I wanted to give back to you what you have all given to me to help you grow your accounts and make an impact this year. What follows are a few actionable steps and best practices to grow your account and blog traffic in 2021.
Community & Content = Growth
Unfortunately, You can’t just post ANYTHING anymore and expect to see engagement. Every post and caption and action needs to be calculated and done with a purpose and intention. There’s billions of people on instagram and they’re getting more choosey of who they follow by the day. They need to be given a reason to follow you.
Of course, if you have a cute pup that you’re obsessed with and don’t care about getting followers or getting seen, that is 100% ok. But if you are trying to get your cute pup seen and hopefully monetize the account in the future, then there’s a few things you can do to help get on the right track.
Like I said, give your followers a reason to come back to you everyday and give new people a reason to follow you.
The first step is to find a community and join the conversation. If you have a specific breed, count on there being a community and few large niche pages centered on sharing images and videos based on that breed. Start interacting with the followers of those accounts. It’s much easier to get interaction from accounts with 100-2000 followers than 50,000 followers.
Go to one of the images and go into the LIKES and start interacting and engaging with those people.
Follow them, drop a comment, drop a few likes. Let them know you’re watching and liking what they’re doing. These days a few likes and a follow go a long way. As in every social media platform, you need to give to receive. Be present in the conversation. Authentically engage. Reply to questions they pose in captions. You know, be social!
Now for your content. Content is still king.
You’re no stranger to what good content looks like. You see it all day every day. Why? Because instagram rewards accounts with good content.
If you don’t know how the instagram algorithm works, here’s a breakdown.
Instagram wants people to spend as long as possible on the platform so they’re only going to show the content that is considered good because if people see bad content, they’ll most likely exit the app and that’s not good for ad revenue for Facebook (and that’s all they care about).
Better content + more time spent on platform = more $$$ for Facebook.
Good content gets good engagement. So let’s say you post on your feed. Instagram shows your image to a small percentage of your current followers. If that content demonstrates that it’s getting good engagement (likes, swipes, saves, comments, shares), it’s going to start showing it to more of your audience and therefore will increase your reach. If it’s not getting good engagement from the beginning, it’ll more likely get buried and not be seen.
So that is why it’s so important to have great image and video content. Your iPhone takes amazing quality images so it’s not your hardware. It’s the thought behind the shot, the lighting, etc. You need to be able to tell a story with your image and have an image that you can support with your caption so it works. Nobody wants to dark shaky videos or grainy underexposed images.
When you’re taking an image or video, you have to ask yourself, “Does this bring me or someone value? Would I Like, Share, or Save this?” If you can’t answer that, it’s probably not worth the post.
Lead with value above everything else. You want someone to come to your profile and think, “hmm, I like what I saw, I got some value from this post and I’m on board with their message and vibe. Follow!”
But please remember it doesn’t have to be perfect!! Perfection is the enemy of progress. Instagram also rewards accounts that post frequently. So it’s best to find a happy medium.
5 MUST-HAVE TOOLS FOR TAKING THE PERFECT PET SELFIE!
Example – get a dog selfie stick and record a quick 20 second video of you and your pup in the park doing some training exercises. Make sure it’s clear and sunny and it’s not shaky. Write a caption about ways you’re training your pup and some of the problems you’re running into. I can guarantee people will relate and offer words of support, encouragement and advice. It’s that easy.
Now for Engagement
Engagement is huge. That really is the determining factor in growth and traffic to your website or blog.
Here’s some tips to grow your engagement.
20 Minute Rule
Before you post, spend about 10-20 minutes engaging with your audience and new audiences. Leave some likes, follow and comment on targeted accounts. The objective is to get them back to your account. So when you do post your new piece of content, you have new eyeballs and new chances to make a good impression and grab a follow.
Give Your 2 Cents
Like I said, you have to give to get. Give love and you’ll receive it.
Go to your explore page – and go search for a relevant hashtag. Go to the Hashtag Page. You’ll see 2 tabs. TOP and RECENT. Click RECENT. These are the accounts that are smaller and trying to get seen and are more likely to reciprocate engagement. For 20 minutes each day, go to a few different hashtags and find images you like and give your 2 cents. Just share some love. They’ll give it back.
Smart Stories
Stories are another great way to show some behind the scenes content that won’t make it to the feed. However, if you just post to your stories, most likely only your followers will see the content. A little unknown secret is that you can attract new audiences with your stories.
When you post a story, swipe up to get the features. Click Hashtag and add the relevant hashtag. This way it’ll show up in the Hashtag Story. This will be seen by people who are looking at the #goldendoodle hashtag story and if they see what they like, they’ll click to your profile.
There’s plenty more tricks and tips but here are a few solid actionable ones you can do every day to get the ball rolling.
Let me know if these work for you or if you have found any tips that have worked for you that I didn’t mention.
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