Powered by
While not the be-all, end-all, hashtags can still prove useful in profile discovery and thus can lead to growth. Focus on a selection that range from small to large– you don’t want to relegate yourself to hashtags that are in the multi-millions as these hashtags will certainly be more competitive– and ensure your hashtags vary from a description of your content to your specific niche to possibly even location-based.
Reach out to like-minded individuals within your community and brainstorm on ways to collaborate with each other, building off your own strengths. Whether a true collaborative post, such as the type you can do on IG, or another sort of video collaboration, networking like this helps put your profile in front of people who already enjoy a similar type of content as the one you create, but who likely do not yet follow you.
Of course, what would a social media network be without engaging? As a content creator, you need to not only create high-quality content, you need to actively engage with both your fans and your would-be fans - this means doing some legwork and engaging with users who are not already following you, while still connecting with those who do follow (and comment!) on your content already.
In order to achieve maximum profile growth, you need to be able to provide some sort of value to your followers and to the community at large. Typically, there would be two ways to do this: via entertainment or via information. That is to say, is the content you’re putting out simply engaging with your audience because they are being entertained (having a laugh or else pulling some sort of emotional trigger), or is it because they are learning something, or you’re helping them understand something more fully? Sometimes these two methods can collide together for something truly magical!
Hashtags are signals to like-minded individuals that not only does your content exist, but so do you! Thus, it helps your community find you, and vice versa. Not to mention, it can also assist when it comes to engagement, as using hashtags allows your content to be featured among the top posts of any given hashtag (a whole world of possibilities opens up, versus if you choose not to use any). In order to make the most out of hashtags, ensure you’re using ones that identify your content on a wider scale - what is it - as well as some hashtags that get more specific about what’s in your post - and finally, you can also add in some more location and detail-oriented hashtags. You want to choose hashtags that are a mix of small and large, rather than only opting for broad and expansive. For example, if you choose a simple “#art” hashtag on Instagram, there are over 998M posts with the same hashtag - it may prove more helpful then, to use a hashtag that defines your art a bit more, such as “#watercolour” (15.3M posts) or even, “#watercolourart” (1.2M posts). Ultimately, anywhere from 5-15 hashtags should suffice.
Social media is all about being social! In order to find your community you need to spread the love, which in turn, will spread awareness about your account. That means to use those hashtags– after you do a post and you’ve added your chosen hashtags, click on one of them and visit recent posts. These should be your people - those who are in the same niche - and once you engage with their posts by adding meaningful comments, they will be likely to return the love. Choose several hashtags to check each time you post.
This goes hand-in-hand with sharing the love - beyond simply commenting and liking on posts within your community’s oft-used hashtags, take it a step further by hitting the ‘Follow’ button! Don’t be afraid to follow people who do what you want to do, or do something you already are doing/are passionate about - especially if you genuinely love the content they post. When you appreciate their content and follow them, it’ll make it that much easier for you to simply engage with them on a day-to-day basis, and they will be more likely to follow back when they see you engaging with their page so often.
Social media is becoming more and more agile when it comes to searching for content. Beyond simply finding and using hashtags that identify with your content, go ahead and search using the main keywords associated with your content. See what popular posts come up, and from there, go down the rabbit hole - check out the pages, check out the commenters, not only engage with these pages but see what you can learn from them - what are they doing that appears to be successful and appeals to you and your content?
Choose one day of the week to create content for your social media, and prepare several posts (a week’s worth at least!) in advance. You can even prepare captions in advance, choose your cover photos, etc.
Whether it’s for the following week or the following month, it’s easier to stay consistent when you have a schedule written out. A schedule should map out what content you’re posting on which days specifically, and it can even include the time you plan to post based on when your audience is most engaged and online - create an online or written out calendar, then stick to it!
In order to help you schedule, it may be good to involve the robots. This means scheduling your content to go live at a specific day and time so you don’t have to log on and do it yourself, via a third-party app or using in-app functions.
Consistency doesn’t mean you need to post every single day of the week, it’s about setting expectations for your followers about when they will see new content from you. Is it always on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? Are there Stories daily? You may be able to build up to posting daily and intertwining daily Stories too, however, you can start small and still be consistent!
The inherent nature of a social media platform is to, you guessed it, socialize. This means you should interact not only with your followers, but those who don’t follow you, whenever you share a new post.
When it comes to engaging with your followers, this is relatively easy - scroll your own timeline and ensure you’re leaving thoughtful comments and likes across your online community.
As far as engaging with those who don’t already follow you, the best way to do this is either via the explore or For You pages, or else, searching under hashtags that fit your niche. Spread the love by leaving meaningful comments and likes based on the content. If you do this on multiple posts for any given individual, they will likely take notice of your own profile, and visit in return, thus helping encourage your profile engagement.
In order to encourage your community to engage with your content, it’s a good idea to end your caption with a question - this allows them to reply in your comment section, which then allows you to reply in return, essentially doubling the return on your engagement. Create a conversation in the comments alone if you can, by going back-and-forth with your replies.
Hashtags allow potential followers to find you based on how you categorize your own content - it allows you to not only define your content in a way that helps you find your own community, but allows you to reach more people in the process, which can certainly help with engagements.
Add hashtags to your post that pertain to your niche, your community, and your content.
Choose anywhere from 4-15 that fall under these categories as you think about: what is your content, what’s in your content, and what’s your community? Experiment with different hashtags for each post rather than repeating the same ones each time, and assess what does well.
Of course, posting when everyone’s online always helps ensure the most people possible will view your content and thus increase your chances of engagement.
Check when your audience is active using your analytics, and ensure you post during those times. Alongside simply posting though, ensure you are setting
aside time to engage with your community following any post you share, as this will help boost potential return engagements on your most recent post - keep in mind, if you haven’t share a new post recently, return engagements will likely occur on whatever you’re most recent post is, as fellow users will likely gravitate towards the top of your feed.
