How to grow on Instagram?

The best way to grow on IG is to play alongside the Algorithm. To do that you need to understand how it works, or at least the parts that are important to grow your account. There are two different types of accounts you can grow, personal account or so-called theme pages. Theme pages are simply Instagram accounts focusing on posting content in one niche, for example football theme page would only post pictures and videos belonging to football category. It is known these theme pages are easier to grow on Instagram than personal accounts. So how would you grow one?

Pick a niche

It is fundamental to pick a niche and stick to it all the time. We have to understand that users will probably follow our theme page because they enjoy this type of content, so whatever content it is, don’t change it. The best way to pick a niche is to choose something you enjoy. You can engage more with your followers if you actually know what you are talking about. On the other hand, some niches are considered more difficult to grow than others. Why is this? This is not any rocket science and it applies also to a real world, it may happen that some niche is overcrowded by big accounts and there is no need for more. Same applies to a real world, if someone would try to open a fast-food restaurant in town where I live, it probably wouldn’t work. Not because he is doing anything from, there is simply enough of fast-foods. Also, I am not saying it would be impossible to grow a theme page in overcrowded niche, just significantly difficult. So, after successfully picking a niche, what’s next?

Start posting

When you want to grow, it is important to post to your account so Instagram Algorithm can figure out what is your page all about. As I already mentioned, it is important to post niche specific content to you theme page. Once you picked a niche, stick to it. It is also recommended to post regularly at the same time every day. Also, so called “golden mean” is important, don’t post too much because IG Algorithm might consider your page as spam, but don’t post too little because you will lose your engagement. Generally, 1-3 posts per day are recommended. It is fundamental to use hashtags, where the golden mean applies as well. As already mentioned, limit for hashtags per post is 30, but that doesn’t mean you should fill your caption with 30 hashtags. 10 hashtags should be sufficient and they should always be relevant to content on your post. Now, there are many strategies to go about growing your account, but I will not dig deeper in this because it will get too long and we will lose our main point here.

Personal accounts

Talking about bias, it is difficult to apply it on some theme page. I would rather focus on personal accounts where bias is much more applicable. I already mentioned, these kinds of accounts are significantly more difficult to grow. But why is this, may it be because Instagram Algorithm is acting biased? Not really, or at least not in a way I’m looking at it. Obviously, it is harder to get same engagement on a family picture than on some meme people find funny or relatable. We need to define first, what biased means and what exactly are we looking for.