Read This If You're Posting a Lot But Aren't Growing On Instagram 📉

A common issue we hear from people is that they’re posting a lot but aren’t getting any traction. If you’re having this problem, here’s how to solve it.

• First Things First

• The Truth About Instagram’s Algorithm

• How To Boost Your Engagement

• How To Accelerate Follower Growth

• One Other Thing to Try (Hobby+ Exclusive)

First Things First

Before we get started we need to make sure we’re all on the same page.

When we say “post a lot on Instagram”, our recommended posting volume is 5-10 days per day in the feed. So the first thing to do to jump start your IG growth is to make make sure you’re posting that much daily.

Post at this volume for at least 30 days before making any changes to your content to ensure you’ve collected enough data.

Pro Tip: Use content formats to help make posting at this volume sustainable. Formats are repeatable content templates you can use to create content quickly and at scale. You should always be cycling through 3-5 content formats at a time.

ICYMI: We recently shared an e-book of 27 trending content formats.

The Truth About Instagram’s Algorithm

If your posts aren’t performing well and you aren’t growing on Instagram it’s not because of “the algorithm”… it’s because of your content. The algorithm is a tool used by Instagram to distribute content across its platform.

The algorithm isn’t singling out your account and limiting its reach. The algorithm looks for content that is performing well, or in other words, is getting engaged with by users, and shows that content to more people.

Want to make the algorithm “like you”? Make content people like.

How To Boost Your Engagement

If your engagement is low, the fix is obvious… try different content.

We’re not talking wholesale content changes; you don’t want to get rid of a format right away, but rather make tweaks and gradual changes.

You should test each change 3-5 times to gauge its performance. If your new content format outperforms your recent post average by a considerable margin more than once, then you should make that change permanent.

If a change does not improve your engagement, cut it and move on to the next change. You should be testing a new change every single day until you see a lift in your engagement. If you’ve made a few different tweaks and the content is still underperforming, cycle in a whole new format to test.

You don’t want to change your content volume (as long as you’re posting 5-10 times a day), so when making changes you should remove one format from your rotation and implement the change in its place.

Reminder: You don’t want to wait until your content starts underperforming to test new content tweaks and formats. This is something you should be doing all the time. That being said, you don’t want to ruin any momentum you have, so when things are going well, we recommend you run these tests at a slower frequency.

How To Accelerate Follower Growth

As you start to see an increase in post engagement, you’ll start to notice an increase in followers as well. If you want to increase the rate that people follow your account, here’s a simple hack:

*REMIND THEM TO FOLLOW YOUR ACCOUNT*

We’ve tested it and seen that if you include a simple CTA in your caption reminding people to follow you, it will lead to a higher conversion percentage.

Here’s a couple simple CTA templates you can use:

If you made it this far - Don’t scroll without following the best (YOUR NICHE) page on Instagram - @YOURACCOUNT

Follow @YOURACCOUNT to get more posts about (YOUR NICHE)

One Other Thing to Try