It’s Monday morning. You’re lying in bed scrolling through Instagram– putting off the inevitable. You’ll soon have to drag yourself out of bed to get ready for that job you abhor at worst, tolerate at best. Enviously, you double tap through the endless perfectly curated photos from your favorite bloggers. They make a living posting latte photos, outfit of the day posts and jet-setting to tropical locales. Meanwhile, you’re stuck toiling away at Excel spreadsheets. Life can be so cruel.
You shouldn’t feel envious. These bloggers worked hard to build their following organically. Now they’re seeing the fruits of their labor by leveraging their influence to partner with brands for sponsored posts. Some of which can cost upwards of 230K for those on the Kylie Jenner level. These influencers tend to stay tight-lipped about how they’ve managed to grow their followings to such astronomical numbers. That’s no coincidence. If they spilled the beans, everyone with a camera could do it. Thus, saturating the market.
However, I take a different approach. As a social media consultant, I’ve built a business around helping major brands and influencers in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industries build their social media followings. I helped one fashion blogger gain over 28,000 Instagram followers over the course of a year. All through these tactics I’m about to share with you– for free!
Use Hashtags Strategically
This tip has been repeated and regurgitated in so many different “how to get more Instagram followers” articles. Using hashtags is marginally helpful in the beginning to help get more exposure to your images. As you grow beyond the 10K mark, their efficacy drops substantially. So does that mean that you should abandon hashtags altogether? No, but you should be using hashtags strategically.
There are certain Instagram accounts with huge followings that are dedicated to reposting stylish photos from fashion bloggers and influencers. Many of these accounts have their own unique hashtag that you can use to get your photo noticed and potentially reposted. This is the difference between including a generic hashtag like #ootd in your caption yielding maybe 10 extra likes along with a few spammy comments and using a hashtag like #ootdsubmit or #Stilkolik. If the account chooses to repost your photo, they will tag you– bringing in hundreds of targeted and engaged followers in your niche.
Finding these accounts isn’t particularly difficult. You can go to any major fashion blogger’s Instagram profile and tap on the tagged photos.
Scroll through and you’ll notice there are accounts that have reposted the blogger’s photo and tagged them in it. Usually these profiles tout themselves as “inspo” accounts and are identifiable by their feed filled with reposted images from fashion bloggers.
Make note of these accounts and see if they have a hashtag in their bio that they prefer people to use if they would like to be reposted. In the event that you come across an account that does not have a specified hashtag to use in order to have your photo reposted, the following tip will be useful.
Tagging photos
Let’s say you come across an inspo account that does not have a hashtag specified in their bio. How do yo get their attention? You have two options. First, you can try sending a direct message asking very nicely to have your photo reposted. This option is not ideal because if the account doesn’t follow your account, you will have to send a DM request. The user may never see the message and you will have missed an opportunity.
The next option is actually tagging the account in your photo. The user gets a notification and they can go into their tagged photos any time to retrieve the photo.
Keep in mind that this option will only be effective if your have stunning, high quality, #GOALS type of photos. They’ve got an aesthetic to maintain, after all. This brings me to my next point.
Take Great Images
Instagram is likely the most visual social media platform. Like BFA says, images matter– especially on Instagram. If you want Tarte Cosmetics to fly you out to Turks and Caicos, grainy selfies and poorly lit photos simply will not suffice. If there is any aspect of fashion blogging to invest your money, photography will give you the best return on investment. That’s why you should drop by next Friday. I’ll be spilling all my secrets to taking amazing photos that will get you noticed on Instagram.
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Talk soon. Bye!
