Is Your Instagram Follower Growth STUCK? Here’s how to get it growing again
We’ve all been there at some point.
You see that “new follower” notification on Instagram, only to see that you’ve lost a follower. Hello new friend! Buh-bye old friend.
Fresh faces are peachy, don’t get me wrong, but seeing that number stay stagnant can be a bit of a head-scratcher (and hair-puller-outer).
Here’s the thing – stagnation is part of the process. If your follower count has flatlined, then you just might be nestled tightly in your little Instagram cocoon, waiting for something to crack your shell so you can evolve.
While stagnation can be super frustrating, it can also be kinda fun. Think of it as a challenge. Your old ways have served you well (they got you this far) but now it’s time to shake it up and make some new waves in that Instagram pool.
Here are five things that you can try that will be sure to break that frustrating plateau and kickstart your Instagram follower growth once more.
Try Something New
So our old ways aren’t quite serving us anymore. Womp womp.
Take a moment to mourn those “good old days”, but then wipe those tears away and get ready for the next phase in your Instagram adventure!
New can be scary, but it can also be fun and EXCITING. For you, AND your followers. They might have gotten so used to seeing the same thing from you over and over – maybe it’s photos you’ve snapped with your hand hovering over the canvas, brush in hand (“hands are weird” are definitely my motto for taking these), or maybe you pair up each post with just a simple low-key description of what you’ve painted.
This is your license to PLAY. To EXPERIMENT. To try something NEW.
Shake up the style of photos that you pop into your feed. Instead of just posting the polished finish image, why not snap a shot of your painting on the easel, half way through the process.
Maybe share something a little deeper than just the title and the dimensions – people want to know what’s going on in that magical artist head of yours.
Try time lapse videos of your art, work-in-progress shots, collages, photos of you holding your art – you name it! Get creative and explore.
And then listen. See how your audience responds. See a spike in comments or likes? Great!
Stick with it, they like what you’re dishin’ out.
And hey, if you’re flat out of ideas, you can always take a peek into the Explore feed to see the style of posts that are popular right now. Use those as inspiration to kickstart your post experiments.
Stop Trying to Get New Followers
Seems a bit contradictory, no?
But here’s what I’m getting at. Rather than constantly hungering for new followers, turn your attention towards building and fortifying the relationship with your current followers.
This does so many wonderful things. Those folks that already have you on their follow list are already there listening to you – you have their attention already, so thank them by delivering them beautifully juicy things.
Have conversations with them. Thank them for following you. Open your heart and share the magic within – your ideas, messages and thoughts are rich with benefits for your followers.
And here’s the neat little thing – when you shift your efforts away from trying to attract new people and towards your current fans instead, they’ll love it and you’ll start to see higher engagement. Likes, comments, direct message, shares – all the good stuff.
This spike in engagement will actually get the algorithm’s attention, and do you know what happens then? The algorithm actually delivers your content to MORE people. Current followers and new people alike.
And when those new shiny faces see that your account is a wealth of positivity, affection and interactions, they will be racing to tap that “Follow” button.
Really, it’s a win-win-win situation.
Your current followers will love the attention, new followers will have stumbled upon a new & exciting account to follow, and you reap allllll the rewards of those interactions.
Plus there’s a little thing called social proof. Happy fans tend to share enthusiastically about the things they love, and if your art & account is something that falls under that umbrella than you can bet your hat that they’ll be spreading your name far and wide.
Refresh Your Hashtag Game
Hashtags are a fickle thing – the inner workings that controls them can leave you totally floundering for answers.
Sometimes the right hashtags can bring in a flood of new followers, and other times those same hashtags can invite nothing but a chorus of lonely crickets.
Their effectiveness fluctuates like crazy – and according to the lovely folks behind Instagram/Facebook, using the same hashtags over and over again can actually cause them to be less effective.
You’ll start to see your reach crash, and alongside it likes, followers and engagement.
Besides, you are a dynamic human & artist that evolves over time. Using the same hashtags from a few years ago just isn’t as effective as something that actually suits your current style.
Take a good hard look at the hashtags you’ve been using and dig back into a solid hashtag research session. Give your list of hashtags a refresh and you’ll start to see new followers flooding in before you know it!
Be Awesome Off Instagram
Have you ever noticed that big time celebs tend to have some of the crummier feeds out there? Grainy selfies, blurry snaps and just the worst lighting.
But yet their follower counts still rivals the population of some countries.
The reason? They totally kick butt OFF of Instagram. They’ve shared their talents & magic with the world in another way, and then have pointed those fans to follow them on the app.
You can do the same thing. Be totally rad off the app, and then point people to follow & connect with you on Instagram.
Share a couple of your top-performing posts on your website, and invite them to follow so they can catch more juicy behind-the-scenes content.
Have a killer audience on another platform like Facebook or Youtube? Ask them to follow you on Instagram too.
Be clear about the kinds of things that you share on Insta, and how it’s different from the rest of the platforms you are on. Maybe you share daily sketches or tell stories through your art – get them super pumped to see a deeper side of you and your artwork.
Take A Deep Dive Into Your Stats
There are oodles of details that go into putting together “a great post” on Instagram – from capturing the perfect visual mood to finer minutiae like using certain non-pushy power words in your Call to Action.
And those variables and their effectiveness all vary depending on your own unique audience.
You might have already had the stars align and stumbled upon the perfect combo of image, caption and promise for your unique audience, but how on earth will you ever know?
Easy – you let the stats speak.
Numbers. Don’t. Lie.
If you have a Business or Creator account on Instagram (if you don’t, you should), you have access to data Insights. These are HUGELY helpful.
Sure, you can flick through your posts and see how many likes or comments they got, but that data is only a tiny slice of the number pie (I so resisted the urge to say “number pi” there).
You’d be missing out on seeing which posts got the most engagement, or which posts single-handedly brought in the most likes, website clicks or shares. This info is hella valuable if you have any thoughts about working smarter instead of harder (or, working less instead of more).
Open up Insights on your account and scroll through your options – I recommend seeing which posts brought in the most engagement over the last month, 3 months and year.
Notice any trends?
Maybe it’s the post style.
Perhaps it’s the caption – are your highest performing posts the ones with great stories that resonate with your audience?
Maybe it’s your hashtag game, some drawing in all the views.
Dig deep in those numbers, and let them whisper their secrets of what your audience likes best. Then, do more of that.
Clearly something about those top posts attracted your audience, so reward them with more of what they like! And hey, you’ll benefit in the meantime. 🙂
Well there you go! When your Instagram follower growth plateaus harder than the prairies, give it a solid boost once more using one of these five methods.
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