MAKE YOUR INSTAGRAM SOMETHING YOU WANNA DOUBLE TAP

If you are a blogger, you know the Instagram engagement and growth struggle is real (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s fine. I truly would rather be oblivious as well. 😛 If you are curious, basically Instagram’s algorithm affects which of our photos you see, and the less you engage with them, the less, you will see them. If our photos aren’t seen/don’t have good engagement, we won’t be able to grow our brand or potentially not be able to get partnerships with other brands), and we as bloggers all have felt it in one way or another. It’s so easy to get caught up in the numbers and stress about it all. I will be honest, it can consume your thoughts, and if you allow it, it can even downright dictate your security in who you are. I have known bloggers who become so obsessed with worrying about whether or not their photo/feed is a good as the next blogger’s that I don’t know how they go through life. It truly can suck the life out of you! Instagram should be fun. It should be a way you express yourself and who you are, and whatever it is,you should be proud of it because it’s YOU. And if it’s not you, or you’re just trying to be someone else, change that!

Alright so let’s get practical. I talked about loving your Instagram and your feed. But we obviously would still love to be seeing growth. I thought that I would share a few things that I recently changed that I feel have actually dramatically helped both with me loving my feed and being proud of it as well as with growth. I noticed for myself that I am always drawn to follow feeds that have a cohesive theme and style as well as varied photos. I have tried to find my style over the years, and just a few weeks ago, I feel like I finally settled on a Lightroom preset/VSCO combo that I love. I started applying that to ALL of my photos (adjusting small things like exposure etc for each individual photo) as well as varying the TYPE of photos. If you’re like me, your full body outfit photos typically “perform best” so you’re more likely to want to post that to garnish the most engagement possible. However, I wanted to look at my feed and see variation in my photos (coffee, scenery, flatlaye, selfie) so I just started doing it! I decided I would just focus on loving my feed and not worrying about the fact that a photo of my coffee doesn’t get as much likes. And YOU GUYS, my engagement has gone up significantly (~200 likes per photo) since I started doing that. I also noticed that the more saves my photo gets, the more interaction it gets as well. People LOVE a good selfie. And they also tend to save more “Pinterest-inspired” photos aka something they might look at and say, “Omg what a cute photo idea. I want to try that!”

Bring people into your life too! If you were at brunch, post a photo of your brunch. If you were out at the flea market, show them a peek into what’s there. People crave relationships and realness. So if you can bring them into your real time life, that’s good. They can see you on your stories out doing that thing or wearing that outfit, and then bam, it’s in your feed!

And another thing I have just always done as well is to be super personable in my captions. Say something witty or funny about your day. Bring them into your life! I have found that draws out more comments than just sharing how great of a deal or cute my outfit is! My following has also been slowing increasing because, as my photos get more engagement, they are seen more. Then they come to my feed, hopefully see a cohesive style and learn something about me and follow! Ok last thing, I also have been using my iPhone a lot for photos too. I don’t stress about every photo being perfect or taken with my professional camera.

So just to sum up in case that was a lot:

1. Create a cohesive theme

2. Vary your photos (selfie, coffee, flatlay)

3. Take Pinterest-inspired photos

4. Bring people into your life

5. Be engaging

6. Mix iPhone photos with professional photos

And above everything, make sure YOU love your Instagram. It’s a representation of who you are. Don’t try to be someone else. Just be you. People will be able to see that! And they’ll love you even more for it.

P.S. The photos that were above are from my Instagram in the last few months. Since I made more of the changes. Specifically to my edits. I remember being much more stressed and worrying more before I had a plan and made some changes that really made me love my Instagram. These photos below are from before those changes. And if you want to go to the trouble of doing that super deep stalk to way before all of this, be my guest by heading over to my Instagram. 😛

Hope you enjoyed this post! Let me know so that if so, I can be sure to do more like it!

xoxo,

Christine