Growing your Instagram account is no small task. It takes a lot of planning and preparation to get it right, and that’s why we’ve put together this guide to help you along.

From making the perfect bio to posting quality content, this guide will make growing your Instagram account an achievable goal.

Read on below to learn how.

Tips for the perfect Instagram bio

Your bio is the first thing people look at when you catch their attention. It should make a strong and lasting impression.

A striking profile picture with a simple one-liner that sums up your brand is best. But, below are three other tips to help you make a strong impression in 150 characters or less.

Example: Bubble

Keep it clean

A clean and easily readable bio is always best. People should be able to sneak a peek and get a sense of what your brand is about without scrambling their brains.

Avoid cluttering your bio with too many emojis and pointless words. Your content is the main attraction, your bio is just the stopover. Don’t forget that.

Keep it simple

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Your bio shouldn’t beg for followers; it should reaffirm the quality displayed in your content.

A simple sentence with info your audience needs will do more than a plethora of emojis and keyword synonyms. State your key message in as few words as possible, include a relevant link (if there is one), and leave it at that.

Those that are meant to get your point will get it. And those that don’t, probably aren’t the followers you want.

Keep the human touch

People are on Instagram looking for fun. The easiest way to connect with them is to have fun yourself.

Be funny, quirky, or witty. Whatever you choose, be memorable, show a desire to connect, and leave people with something to think about.

If people can see you’re sincere about adding value to their IG experience, they’ll give you a shot to prove yourself.

Tips for your Instagram content

Unmatched content is the ultimate hack for growing your Instagram account. But how do you make quality content?

Niche down

Instagram has over one billion monthly active users. Try to talk to all of them, and you’ll never have anyone’s attention.

Niching down creates a clear focus on who you want your message to reach. It allows you to align your content creation to appeal to your ideal Instagram user.

How to zero in on your ideal Instagrammer?

To uncover your target persona, learn the following about the person you want to reach.

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests
• Stage of life

Find these answers and you’ll know exactly how to craft a message that resonates.

Create relevant content

Once you know who you want to reach, you can shift your focus to creating relevant content.

If your goal is to reach free-spirited nature lovers, creating posts highlighting the architectural beauty of concrete monstrosities would be counter-intuitive. Instead, you’d want to focus more on celebrating nature, the outdoors, and wildlife. Stick to content that resonates with your target.

Having a target persona will limit what content you create, but it will increase your chances of making meaningful connections. The more relevant content you share, the more users that fit your target persona you’ll attract.

Create a style guide

Example: Visualize Value

Knowing your ideal follower and the type of content that will resonate with them is a good start, but there’s more to growing your Instagram account than that.

The best Instagram accounts are always aesthetically pleasing, on-brand, and they have a special something that makes them stand out.

You can do this for your account by creating a style guide. The guide will make your posts more recognizable and create a unique style that people associate with you.

Your unique touch can be as simple as a template, format, background, or color scheme you use for your posts. It might seem insignificant, but that’s all it takes to stand out when very few others are making the effort.

Post consistently

One of the best things you’ll ever do to grow your Instagram account is post quality content consistently.

Posting consistently creates an expectation people know you can satisfy. That means people will look forward to your content, and you’ll more than likely receive tons of positive engagement.

Niching down and having a style guide will make posting easier, but you can go a step further and schedule your posts ahead of time. Any of the platforms below will help you schedule a queue of posts for your Instagram account.

• Sendible
• Agorapulse
• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• Hypefury (coming soon)

To make your scheduling more effective, use your audience insights to schedule posts when most of your followers are online. This will increase your impressions and ultimately your chances of engagement.

Set goals and track your performance

Robin Sharma once said “what gets measured, gets improved,” and the same goes for growing your Instagram account.

Set SMART goals around your audience research, content creation, and follower growth. Tracking these and other goals you might set will increase your knowledge about what content resonates, how your audience is evolving, and show you if your account is growing at the rate you want.

A massive follower count isn’t everything, optimize your goals and strategy for audience engagement.

It’s better to have a few thousand followers tuned in to the conversations you’re starting than a 100k follower account of uninvested followers that don’t mind having your content pop up on their feed occasionally. This is especially true if you’re growing your Instagram account to monetize it.

Tips for your Instagram reels and stories

Reels and stories are an awesome tool for showing off your brand’s personality beyond what a normal post can convey. They are also pretty amazing at engaging your audience with video posts getting up to 2 times more engagement than normal posts.

Below are some tips on how you can use reels and stories to accelerate your Instagram growth.

Have fun

If you’ve got some out-of-the-box ideas you’ve been meaning to explore try them out in your reels and stories. Stories in particular are great for this because they’ll be gone in 24 hours, and if your crazy idea catches, you can always add it to your highlights.

Play around with the Create feature, the green screen, and allow yourself to push your creative boundaries. Create fun experiences for yourself and your audience, and people will gravitate towards to get in on the fun.

Drive instant action

If you have an Ecom brand or offer to sell, reels and stories could really drive up your conversions.

Tag your products, add links, use the swipe up feature, and let people take action while they are caught up in your content. Remember, we buy with emotions, and justify with logic.

Drive engagement

Over 80% of Instagram users post a story every day, and at least 70% watch stories. That should tell you there’s a massive opportunity for engaging your audience there.

Use AMA’s, polls, and quizzes to get your audience talking about and with you. And, don’t forget to listen for valuable insight into what your audience expects and thinks of you.

Make a lasting impression

Your reels and stories can add immense value to your account if you use them properly. You can use them to mainstay assets for sharing key content and value from your account.

You can use reels and stories to answer FAQs, to share tips and tutorials, or as a place to document your journey with your assets. Reels are best for this because unlike stories they don’t disappear, but you’ll see below how adding the right stories to your highlights can be a genius move for growing your Instagram.

Tips for your Instagram highlights

Instagram highlights are like an extension of your bio. Use them as an awesome intro to your brand or compile testimonials, your social proof, and your greatest hits so they are all front and center.

Put some thought into them and they’ll make quite an impression on profile visitors.

Add value to your account

Below are 8 ways you can use your highlights.

• Answer FAQs
• Start a series
• Show tutorials
• Document a journey
• Plug your offers (products)
• Promote upcoming events
• Share your latest adventure
• Display social proof/testimonials

Your highlights enhance the experience your audience gets from interacting with you. Don’t underestimate the value they add, and as with every other piece of content you post, focus on the quality and engagement appeal.

Growing your Instagram account is simple once you get the basics right. Update your account and content strategy to create the highest quality experience, implement these tips, and your account will definitely grow.

Remember, optimize everything for engagement with your audience. And, don’t forget to have fun.