One of the best ways to market anything these days is through social media. I have substantial experience running one of the most successful LGBT+ Instagram accounts from several years ago. This was a personal challenge through which I learned how to gain popularity and extend viewer reach on Instagram.
Where It Began
It all started in 2017 when my friend asked me to take over his Instagram account for one week during a summer band camp. When he handed me the reins to his account, @LGBTMOTIVATE, he had 4,825 followers. When he returned, he was blown away at the account’s growth, which gained almost a thousand followers.
A couple of weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to permanently be an account administrator. I was honored that he was impressed enough to offer me the position. Mind you, this was not something either of us made money from, but it was great fun.
@LGBTMOTIVATE profile picture designed and updated on July 4th, 2018 by Ves Slone
By the one-year anniversary of creating the account, we gained 13.2k followers. This was accomplished by consistently posting new content throughout the day, using plenty of hashtags on every post, and interacting with incoming comments and direct messages in a timely manner.
Our content mainly centered around memes and mental health tips. When followers would message us for advice, we offered what we could, or referred them to crisis helplines.
How Quotas Impacted Our Growth
Eventually, we expanded to have as many as five different account admins at a time. Acquiring more admins enabled us to split the daily workload. To keep everyone motivated, I decided to implement a post quota.
The quota was designed to ensure all admins posted daily, and a weekly ranking system was created to achieve this goal. Ranks were announced to admins on Saturday. The ranks were categorized as follows:
- Senior: Two posts a day, totaling fourteen posts in one week.
- Intermediate: One post a day, totaling seven posts in one week.
- Junior: Four posts in one week.
- Under Junior: Less than four posts in one week.
- Rank “Under Junior” allotted one week to bring up their post rate, or admin privileges would be revoked.
The quota was effective, as most of the admins were consistently Intermediate rank or higher. The need for such high quotas changed if we acquired more than five admins. As I’ll explain shortly, this was to avoid overwhelming our followers with content.
One thing we struggled with was how to reward admins for their achievements. Given our geographical differences and the fact that we weren’t doing this for money, rewarding good behavior was difficult.
One method we used to recognize success was to shout out whoever performed the best that week. This usually took place in our private admin group chat, but sometimes we’d do a public shout-out if the admin went above and beyond. This was just a pat on the back reward, but it’s all we could do.
Whenever someone did not meet the post quota, we would identify their pitfalls, advise them on how to improve, and then monitor their performance. After one week, if they did not improve, we would revoke their admin duties and search for a replacement.
Steps to Improve Viewer Reach for Free
1. Post frequently
Make three to five posts a day, and spread them apart by an hour or more. If you post several at once, people are less likely to interact with your content because you’re spamming them. By spacing out your posts, your followers will see you several times throughout the day, giving them more opportunities to engage with your content.
2. Use hashtags
The maximum on Instagram is thirty hashtags per post. Any more than that and they automatically delete. Consistently tag your posts, and make sure the hashtags are relevant. You may want to change some of the tags on each post to reflect your content.
The best way to add thirty hashtags to your posts is to save the tags in a note-taking app and copy/paste them into the caption or a separate comment. Using a separate comment looks better than the caption because comments are normally hidden when you’re scrolling unless you specifically click on the comment section. You don’t have to use all thirty tags, but if you want the maximum reach, it’s your best bet.
3. Interact with smaller accounts
Like and comment on posts that share hashtags with yours. It’s best to do this on content from small accounts so they’re more likely to notice your activity. Furthermore, small accounts will often look at your page and may end up following.
If you solely interact with large successful accounts, they are less likely to notice your activity. Your interactions may be lost within the flood of their notifications; they simply have too many notifications to even see you.
That being said, don’t just post annoying advertising comments like, “Love your pic! Check out our page!” No one wants to interact with those. They’ll assume you’re a bot and report you for spam. It’s better to post a relevant, creative comment and let your wit draw them in.
Paid Options for Growth
Now that we’ve covered free options to gain followers, let’s discuss paying for advertising. Instagram also offers paid promotions that will place your posts directly in a person’s home feed. You can set these up using a business account, and you can also tie your Instagram to your business FaceBook page.
If you use several social media accounts for your content, there’s a way to simultaneously post to them at once. The latter requires a quick login for each social media platform to allow posting. Most other social media platforms also offer paid promotion, so look further into that if you’re interested.
Is Paid Promotion Necessary?
Paying to promote your content may be favorable and effective for those with the means. However, as illustrated above, keep in mind that spending money isn’t always required for gaining a large audience.
For @LGBTMOTIVATE, we never paid for ads. It goes to show that spending money is not always necessary to expand your following. You just have to be dedicated and consistent.
The Outcome
In 2019 when we all stopped posting on @LGBTMOTIVATE, we had 40k followers. That’s a 729% increase from the first week I posted on the account in the summer of 2017. If you visit the page now, most of the posts have been archived or deleted at the discretion of the account owner.
Even though the account has been retired, we may someday revive it. If we do, we’ll certainly use some of the same techniques to make it successful once more.
Ves Slone 