Are You Stuck In An Instagram Rut?

Followers not going up? Feeling unenthusiastic about posting? Running out of pictures to post? It sounds like you’re in a social media rut.

But don’t fear, there’s some easy changes you can make to get your back on path.

1.Understand your audience

There’s a strong difference between knowing what your followers want, and giving your followers what you think they want.

In order to understand your audience properly you need to walk a mile in their shoes. Unfortunately this will take time - you’ll need to think like your ideal follower. Do what they do day in, day out - get to know where they shop, what their values are, what type of things they do in their spare time, and how they communicate with others. Once you’re living like your ideal follower, then you’ll understand what information they want to receive, and how they’d like to receive it.

For example, the sell, sell, sell attitude will only get you so far. Rather than talking at your audience, ask them questions and get them engaging with you. After all, social media is a two way street. It’s a conversation between brand and customer.

If you want to find out more about understanding your audience, you have to read The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy.

2. Get feedback

Asking friends, family and even your current followers for feedback and constructive criticism could help you understand where you’re going wrong. There’s nothing better than having fresh eyes look at what you’ve been doing and make suggestions for change.

You may not want to, or feel comfortable with it - but listening to others and understanding what they like and dislike about following other social media accounts will help you to ensure you’re giving your followers what they want.

3. Review your content

Reviewing your content is another great way of getting out of a rut. Go through your analytics, or use software such as Iconosquare to find out what your most liked images are. You’ll very quickly see a trend emerge.

While some people prefer high quality, heavily edited images - you might find that being more ‘real’ with your audience and posting ‘real time’ images shot from a phone rather than a camera work more to your benefit.

It takes a lot of time and effort to produce a heavily curated Instagram feed, so taking more spontaneous photos, or reposting some of your tagged photos may work really well to your advantage.

4. Check if you’ve been shadow banned

If your followers and photo likes have gone down, you might have been shadowbanned. We’ve spoken about shadow banning before on our blog but in a nutshell, a shadow ban is where Instagram hides your images from the discover and search feeds - which results in less likes and you got it, less new followers.

Check to see if you’ve been shadow banned and follow our tips to make yourself searchable again.

5. Still in a rut?

Well then you might need a total change of strategy. Try thinking up a hashtag or campaign idea to promote your latest products and think of innovative content and stories to surround this idea. Using a theme and changing it up every now and again can be a really useful tool to keep your followers engaged and interacting with your posts and products!

If you need any more help getting out of your rut or need inspiration we run social media strategy sessions at Sassy Digital. Get in touch to find out more! @lucyhitchcock_ @sassydigital