Launching Your Instagram

If your non-profit, small business, or personal endeavor wants to find and connect with potential donors and customers, there are many tools at your disposal. Instagram relies heavily on eye-catching imagery and calls-to-action, engaging users to like, follow, and, eventually, buy into your cause or service.

We often see accounts with beautiful photos and well-written content, oftentimes an overabundance of content, but with little interaction and even fewer followers. Why is this? The myth that good content will always drive success on Instagram has been dashed in the past five years. Many accounts that achieve success do so by simply reposting art that others have made, often to the detriment of the original artist. You are different. You want to connect with your audience, drive traffic to your website, and enlarge your circle of influence and attention. After successfully navigating a very difficult field for nearly a decade, here are some important takeaways to launching your Instagram:

Begin With A Soft Launch

No matter how exciting your brand is, unless you have a strong customer/donor base already in place, launching your Instagram is the equivalent to honking your horn in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic. But that’s okay! Your goal is not to achieve instant success, it is to maintain success over a long period of time. Consider a soft launch of your account. Assemble a line-up of introductory posts, ones that clearly define your goals. These will live forever at the bottom of your account and become a handy way for users to track your journey from beginning to end. For instance, if you run an animal shelter, you may start out with a brief history of what you’ve accomplished since you opened your doors, highlight some of the cutest adoption photos, and show examples of your impact on the community. Accounts often want to come out swinging; people want to hear the hits, not the deep cuts, right? But after you’ve heard all the old familiars, are you going to stick around for the rest of the show?

A soft launch also allows you to build a bit of your content to show users that you post regularly (or on a specific schedule) and that your content is variable (videos, images, etc.). Not many users will follow an account with only one photo that was posted three months ago. Your soft launch is creating an expectation, one that you need to be confident in. If you cannot produce content each day, do not panic, you are not obligated to post each day! Find a schedule that works for you and still allows you to connect consistently with your audience.

#Hashtags

Hashtags are a fantastic way to organize your Instagram content and appear in popular lists. Some users, believe it or not, follow only hashtags, using the ever-updating carousel to get the latest posts automatically curated for them. Some users obsess over hashtags because the belief has always been, the more hashtags the better. But these handy tags are double-edged. Because millions of posts are recycling and using hashtags, your content only stays at the top for a brief period. Hashtags are a great resource for catching someone’s attention but are not necessarily essential to your long-term success.

For instance, you paint original landscape art and sell them on your website. You may hashtag your work as #art or #oilpainting. While accurate, your post will quickly become buried in the deluge of rapidly changing content. You may notice a quick wave of dozens of likes followed by a long period of inactivity. The wave of users who happened to catch your post has now passed. These interactions are important; you never know when a user may stumble across your brand and decide to follow you, but do not pull your hair out trying to perfectly tag your post! You need to find your audience, learn your audience’s behavior, and tailor your brand and purpose to maximizing those interactions. If your audience loves that you paint stunning sunsets, do not waste your 30 hashtag limit adding tags like #mountains or #winter simply because those are popular. Users are perceptive, they can spot an account that is trying too hard very quickly.

A helpful trick is to describe your image using words, such as: This is an image of a model holding an ice cream cone and wearing a branded t-shirt featuring a dog. What key elements can we use to form our hashtags? We are trying to sell #apparel. The subject on the shirt is a #cartoondog. The photo was captured during a #photoshoot. Why are you selling the shirt? To raise money for #animalshelters or #petadoptions. The simplicity of the image can drive a whole slew of hashtags that quickly let users know exactly what the content is. Nobody wants to click on a #dog hashtag and see only photos of cats. Help make the experience easier by setting those expectations and then delivering them immediately!

Following / Liking / Commenting

A lot of success for new brands comes from their ability to interact with like-minded users. They use the Instagram community to connect on more personal levels. Just because you sell dish soap doesn’t mean you can’t bond with your followers over other interests. Do not be afraid to follow other accounts! Do not expect them to immediately follow you back, give them a reason to do so! It is your job to convince them of your brand, not the other way around. If you are a singer/songwriter, follow other up-and-coming singers, follow accounts that post vinyl records and Spotify playlists, follow enthusiasts and fans of similar bands you like. Engage with these accounts by liking photos that really stand out to you. If they make good music, tell them so in a comment! Show them that you aren’t interested in just their follow back; your interactions mean something to them too, they are trying just as hard to find their footing.

This is often the most time-consuming, and sometimes tedious, part of growing your brand, but it is an effective way to empower your audience to give back to you. Set aside time each day to engage with your community and be consistent. We grew the Intergalactic Beets Project’s audience from zero to over 500 in just four days by using this method. We reached 5,026 accounts overall, gained nearly 5,000 views on their reels, and had an additional 1,000 users view their profile. Their account had already existed for two months with nearly 50 posts, but despite the quality of their content, they were not maintaining consistency in their community. We changed that by stepping onto the playing field and exploring, finding music enthusiasts, artists, and others who enjoyed their work. Now they have over 1,000 followers and are growing at a consistent rate.

Following many accounts is not a bad thing: it shows that you are enthusiastic towards your community, that you appreciate the content of that community, and it helps you keep in step with the rapidly changing interests that may impact your own posts and brand.