Organic Instagram Growth - Full Strategy Explained (2023 Methods) | Alexandre Pereira | Skillshare
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Organic Instagram Growth - Full Strategy Explained (2023 Methods)

teacher avatar Alexandre Pereira, Let's Grow.

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:55

    • 2.

      How to do the course

      0:46

    • 3.

      Consistency - What does it take?

      3:35

    • 4.

      Hashtags - How important?

      3:55

    • 5.

      Captions + Call to Actions

      2:51

    • 6.

      SEO - The Future

      2:43

    • 7.

      Reels - Everything you need to know

      6:36

    • 8.

      Content - Styles And More

      4:59

    • 9.

      Profile optimization - Stand Out

      5:25

    • 10.

      Competition - Mindset

      1:57

    • 11.

      Niche - Understanding

      1:31

    • 12.

      Common Mistakes

      3:08

    • 13.

      Story Ideas for Engagement

      4:04

    • 14.

      Tools - MUST Use

      2:11

    • 15.

      Additional Extra Tools

      1:38

    • 16.

      Project - Complete It

      1:04

    • 17.

      Outro - Thank you

      0:32

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About This Class

Learn everything it takes to achieve organic growth with Instagram Marketing in 2023. In this course Alex, breaks down all the important components that have helped him gain over 800,000 followers organically over the last 12 months.

Whether you are a small business, a successful influencer or you do not even have an Instagram account yet, this course will put you in a position will give you the edge over competitors. Look no further, if you are looking for a course that you can learn fast and implement today!

Let's prepare you for 2023.

  • Understand what to spend your time and energy on
  • Build a strategy that SUITS you
  • Build a Community 
  • Learn how to make the Algorithm serve you!

In Under 1 hour, Alex gives you a step-by-step course which also covers fundamental aspects of Instagram including;

  • Algorithm Breakdown
  • Community Building
  • Captions + Call to Actions
  • Consistency
  • Content
  • Common Mistakes
  • The best Tools for you
  • Reels
  • Instagram SEO
  • Story Ideas
  • Profile Optimization
  • Understand Your Niche
  • Hashtags
  • Competition

Best of luck!

Alex

Meet Your Teacher

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Alexandre Pereira

Let's Grow.

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Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Guys, welcome to my course on how to effectively grow on Instagram in 2023 and onwards over the last 12 months or 24 months, instagram has grown significantly for those of us who've been using Instagram for a long time, or even the new abusers, a lot of the old content out there will be telling you things that are outdated. And in this course, I want you to be up-to-date and be able to build a strategy that is going to allow you to grow thousands and thousands of followers on Instagram is not easy. As we approach 1.3 billion users, it's becoming more and more saturated. But it's never been better to actually grow, to actually be able to build a brand and community. And that's exactly my goal. Every time I post and grow an account on Instagram. So we're going to be running through my mindset throughout that, covering basics such as hashtags, SEO, but then more, some of the more advanced stuff. But no matter what level you are, everything that I talk about, you will be able to apply and add to your strategy. Over the last 12 months, I've been able to grow over 500,000 followers on a variety of different accounts, whether that's themed pages, influencer or small businesses. The goal of this course is, I'm gonna be covering a range of topics which are commonly asked Questions. And I'm going to cover each of them, but also I'm going to make them relatable to the Instagram algorithm as someone that's been using Instagram for the last seven years. I've seen how the algorithm has changed and how important it is to be up to date with it. So it's extremely important that you understand these strategies and apply them in 2023 and onwards. So by the end of this course, you're going to be able to go off and really build a strategy that is current and that will put you in a skyrocketing mood. Stay tuned. Let's get started. 2. How to do the course: Hey guys, I'm so happy that you've decided to take this course and take action and become a part of this Instagram growth journey. Now, a bit about how to take this course. I want you to have a notepad and pen ready, as there's going to be a lot of things I'm going to talk about and it's important for you to take notes and remember certain things that apply to you. Also have your Instagram account ready so that you can monitor things and analyze things as we talk about different topics. As it's important to see where you might have gone wrong in the past and where you're going right. And then from the course you'll be able to see which parts you need to improve on. It's going to be a journey. Don't rush it. By the end of the course, you will be in a position to grow and really shine out to your potential audience. Let's go. 3. Consistency - What does it take?: When it comes to consistency, don't be scared and don't think that you need to post four times a day or overdo it consistency. And the number one thing that I want you to remember is that the goal here is for you to not burn out consistency is very important to the algorithm as ultimately, Instagram is competing with TikTok or YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, all of these platforms which are essentially competing for our time. So the longer that someone can stay on your profile and on Instagram, the more Instagram is going, would you an expose your content to be consistent? There are a few things that I want us to remember, and by the end, I'm also going to mention something that is very important. The first thing I want to discuss is posting and your scheduling and how to do it. Now, the number one thing I recommend is that you have to be planning in advance and you have to be using the scheduler. There are numerous software nowadays such as later, sweet, even the Metta suite, which allow you to build a preview and put all of your content on there and to build a schedule for the next few weeks. This will allow you to not only avoid burnout of just doing it every day, but also allow you to plan your content. Everything needs to be a strategy and planning in advance. It allows you to tick these boxes, feed the algorithm, and also fulfill your goals. So using these scheduling software is essential for you to do so, especially if you're handling multiple accounts and on these softwares and on the metal, you're able to actually post things automatically so you don't have to post pictures, reels, etc. Every day you organize the post. You put the caption. If you put the hashtag and it will just let it out for you. Not only is it going to save you so much time, it's going to feed the algorithm and it's just going to give you what you desire. Now, when it comes to consistency, of course, it's great to plan as we just mentioned, it's good to make sure that we're able to avoid burnout. But one thing when it comes to Instagram and to other platforms is that there is waste trending. Always. Stuff that we need to jump on as a social media manager is something that is critical to grow. What I want you to do is basically plan your continent advance, but always leave opportunity for you to jump on a trend. So e.g. if there's a trending audio in your niche or you're somewhere outside and you think, Wow, I could record this right now and post it didn't do it. You need to have a percentage of posts which are dynamic. These types of posts are much more likely to go viral, especially if you're jumping on trends and you need to leave opportunity for this in your schedule. Essentially how I do it when I schedule is I just plan my posts for the week. If I decide to do something one day which is off the schedule, I will just push everything forward and insert today's post, which I want to go viral. What I think might go viral, you don't need to be doing this every week is just really when you think something is going to work or you think the team should do it. And as it influences, you think, wow, this big influence has just posted something and it's telling other people to do it. So let me do that. So guys, make sure that you're planning your content, make sure that you're scheduling your content and make sure you're leaving opportunity to host dynamic content. And the algorithm will reward you for this. 4. Hashtags - How important?: One of the first things that we're going to discuss is hashtags. As obviously hashtags is very important bits also developing and changed over the last 23 years, over the last 12 months, might strategies have changed a lot. So that's one of the first things that I want you to understand going forward and when you're implementing it in your strategy, let me give you a quick rundown on how hashtags actually work. So hashtags allow you to categorize your content. And that was the initial goal when hashtags were first created and thoughts about when you're typing in a hashtag, you'll be able to see how popular the hashtag with the number that comes up, e.g. it's quite obvious which hashtags are going to be huge, more popular a word is, or the more popular the category is, the more popular that hashtag is. So e.g. hashtag food is going to be absolutely huge. And this is where the next steps, and you will notice that food is an absolutely huge hashtag and as we basically niche down in that category. So e.g. let's say we have food and then we put down American food. But hashtag will slowly decrease in size. Then we put California and it will decrease again. And then we put mac and cheese, and then we put cheesy mac and cheese, and then we put cheesy mac and cheese holes. Now each time it's gone down in size and it's become more and more niche. Basically, as you do hashtags and with your hashtag strategy, you should be including a mixture of these. I think a lot of time in the past, people used to say you use 30 hashtags, but from my experience, hashtags have become less and less effective with, by putting so many that I do a mountain now is 3-7. You just want to make sure that the Instagram algorithm understands exactly the type of content that you're doing, but also the hashtags actually won't make your video go. Viral. Hashtags are actually very useful when you're starting, when you're in your first thousand followers as you grow. And lots of my accounts, which are 200,000 plus, I do not use hashtags as the algorithm already understands my audience and they're not necessarily important. The Instagram algorithm now has a lot more SEO potential with other variables which I'll discuss later on in the course, hashtags are less effective in that way for bigger account, if you're a smaller account, use around seven hashtags and use a mixture of big ones and really niche down. So if you're posting travel content, do a big one, light summer travelers or something that is quite big, I wouldn't say always go for the really obvious and big ones as it's going to be really hard for you to rank in those. Sometimes the bigger ones also can be. And if they're extremely popular, so be careful with those ones, but try to get one or two in the millions and then get the main bunch in the hundreds to 500,000 and then niche down from there. But I would say the optimal amount for you to go forward is around seven hashtags, especially if you're below 20,000 followers don't rely on them too much and don't spend too much time on hashtags, guys, this whole course is about you being efficient and not burning out. I will tell you now when I'm preparing my hashtags, it takes me about 1 min now, or 30 s or even less than that. And I usually do it manually because most of the time I'm posting reals. I just quickly, depending on the video, will do my hashtag manually. One of the great tools that I use is in flat. And you can just Google that, which is a platform that allows you to generate the hashtags. But the issue and what a lot of people recommend is using these softwares and these tools, but I don't recommend using them as a lot of the time they will scrape huge hashtags and they don't count hashtags that have been banned or anything like that. So I would suggest doing manually, doing three to seven hashtags and going from there. 5. Captions + Call to Actions: Guys, when it comes to captions, captions are critical to build engagement, deliver your message for call to action, and also just to make sure that people understand your brand. And it's a way for you to communicate your message that the actual pose to the content might not be able to with captions, I would experiment, have some shortcut options and have some longer captions. Use software such as Grammarly to make sure that the captions are concise and that the grammar is good. And the mindset that I want you to have every time you create a caption is, am I providing value? Or I might incentivizing people to comment one of the classic captions that I've seen or used myself when creating e.g. content, which is funny, I will put caption this. I'm then incentivizing people to comment and actually interact with the post by them captioning the post for me. But then if I have some educational content or something that I want to deliver a message on, I will provide a caption that is full of value. It's more likely that they will save the post going onto call to actions. Ultimately, when we're posting on Instagram, we are trying to get the users or the consumers to actually do something, whether we have a product we want them to buy, or we want them to visit a website or sign up to our mailing list. We are able to do this with call to actions. Now, I'm going to just run through some examples of different call to actions that we can get people to. Now the first thing is to save, making sure that people save our content is critical as it's one of the best metrics to tell the algorithm that people like the content. So something that you can write in your captions is make sure you save this post for later, or make sure you save this post. Save this post so you don't forget, save this post and revisit it weekly. Another metric which is critical is shares. The call to actions are going to be amazing for you to get your shares, shared this with a friend who's struggling with. Share this in your story and let people know. Share this with a friend who needs to see this, like this post and let other people see it too, guys, if you enjoyed this post, please double-tap. If you like this style of post, make sure you tell me by liking comments again, are critical in terms of engagement and you can incentivize this in your captions with the CTA tag, someone in the comments who needs to see this? Do you agree? Comment below, comment below, and the best one gets pinned, guys, use your captions wisely, incentivizing engagement and use call to actions. 6. SEO - The Future: Instagram has changed way more to be like an SEO platform over the last few months and it's going to continue doing so. Seo stands for search engine optimization. What essentially it means is that it's basically like Google's concepts, but now in Instagram, so all of the keywords and everything that you're inserting into the app. It's going to help your content and profile get exposed to the right audience. So using the right keywords here and in certain places is going to make sure that you're going to grow much quicker. Instagram SEO is booming right now, but still very new. So if you can capitalize on your SEO, you're going to put yourself in positioned for growth. First thing I want to discuss is your profile. Please go to profile and optimization class if you haven't, as that will put your profile in the best scenario possible for SEO growth. You want to make sure that you have the right keywords there. You are being exposed to the right audience. Hashtags again, are going to be important for SEO. As I mentioned, I have a hashtag clause that I want you to watch, used three to seven hashtags in your posts. Guys, anyone telling you to do more does not understand how the SEO algorithm is working right now, guys, there's now a place when you post in advanced settings called alt texts. And most people actually don't know about this. So I will need to go in there when you post and just add some keywords that actually match the content that you're creating. This is going to help the algorithm understand what posts, understand what the content is about and put it in front of the right people guys. Use these small tools, the Instagram of forever improving and introducing to really make your account boom. This is so new that most people don't know about it. And if you're able to use it now, it will put you in pole position. As I mentioned in the captions, closed captions are essentially where the algorithm is going to scan and see what keywords at the end, understand where they need to put your content on the Explore page. Make sure that whatever content you're creating that you're using your caption to put the right keywords, the right hashtags, and utilize those words to make sure that algorithm understands. It's relatively simple, that makes such a difference. So use your captions and make sure that you add keywords. And if you are able to take away and understand all of these steps, profile optimisation, hashtags, alt texts, and your captions. You will be making sure that the algorithm understands what audience you want to be put in front of. 7. Reels - Everything you need to know: Instagram, Rails. Now, if you've done any research or try to get any tips or any advice in the last few months or the last year, everyone is telling you to post roads, they are not wrong. Instagram rules are huge right now. Short-form content. Every single platform is promoting them heavily. Since TikTok has boomed, everyone is now competing with that style of content. And Instagram rules are really effective. It's really important for you to have them as part of your strategy. And today I want to give you some key tips that are going to change the way your Instagram Reels perform when it comes to Instagram rules, short-form content is what everyone is pushing. So as I mentioned earlier in the course, we need to feed the algorithm, the rights, fundamentals and the right variables for us to be boosted onto the Explore page. Now, when it comes to rows, the way engagement is measured really is through the watch time. So if unreal is 50 s, then we need to get as much watch time all the way up to 50 s as much as possible. If we get 45 plus seconds or 40 s, the algorithm is going to think, Wow, this is good because people are watching over 90 per cent railroad. Now, this is where some of the tips and hacks that I want you to do for reals comes in. Instagram really likes short rules. So the first trick and tip I wanna give you is we need to make sure that our rules are getting solid watch time. And the way around this is for us to create rows which are 7-9 s long. The reason we do this is because that means that people are more likely to watch 100 per cent of the real and even rewatch it, which is going to tell the algorithm that this post is incredible. Not only that is at seven to 8 s, the row actually loops. So it automatically, again for the consumer. So not only are they watching 100% of the room, that they actually rewatching it again, giving more and more love to the algorithms. So guys, I want you to start posting seven to 8 s on Instagram growth right now, you need to make sure that you are doing this. And this is going to generate you way more views than anything that you were doing before. Now the next trick and understanding that I want you to have withdrawals is that the first two 3 s are critical. You need to make sure that you're able to hook the person. You are, whoever watches that real into your video. That's the mindset. I can't tell you what to put there because I can't see your video, but I can tell you, make sure that you go straight to the action and remember if you're making videos, does seven to 8 s, make sure that the first two, 3 s, you're going straight in because usually anything that's kinda dynamic, we lost that length anyways, so try not to have a long intro. Let's say you're doing a fitness video and you're about to do a rap, don't make the free, wait too long. Just stop the video doing the reps, people watch the 78 second video, that algorithm will love it and people are going to be. The next thing that I want you to do is make sure that you're using trending audios. Trending audios gives you another layer, another opportunity to go viral. And nowadays, audios from TikTok common to Instagram and even Instagram has its own audios which are trending and going viral. So you need to pick audios which match your video, match the niche that you're in. So potentially go on to competitors, see what videos do well for them, see which audios are doing well for them, save them, then you use them on your own audios. You'll notice that so many audios are seven to 10 s long because people understand that this is a great length of time for Rails. Trending audios, make videos that are seven to 8 s long. Make sure that you have a really good hook in the first two 3 s. And then finally, I want you to make sure that when you're picking your rules, that you are picking the right thumbnail URL is going to go into your page and people will see on your grid, even when it goes into the Explore page, the roof thumbnail, it's going to make people press the video. So you need to make sure that you are putting the best thumbnail possible. And something I want you to remember is when you go into or cover, you can actually zoom in. You can zoom out. You can go around the page and you can pick the best spot which people are going to press. I like to pick spots which I think are clickbait which incentivize people to press the video. Guys thumbnails are really important when it comes to rules. And it's critical that you make the most of them. The next steps when it comes to rows, I want you to make your content in batches or prepare it in batches. If you're an influencer or a business and you create content or someone creates content, Few, get them to create that content in batches. So they create numerous at a time. This will make sure that the process sufficient for you as tracing rules on a day-to-day basis can be time-consuming and not effective. Make the content give it a week, two weeks, or however much you make, analyze it and go from there. So make sure you create reels in batches. And guys, when it comes to creating your rules, make sure that you prep beforehand. So have an idea of how you want it to look. Remember, fiction is not the goal here. What you want to do is post and move on. Rules are going to be a critical part of growth for 2023 and onwards. So make sure that you have it reals as part of your strategy, as ultimately Instagram and the algorithm pushing rules heavily right now. So it's critical that you jump on rules, guys, whether you're an influencer or business, there's ways to make rules and be smart about it. You can create rules with just a video clip and text on top of them, similar to how people do it on TikTok. And that also can go very viral. And you can also put pictures. You can use templates, which is a new Instagram feature. So there's lots of ways to make rules. It doesn't just need to be a cinema piece of videography. There's ways to combine different styles of content to make rules. So it's definitely worth experimenting and going from there. 8. Content - Styles And More: This one I want to discuss Instagram content on a whole and how to best effectively use it when it comes to content, it's important that you have a strategy. So you have an idea of how you're going to get your content, how you're going to create the content if you're leaving it to last minute and doing it on a daily basis, it will cause you to burnout and it will cause you to potentially stop and just give up. So really you want to be able to create everything in efficient way. Now there are different styles of content. I'm going to start by discussing the carers cells or the swipe pose switches when you have a graphics or pictures and you're able to swipe through them. You can do up to ten at the moment on Instagram, this is a great way to provide value to your audience, to make a slideshow of pictures and to just really tell a story similar to rules, you're able to really keep people on the post, making sure that people stay on the watch time in this case will be really high if you are able to provide a concise story which is interesting combination of swipes and rules are the best to Brian now in terms of content that you can post, I would have a template that you can use or a style that you go to every time you make a carousel. Not only will this look good on your grid, but it will make it much easier when you're creating the content. You can use Canva to create your graphics or you can pay someone, but in reality, you want to make it as easy as possible for you so that you can be consistent. Thumbnails are going to be extremely important just to make sure people press your content. Make sure the first slide is always clickbait. And then as you go through, you've hooked them on the second one, which will make sure that they read the whole thing. Guys, be small. Remember, what you're looking for is saves likes and comments. I made a whole class on rails, so make sure that you watched that one. But rules are going to be very important as that's exactly what every platform, especially Instagram is pushing in 2023, is short form content making rules as part of your content strategy is going to be critical. Now single posts and pictures are still a great tool if you are able to use them, is so important for you to post this type of content, but you need to make sure is that you have a caption which is engaging. Remember we want to keep people on the posts as long as possible and without a real or without the swipe, there's less with them to look at and to engage in. So make sure that you concentrate on the caption and probably combined a single post with a strong caption would allow you to compete with your rows and your swipes. Now with your stories, stories is slightly different. You can be much more experimental on, and you can also engage with your consumers a lot more if you're a brand influence or even potentially a theme page, you can get your consumers to actually interacts with you. One of the most popular ones that I see influences use or brands is asked me anything when it comes to commenting on posts. You're going to have your hardcore fans which are going to always come in. And people which you're engaging with their content, though engage with yours. People are much more likely to interact, especially if it's a question, because no one else is going to see that some people, even online or shy, if you have a serious page, maybe your story will allow you to be slightly more comedic. One of the best things about stories for me, for businesses is that you can really sell on your stories, whatever business you are or whatever product you're trying to sell, you be able to use your stories, press here and direct them to the website. And it's going to be very important for you to use this feature. So stories is definitely something that you should implement. I like to also share a new post Sunday at something creative to it. You can share old content directly there. You can repost some stuff. So there's loads you can do. There's lots of features such as poll asked me anything, gifts. There's a lot you can do an experiment that's the key there with stories. But I would aim to post one story a day for sure, especially on days that you potentially aren't posting, utilize a scullery feature and don't overthink it. Finally lives. If you're able to go live on Instagram, can definitely do so. I wouldn't recommend going live until you have at least a few thousand followers. As you will be able to make sure that at least some people will attend. It's great way for you to collaborate if you're an influence where people can ask you questions, same with brands. So definitely utilize the live feature, but I would have that at the bottom of your priority list and make sure that you can check list everything. First concept is going to be a key part of your growth. So make sure that you come up with a strategy that works for you that is able to represent your well effectively, but ultimately won't lead you to burnouts. 9. Profile optimization - Stand Out: One of the most important things you need to do is to optimize your profile. Your profile needs to be appealing to the potential consumer to make them fully. At the end of the day, when people go to your profile in the press follow, they need to go through all of that and they analyze your page and decide from there. So first thing is your content needs to be good to initially attract them, but then they'll go on to your profile to press follows. So we need to make sure that we're in a good state and that we are visually appealing to that consumer and to the ideal audience. The first thing I want to make sure that we're doing is make sure that a profile picture is professional, whether we're a brand, whether we're an influencer theme page, make sure that it looks professional so we need to act. All costs. Avoid blurry photos. If you have a blurry photo there, it's going to be the first sign that you are not really caring about your profile and that you are not so professional entity, whether you're an influencer or a brand's, if you're a brand, get a logo, get it done professionally. Make sure that it's hate. D, as that's the first thing that people are always going to analyze. If you're an influence or someone who's trying to brand themselves, makes sure that you get a professionally done photo. It's worth the money as you'll be able to use that photo on all platforms and especially on Instagram, you'll be able to showcase yourself cleanly and without below. Now, the next thing that I want you to do is make sure that you pick a handle that is easy to remember. Don't want to pick a handle which is over 15 characters. And also that really doesn't have too many numbers or ideally no numbers at all. And as little spaces, adults and underscores as possible and be creative with it. I know that a lot of the handles nowadays are taken, but there are ways to be creative. And I think these fundamentals when it comes to setting up your profile and make sure it's optimized. It's going to take time, whatever position you're in. If you already have an account with a handle, it might be worth changing. If you think that it's not easy to remember and it doesn't reflect your brand properly. So remember those points and take that forward to optimizing your profile. The next thing I need to make sure that we're doing is in the bio, we need to make it clear exactly what the consumer or our potential audience can expect from us when they follow us. That's essentially the most important part. Remember, they're going to come in our profile, analyze our vote to analyze our bio, analyze the whole thing put together, we need to use this space effectively and really told them why they should follow us if they've watched one of our dog videos and they come onto our profile when it says we post the best dog videos, they're going to be much more inclined to follow us. We need to make sure that we put the right information that puts something about exactly what you do and what the audience should expect from you. Now, the next thing we can do is put a CTA, which is a call to action telling them to actually do something. And this applies for even our current followers. So the, when they go on our profile, we have a CTA because ultimately whatever type of account we have, we're going to be trying to send the audience somewhere else, whether it's a website or to the shop or whatever it is. And we can utilize this space to do that. But one thing I want you to remember is that only put one CTA here. Do not make your bio spammy and just selling because that's not going to get your sales and it's not going to get you followers. So put one CTA there, make it short and sweet. Visit our store for the latest offers or if it's Black Friday, black Friday offers available now point down, and that's it. That's enough. People will convert from that, but you don't want to appear too spammy. So guys, make sure that you've written this down. You've analyzed your profile so far and that you're taking these boxes. And the next and final thing is, is your story highlights. Story highlights are great to make your page look aesthetic. Get some story highlights which fits your brand. Don't put pictures of random things as either. Think that it effectively benefits your profile. What you need to do is whatever colors you're branding is, add that to your story highlights. If you're a travel page, you can put some different countries there. And if you're a small business, you can put some products. Make the products look good, make them name look goods that you can put offers, special offers. If you're a gym, you can put some of your classes. You could put some of your posting. You can put some of your PTs, use platforms such as Canva to create this story highlights. But they are great to just add an aesthetic to your profile. And for people who are really interested to press them, this will be the least engaged part of your bio, but they are critical part and I always recommend using them. So guys, make sure that you have applied this to your profile. Definitely use this section to optimize your bio and build something that the audience are going to follow you and remember you for 10. Competition - Mindset: Competition and competitors, no matter what type of account and you have, competitors are going to be all around you. We live in a saturated world, especially on Instagram with 1.3 billion users. But something that has changed the way I grow on my Instagram accounts, all my competitors, competitors throughout your journey are going to be critical for your growth. There are going to be competitors which are growing really quickly, and competitors which are going to be not doing that well. And what you want to do is keep analyzing those 23 accounts, which are growing really quickly around the same level of z. So if you have 5,000 followers, find a few competitors which are similar to you. And you want to make sure that you keep changing these competitors every 10,000 followers and keep finding the ones that are growing quickly. Because what is going to happen is you might not be in Instagram expert now, but the way they're growing, you're going to be able to analyze that and understand after a few days or a few weeks why they're growing so quickly. And you want to check everything that they do and implement some of those strategies onto your own profile. Saying all of that, not only the strategy but the content they're posting, audience that they're using, the hashtags, the way they communicate with the audience, etc. You want to be able to take this from two or three different accounts and apply it to your own profile. If you're a social media manager and you're running a few different accounts. This is going to be critical as they do a lot of the research they're growing. So you can literally take their strategy and add it to your own to make sure that throughout your growth journey, you're finding two or three competitors. Makes sure that they're always growing. Make sure they're around the same followers is you and in your niche, competitors are great for growth. 11. Niche - Understanding: The next thing I want to discuss is niche. It's obviously, even if you're a business or an influencer or theme page, is still very important to have a particular niche and stick to it no matter what type of account you have, if your content is to sporadic and two random people won't follow you. People like to follow accounts where they expect a certain style or expect a certain bunch of content that the user will stick to that guys, when you're picking your niche, make sure it's something that you're passionate about, making sure it's something that you can actually post consistently and make sure that you have enough ideas where you can rotate four or five different styles of content around that particular niche. And it's very important that you don't start to post things outside your niche, especially because the algorithm will get confused. Nowadays, the algorithm is really trying to understand every time you post what content, who to share it to. The more outside your niche you go, the more confused the algorithm is going to get, and probably the less engagement you're going to get from the onset, make sure you pick a niche that you're passionate about. And make sure you pick a niche that you're actually able to create content for, that you see that you're going to be able to do this for a while no matter if you're a small business or an influence. So you can pick a niche and you need to stick to that, an appeal to a certain type of community. So guys, it's very important to pick a niche. 12. Common Mistakes: Guys, here are some mistakes that people are making right now on Instagram and that will be affecting your growth heavily. If you're doing any of these, then make sure you stop and rethink your strategy. First one is only posting rules. If you're only posting rules, you're not optimizing the resources that are available to you. Make sure that you start using swipes, need to start being creative with your content strategy, not search, optimizing your caption. If you're not using the right keywords in your caption. Making a lot more difficult for the algorithm to understand exactly what type of content you're creating. Stop thinking that IG has shadowed band you. Shadow banning isn't excuse for when the engagement has dropped and you're just being lazy. So guys, please stop thinking. You are shadowed band. That's not the case. There's definitely improvements that you can make to optimize your growth. You need to be engaging with your community and with bigger accounts in your network. If you're not doing this, this is a mistake and I really advise that you start doing this, guys. You need to be asking your audience and people in your industry for feedback. Feedback is the best way for you to grow individually and your creativity. So it makes sure that you are trying to get feedback. It's fine to copy others, but if you're not innovating and trying to improve those ideas and adding your own twist, then you're not really doing much apart from copying. So please avoid that. You've had content that is doing a lot better than others, you need to repost. It makes sure that you are re-posting that content as it's good enough to be re-posted, trying to make the perfect post. If you're spending too much time making the perfect post, you are failing at Instagram. Instagram is about consistency, moving posting and moving on. If you think posting time matters, it doesn't. The Instagram algorithm has changed the way that it shows content is no longer chronological and it's down to engagement. Of course there's going to be hotspots, but essentially posting time is one of the least important factors when it comes to posting, guys now I know this course is about Instagram, but if you're creating content only for Instagram, that's a mistake. You need to be cross platform posting. If you're creative, short-form content, it's likely that content, YouTube, it can go on TikTok, Pinterest, etc. So make sure that you're posting elsewhere as well. Posting and ghosts and guides you need to avoid posting and then going away for a few weeks, coming back and going away, as I mentioned earlier, you need to post consistently, but make it realistic and make sure that it's achievable. Don't do sporadic posting. Stop thinking your content is perfect, nothing is perfect, so avoid that mistake being afraid to post your best content. If you have great content ideas, then execute them, guys do not use 30 hashtags. That is a massive mistake. Guys, avoid all of these and you will put yourself in a path to success. 13. Story Ideas for Engagement: Guys, instagram stories are a great way for you to connect with your audience. It's a great feature that is extremely underrated in this class. I'm going to share with you a bunch of ideas that you can do for stories right now. You can use it as a bonus. So let's say you've got a new post, you can share that and add additional information that if you've posted a real and the caption is not long and he wanted to go for a shortcut option. You can use your story to reap, share that content, and also add some texts, which is bonus information. Host a competition on your page between different accounts or your own account. Start building incentives, which is going to be great to build a community and just to get overall more engagement on your stories. One of my favorite stories is behind the scenes, whatever industry you're in, you can show people, e.g. how you've created some of your content, or just show them a day in your life, you can do IT industry quiz or a quiz about yourself. You can ask people questions. Get people to comment the right answer. If you're an expert in your field, you can test your audience and see how much they know and people love to interact with that type of stuff as they probably know, you're an expert, whatever industry you're in, whether you're a brand or an influencer or a theme page, you can use your story to sell your services and show potential client transformations, success stories, and give more social proof to your audience without sharing it on the feet. And it's a great way to get them to understand you a little more. You can share old content of yours. Old content once it's posted doesn't mean it can never be seen again. You can post a few weeks later on your story and relive that engagement. As I said earlier, you can quiz people about your expertise. You can ask your audience to see how much experts they are in certain topic. You can also ask them questions such as what tools they use for certain things, what they think about certain topics. Or if you're a brand and have a product, you can ask them flavor they liked the most cities, definitely a lot. You can do that to get customer feedback and customer advice knowledge. Just find out more about your ideal consumers. Guys, if you're an influencer, you could give a random of fan shout out, you can share even more value if a sudden door to motivational thoughts or motivational quote that you love, share it to your audience, share it with people. Because the more you give, the more they will love you. Post a Q&A session. One of the stick is, is asked me anything and I think that's one of the best ways for any type of Instagram account to interact with the audience. So make sure you're doing that and you will definitely be able to boost up the engagement on your stories, TCO, audience with upcoming content. If you're starting to build a community, you can drop snippets of content that's coming out soon, whether that's real as etc. that you've patched created just to build up anticipation and just to build up that engagement. If you're an influencer or even a brand, do polls on which they prefer. If you're a food brand and you have two types of burgers, you can ask them which they would prefer for lunch, given limited time discount wherever you're trying to sell, wherever you're trying to achieve, give them a little bonus, guys, one of the best things you can do with stories is cross-promote your other platforms. So if you have a TikTok or a YouTube channel, you can use your Instagram stories, send traffic that way. Guys stories are a great tool to just get people to interact with you more, to send them to your website, do things that you might not normally do on your feed. So use stories wisely. There are so many tools out there to help you. You can schedule them automatically on the metal where you can use platforms such as later to schedule them. You'll have to do it manually, but there's a lot you can do on stories. So make sure that you're using them effectively. Build a plan, rotate around those types of stories and go from there. 14. Tools - MUST Use: Guys, no matter what type of account and you have Instagram tools and software that is out there is going to help you grow quickly. And in this class, I'm going to quickly run through some of the best tools out there that you can start using straight away. Now, when you're researching content and coming up with ideas or trying to get inspiration, some of the best places to do that research, or Socrates, Google Trends, Pinterest, Quora. There's a lot of places that you can find exploding topics. These websites and places are going to help you find and research content. The best place for you to begin in terms of content creation is Canva on comfort. Not only can you create graphics, swipes, edit pictures, you can also create videos and grills. Canva is going to be your best friends If I recommend any software for content creation or websites, It's Canvas for graphic resources for images. I would use Canva pro version and also Pixabay. Pixabay is gonna be your best friend. When it comes to captions, you want to make sure that it's concise, that the wording is clear, and that the grammar is top-notch. Use a platform such as Grammarly to make sure that you're able to deliver that. For hashtags, use flick and use inflect, type those on Google. And they will give you the tools to be able to generate hashtags. But really guys, I want you to be in a position where you're able to do hashtags manually, as that's how you're going to get the best niche hashtags for your industry, for video creation, you can use in shorts. And finally, you can use TikToks editing software cap cut, which is now available to everyone for content planning, you can use Google Sheets or Notion, both great platforms, ways for you to just plan how things are going to go over the next few weeks or months. For content scheduling, I would recommend software such as later HootSuite, order matter, create a studio. They're going to allow you to schedule your content and make sure that you are anti burnout guys. Use these tools and you will be able to create a strategy which is going to help you grow. 15. Additional Extra Tools: Guys, here are some bonus tips. If you want to write captions, right? Engaging posts ten times quicker using copy.ai if you wanna do social media scheduling on autopilot, meet Edgar. Captions plus dot app will give you 700 templates of captions for a variety of niches. These script edit your videos through text. Pfp maker, if you want to get a professional photograph, professional display picture, use this inside the text dot io. You want to write like a native speaker used this guys, when it comes to Instagram, there are so many tools nowadays for us to grow and so many tricks. But one thing I want you to remember for 2023 and onwards is collaboration. Collaboration is a great way for us to grow with Instagram's new edition where we can collaborate on posts and share each other's audience. So find competitors who you want to expose each other to each other's audiences as this will be a great way for you to grow and just get overall engagement and profile visits on your page. Smart with your collaborations is actually a lot better to collaborate with people than to see people as competitors. In my earlier class, when I spoke about competitors, I meant it in a way. You want to use people as they are doing well, but you can also use people to collaborate and come up with great concepts. Videos provide value and use each other's audience. So collaboration is going to be a great way for you to grow. 16. Project - Complete It: Guys, for the project, it's simple. I want you to optimize your profile. I want you to put yourself in the best position possible for growth. Why I want you to do is make sure that your profile picture is the best it can be and is professional. Makes sure that in your bio, you tell people exactly what to expect from your account. And also, I want you to put a call to action in your bio. Simple and concise use Canva to create some story highlights that match your brand and our simple, but that just add that extra twist to your page. I want you to make sure that your username is clear, concise, and searchable. Your bio, I want it to be three lines. I want it to be about you, your audience, and the CTA. And if you already have some posts, didn't pin your top three posts, guys, do this, share it in the projects and I'll be able to analyze it for you and give you any feedback, but it will put you in the best position possible for growth. 17. Outro - Thank you: Guys, thank you for reaching this point in the course, and I just want to wish you good luck on your journey. I'm sure if you've understood everything I've discussed, taken notes, and applied it to your own profile that you without doubt will be in a position where you're going to grow quickly and effectively organically. Remember, this is a journey that's going to be ups and downs Bayes rule about adding the right variables to the equation, which will lead you to grow guys, my name is Alex, and I hope you've enjoyed it and take care.