Business Tip #6: 11 Ways To Rule Instagram [An Owners Guide To Not Screwing Everything Up]

Lessons I've learned along the way, so you don't have to.

Hello Steemers,

Welcome to my sixth post. If you are looking for the BEST business content, how to read and analyze your market, write the perfect business plan and steps to properly make your first million, YOU HAVE COME TO THE WRONG PLACE. Instead, I will teach you things I've learned along my way to get where I am now. Things that if I would have done right the first time or would have known, would have shaved days, months, or even years off my journey. Along with a ton of headaches!

Tip #6: 11 Ways To Rule Instagram

About two years ago, I had lost my marketing manager to a better paying job. Leaving me to temporarily take control of everything he had created, including Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. I took most interest in Instagram since I felt it was the way of the temporary future and the most sought after platform for the younger generation. He had created our page and grew it to 2,000 followers. At the time when he was doing, I was stoked! I didn't know much about it but seemed like we were on the right track. So I was forced to learn more about.

Fast forward to today. We now own 12 Instagram pages in the outdoor / fishing niche with a total of 1.32+ million followers. Get your attention? Well here's some of the ways we did it.

Choose a good name or use your brand name.
This sounds very basic, but I'm a firm believer that the cooler the name you have, the more likely someone is to follow you. Your should tell the user a story of what they will be looking at on your page and type of content you will be posting with the pictures you use.
Post quality images and content.
Can't stress this enough! If your pictures are low quality, blurry or have random text in them, think twice about posting them. As they will hurt your page more than anything. Make sure the image is relevant to your page as well. Everything you post should be a direct reflection of your brand or niche. Don't be sarcastic or controversial in your posts and if you are debating on whether or not something should be posted, just don't do it.
Well written captions.
I'd say the majority of users don't read captions much, but when they do, they rarely get past for the first three lines of text. So make sure anything specific you're trying to say or promote is written in this space!
Hashtags are imporant.
Hashtag the crap out of your posts! The more you hashtag, the more places a new user can stumble across your video or picture. Hashtag only things that are relevant to your brand so you target the end user who will actually be interested in your topic of choice. We typically hashtag 10-20 words per post, with the maximum I believe is currently 20.
Use the @ sign.
This is called tagging. If you want someone specific to see your page, @ them in caption or tag them in the photos. The @ in the caption will give the user an alert that they have been tagged, while tagging their name in the photo puts your picture in their photo section on their wall. Both are valuable pieces to utilize.
Post Times.
Yes! There are key times out of the day to post. We find that 10am, 5pm, and 10pm pst do the best for our specific brands activity. This is something that you should play with until you find what works for your specific niche, as all niches and strategies differ.
Shoutouts with like minded pages.
Cross promoting is a great way to gain followers with similar pages to your own and a win win situation for both of you. This is a great way to grow your page and what we did to grow most of ours.
Select an exciting cover photo for your videos.
This is huge! If you are about to post a video, make sure to select a scene from the photo that will get a users attention and want to watch it. This can make the difference between 1,000 views and 300,000 views on that single video.
Use socialblade.com to track your stats.
This is a great way to see whats working well for you and whats not! Pay close attention to these stats and adjust accordingly.
Infinite Growth.
Once your page hits around 10,000-30,000+ followers, it becomes smooth sailing to gaining new ones. The amount of followers you gain daily at that point is significant compared to anything less than 10,000. Our @BassDynasty Instagram page for example, averages around 200-600 new followers daily with its current 170,000 followers.
Post, Post, Post and Post Some more.
This is where it gets interesting. You will hear many people say to only post once or twice a day because you don't want to flood peoples feeds. I get that and makes sense. However, it's not what we do. On pages we don't spend a lot of time on, we post a minimum once a day, or every other day. Anything longer between posts, you start falling down the algorithm latter and will lose a lot of future activity because of it. The pages we concentrate on, however, such as our brand page for @BassDynasty that we care about the most, we post anywhere from 7-10 posts a day! This is unorthodox, but believe it's one of the main reasons we were able grow our pages so fast.

Did I overwhelm you yet? Well, this is just Instagram. Wait till we jump into the others! Coming soon of course.

Comment below what you want to learn next!

Hope you enjoyed the blog!

Bryan

About The Author:
*Bryan F., 33 years old, CEO of Lip RipperZ inc (Brands Lip RipperZ and Bass Dynasty).
*Fishing tackle products sold to 1200+ locations around the USA.
*Sole Proprietorship 2004-2008. Incorporated 2008-Current
*Instagram: @BassDynasty @LipRipperZinc @wolves_of_fishstreet (personal)
*Facebook: @BassDynasty @LipRipperZinc
*Youtube: @LipRipperZinc