Instagram Growth Marketing Secrets You Never Knew

If Instagram called you, would you answer? Imagine asking all of your Instagram questions and finally getting answers straight from the source. This is what happened to me. I had a 15-minute chat with Instagram and I’m going to give you all the details! It’s basically the Instagram growth marketing secrets you never knew!

Are you wondering how I even had this opportunity? Do you know how you have in-app notifications pop up on Instagram? I had a banner pop up that said, “Want a call with us?” And I obviously signed up right away. I got a text notification about 10 minutes before our scheduled phone call reminding me of our appointment. And then I had someone call me from Instagram.

instagram growth marketing secrets you never knew. www.iammichellegifford.com

The Instagram rep looked over my account and gave me some feedback and then allowed me to ask some questions since we had some time left over. One thing he noticed was that my reels are playing a huge role in how fast I’m growing. He specifically mentioned it’s because the reels are edited really tightly and because of the captions I use on the videos. (Check out my post HERE for reels tips!)

He recommended choosing a specific time every day to publish your Instagram posts. He said nailing down this time will help the algorithm expect your content at a certain time and then be able to share it with more people because of it.

What the Algorithm is Looking For in Our Instagram Content

The algorithm looks for specific clues in your content to figure out what type of content creator you are/what type of content you are sharing. Some of those places its looking are:

Keywords
Captions
Hashtags
Tags

Using these features and including niched-down keywords in your content will massively help the algorithm which will immediately in turn help you grow. The more specific you get about the content you create and use the features Instagram provides, the faster your content will be put in front of your ideal audience and you will grow.

Posting about too many topics e.g. cooking one day, photography the next, etc. will confuse the algorithm and it won’t know who to put your content in front of. This is what was happening to me several months ago. I was posting about all things digital marketing. It was taking me forever to grow and I knew something needed to change.

I niched down and only started talking about Instagram marketing. After 10 months, my account grew from 18k to over 110k followers! I committed to talking only about Instagram marketing every single day and the algorithm finally started working in my favor.

instagram growth tips and strategies i be you haven't heard before. www.iammichellegifford.com

Instagram Call Key Takeaways

It’s more important to be consistent than to create a ton of content. This means that it is more important to show up for the Instagram algorithm on a reliable basis and post 3x per week than to post 20x one week and only 2x the next week.
Stay away from spammy hashtags. These are hashtags that are different variations of the same word. E.g. #plantmom and #plantmoms. One of these is fine–both are unneeded. Another spammy hashtag are hashtags that are overused. I recommend using hashtags that have been shared less than 1 million times.
The recommended number of hashtags to use is between 3 and 8. BUT if you are really strategic with how you use your hashtags, more wouldn’t hurt. You can check out my post HERE for tips on the best way to use hashtags in your Instagram posts.

get the inside scoop on my phone call with instagram. www.iammichellegifford.com