Skyrocket your Instagram to 10000 followers

Most instagrammers want to obtain 10000 followers but why?

Well, there’s a certain amount amount of kudos in having a large following but if you’re using Instagram for business or want to become an influencer it’s important for several reasons:

• You can increase awareness of your personal brand, business, services or products
• With a larger base of potential customers you can increase your sales
• Increased earnings potential as an influencer
• Higher conversions due to access to ‘swipe-up’ on Instagram Stories

Several ways to publish

There’s a lot of Instagram these days with no less than 7 different ‘channels’ that you can publish to:

1. Main feed
2. Stories
3. Live
4. Reels
5. IGTV
6. Guides
7. Shops

There are many different formats, styles and content types too such as photos, images, videos, memes, GIFs, emojis and products. But this doesn’t have to be overwhelming if you follow a clear Instagram marketing strategy which will help you skyrocket your Instagram to 10000 followers.

Let’s split the strategy into 10 easy to follow steps. Below I’m going to share 2 steps that will get you off to a great start in growing your followers. For the 8 further steps on how to skyrocket your Instagram to 10000 followers, book your place on my virtual Social Media Masterclass: 10 steps to 10000 followers on 25 May 2021 with Amie Barlow, Influencer coach. More on that below.

Step 1 – Optimise your Profile to help you reach 10000 followers

You’ll need to craft your Instagram Profile to attract the attention of as many visitors as possible and then encourage them to follow you. A good Profile will act as a magnet and draw visitors in.

Instagram offer 2 types of Profile:

• Personal
• Professional (Business or Creator)

The names are self-explanatory but choose the type that aligns most with how you are using your Profile from Settings. You can always change your mind in future and switch to a different profile type. Professional profiles offer a number of very useful additional features if you want to grow your profile, which are detailed below.

User name – Your user name of handle should be consistent across all social media and should reflect your name or your business name. It cannot contain spaces and forms part of your profile address. For example, to access my profile you visit instagram.com/pollingersocial

Instagram name – Your Instagram name should be your personal name, the name your known by or your business name. It can have spaces and must be shorter than 30 characters.

Profile photo – Your Profile photo should represent yourself with a head and shoulders shot or your business with its logo.

Bio/description – Your Instagram bio, sometimes called profile description, is a chance to personalise your profile and to explain why people should follow you. It should be punchy in style and include a reason for visitors to click that Follow button. It’s a good idea to include emojis to make it stand out and they can work particularly well with bullet points which maximise the 150 characters you’ve got to work with. You should also include a hashtag or two which can help users find you. It’s worth noting that you can also reference other relevant Instagram accounts with a live account tag ie @username.

Website address – To help people learn more about you and your business, you should include your website address or even better a link from a service such as linktr.ee which allows you to link to multiple websites with just one link.

Professional profile

Category – You should choose a business category and display this on your Profle.

Contact button – If you have a Professional Profile then you should add a Contact button which can link to your email, phone number (you can choose between Texts and Calls) and your postal address.

Action button – You can set up an action button and link this to a variety of third party services including booking platforms such as Appointy, which is connected to my Book Now button.

Shop – If you sell physical products you can setup a Shop on Instagram and display this on your Profile. As well as being able to highlight your wares for purchase, an Instagram Shop has the advantage of attracting people to your Profile who are searching for your Products which could be found via the Discover feature.

Instagram Story highlights – You can display a selection of highlights from your Stories beneath the main part of your Profile and above your Posts. Each highlight can contain any of your past Stories and this gives you an opportunity to show potential followers the type of content they can expect from you. It’s best to group your Highlights into themes or topics. To make them look polished and to nicely compliment your overall Profile you can give them covers and labels beneath. Covers can reflect your brand colours and you can get some great inspiration from Canva which has a wide selection of templates you can choose from and customise.

Frequently Asked Questions – You can setup FAQs to help answer regular questions that people ask via Direct Message, such as ‘What sort of services do you provide?’ or ‘How much do you charge?’

Insights – Professional profiles provide access to useful analytics that can help you learn more about your followers and guide you on the best times to post.

Step 2 – Engage with your engagers for more Instagram followers

Whilst a Profile acts as a passive magnet to visitors, there are a number of active tactics you can pursue to grow your audience. A very powerful technique is to ensure that you engage with your engagers. One example is to make sure you Like and Reply to every Comment on your Posts. This can take a lot of time, particularly if you are getting a lot of Comments but it will definitely pay off.

Another example is to reply via Direct Message to people that engage with your Stories and Reels.

I call this technique ‘shaking the digital hand’. They are offering their digital hand out to be shaken as they want to engage and it’s almost rude if you ignore this and don’t shake their hand in return. If someone shows an interest in your content then this is a powerful signal that they might want to enjoy your content on a regular basis by following you, so it’s important to acknowledge this by reciprocating with a reply of a Comment. You could also follow them or show an interest in their content by liking and commenting.

Engaging with others who’ve shown an interest in you was one of the tactics that Amie Barlow used to grow her following from 800 to over 35000 in 3 years.

It’s good practice to build a stronger relationship with your existing followers and potential followers will get to know you better if you continue the conversation with you and are then more likely to follow. Remember though that all this activity has to be genuine. You can’t fake conversation and relationship building but if you do this well you’ll be well on the way to building your community.

For 8 further steps on how to skyrocket your Instagram to 10000 followers, I hope you can join Amie (instagram.com/amiebfit_) and I on our virtual Social Media Masterclass: 10 steps to 10000 followers.

3 years ago Amie had 800 followers and as well as being a fitness influencer herself, she advises others in the fitness industry on how they can become successful influencers too.

If you act quickly you can save 30% with a special early bird price of £69.99 and it’s nice and easy to sign up over on Facebook. After you’ve done this you’re get access to the Zoom meeting joining details.

?LEARN 10 STEPS TO 10000 FOLLOWERS – 5pm UK time on 25 MAY

For details of the help I can provide with other social networks as well as Zoom and Teams, please visit Social Media Training plus you can view feedback from my clients on Testimonials.