How to grow your connections on Instagram!

Instagram is just like any other social media platform, a place to create and share content so you can grow you specific brand or business.

But that’s not all, only posting on social media will get you so far, if you’re lucky.

It’s called SOCIAL media for a reason, and that reason is to be social, to meet people, to engage, to communicate and to grow in a community.

You don’t go to a party, sit alone in the corner and expect people to remember you when you’re gone.
No, you arrive at a party, try to befriend the host of the party, his friends and the friends of his friends.

Social media is no different, it’s a huge party, this party is cut into smaller little parties (communities), there’s a party for makeup lovers, a party for entrepreneurs, a party for super hero lovers, and so on..
And each party has a host or multiple hosts — the big dogs the ones who have the biggest following, the biggest influence and has the most attention.

That’s your first target.

1. Engage with the big accounts and their followers.

For example, Gary Vaynerchuck is obviously the host when it comes to personal branding parties, entrepreneurship and social media.
You turn on the post notifications on Gary’s content and you engage the second he posts. Number 1 this gives you a chance to be pinned which is free exposure and 2 you’re more likely to get noticed and get a response.

But it doesn’t stop there. Once you comment on the post, you go and engage with the people that commented on his post, reply on the questions people ask if you know the answer, give your opinion, start a conversation and be genuine with your responses.

Do it because you want to, not because you expect them to do the same.

Do this every single day for the top 7 8 accounts in your community, draw people into your account through conversation and connection.

2. Hashtags

Hashtags are there for a reason, and it’s not just not #put #it #on #every #word.
Hashtags are made to group certain topics and conversation into 1 place and it started by twitter and then it began to be used by all the platforms.

How can you use it? Other than using it on your posts, you can find people that share the same interest as you through hashtags.

For example if you go to #personalbrand you find all the people that are interested in personal branding and are talking about it. Engage with those people!

• The Gary Vee $1.80 strategy.
• Leave your .02 cents on the top 9 posts in 10 hashtags.
• Leave your .02 cents means dropping a nice and thoughtful comment on someone’s post and not a spammy “Hey I create content as well follow me”

3. Live with a guest/Guest posts

Lives are by far the best way to grow and audience that actually connect with you.

Yeah it’s cool to wake up with +50 followers, but you know what’s even cooler? Waking up with +15 followers but 10 of them DM’d you saying how much you inspired them or helped them to start. That’s what it’s all about!

Lives not only helps you connect with your audience, but also helps you connect with your guest’s audience and reach them directly!

Guest posts are the same, they give you a chance to showcase your value and your expertise to another person’s audience so that you can build up your own!

As you see, Instagram and social media is much more than posting and ghosting. In fact, you can grow on Instagram by just engaging and only posting a little, but it’s impossible to grow if you’re posting every single day but not doing anything to actually bring eyeballs to your content and form a connection.

Start engaging more, start reaching out more, start putting yourself out there, start being more SOCIAL!