this video is sponsored by HubSpot here are five Instagram tips and tricks that will never fail you if you're somebody who has been struggling on the Instagram platform then this video is for you because we're going to talk about how you can grow on Instagram increase engagement and ultimately how you can finally hit the goals that you have set for yourself on Instagram and see Real Results tip number one know the platform if you want to dominate a platform you'll need to know the ins and outs of that platform what makes it breathe what makes
it come to life basically you'll need to have an understanding of the algorithm and that platform's user Behavior now when it comes to the Instagram platform the biggest misconception is that there is one Almighty Instagram algorithm that controls it all and there isn't there's actually multiple algorithms and processes Instagram uses behind the scenes to personalize each user's experience for example there's an algorithm for how feed and stories are ranked there's an algorithm for Explorer there's an algorithm for the reals Tab and so on now within each algorithm Instagram uses something called signals to help them
rank posts in order of which they think you will be most interested in and there's thousands of signals that Instagram uses so what are some of the most important signals that Instagram looks for I'm going to briefly go over each of these but if you want a more in-depth explanation of the algorithm where I break everything down like everything you need to know about the algorithm then watch this video next or you can read more about it in this article posted by Instagram themselves called shedding more light on how Instagram Works which I'll link down
below first let's talk about feed and stories the most important signals across feed in stories roughly in order of importance are information about the post information about the person who posted your activity your history of interacting with someone from there Instagram will likely predict How likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post comment on it like it save it tap on the profile the more likely you are to take an action on a post the higher you'll see that up in your feed if you're wondering Millie how does how Instagram ranks posts
in my feed relevant to growth and increased engagement and all the things if you're somebody who wants to rank higher on someone's feed or rank in Search and explore then you have to know why Instagram is ranking posts there in the first place so that you can reverse engineer your strategy and get your post to more eyes so we'll talk about that in a second for explore ranking these are the signals Instagram weighs roughly in order of importance information about the post your history of interacting with the person who posted your activity and information about
the person who posted ideally the explore page is a list of accounts that you maybe haven't interacted with it's how you can discover new profiles new people new posts so when it says history of people you've interacted with ideally they're finding similar accounts to the people you've interacted with in the past and showing those profil files and posts on the explore page next we have ranking for the reals page the signals roughly in order of importance are your Real's activity the history of interacting with the person who posted information about the real which is important
to know because these are signals about the content within the video such as the audio track what you're saying what's in the video and the whole frame of the video as well as the popularity of the post so all of that goes into account there and lastly information about the person who posted so with all of that said how do you trigger the algorithm to work in your favor well that leads me to tip number two after you have a full understanding of the Instagram algorithm maybe you've read the article shedding light on how Instagram
works or you watched my YouTube video explaining the Instagram algorithm the next step and you'll see the importance of this in your studies is to utilize Instagram SEO I will say that Instagram search does not currently work exactly as well as Google YouTube or even Tik Tok but that doesn't mean you should skip this strategy because it actually really helps the algorithm a lot of people's argument to skip the step is like well I never go to Instagram to like search how to change a tire or social media tips right A lot of people they're
like well I don't use Instagram for that so I don't really have to focus on Instagram SEO but it's not just about oh if people search for how to change your tire your stuff will pop up it's not just about that it's helping the algorithm categorize you and your content let's simplify the term SEO in case this is your first time hearing about it or maybe you're intimidated by SEO as a whole like maybe it sounds a little more complex or advanced than you think you're ready for but let's simplify it let's make it super
easy peasy anybody could do it so simple a caveman could do it okay SEO is basically the strategy you have in place to be easily discovered on a platform that's it if you're an event planner and someone goes to in Instagram to look for event planner what strategy do you have in place to make sure that you are the person or the profile that they find that's it that's all that's it it's just what strategy you have in place to help people find you that's it so what should your Instagram SEO strategy look like use
key wordss and key phrases throughout your entire profile what are key words what are key phrases basically what is your Niche or Niche and what do you want to be known for those answers those words use those words everywhere your title what you want to be known for the things that you'll talk about on your profile put those words all across your page so do you have to pick a niche or Niche down in order to be successful on social media nowadays no not always but for Instagram that platform specifically niching down will help you
grow a lot faster because of the signals that we mentioned earlier so where do you place these key words and key phrases your username your name plate your bio hashtags captions even the words that you say in your reels including the popup text that you type in your reals Let's do an example this fake account Katie who's an event planner that's what she wants to be known for she wants to grow that business so the username will be events with Katie it's clear who she is and what she does Katie plans events in the name
plate it'll say Katie San Diego event planner those are key words key things that people might be searching for or even to help categorize her content to Instagram Instagram knows okay she's a San diean and she's an event planner so I could show her profile to people who engage with that sort of content and now her bio will say planning your events so that you don't have to lift a finger and you could get all the bragging rights birthday parties holidays and special occasions so her bio says planning events it says birthday parties holidays special
occasions all of those are words and phrases that she would want to be known for some hashtags she could use on a post would be event planner San Diego event planner party planning party planning tips or even whatever that piece of content was about so if she posted a reel that showed an event that she covered it could be birthday party inspo Sherie board example sh board inspo you know so just like describing what that content's about and even within her captions using words and phrases like event planning event planning tips planning a birthday party
easy ways to plan your event easy ways to plan birthday parties easy way to plan parties Organization for party planning you know within the caption she's also going to use all of those words and phrases does Instagram have the best search functions no but because now Katie has a event planner literally everywhere on her profile she's feeding the signals that Instagram looks for and the algorithm knows exactly who to push her content to just by doing this one thing alone you will see growth in followers here's literal proof one of my students Bianca she didn't
even start posting or implementing any other growth strategy on Instagram all she did was update those things throughout her profile and immediately started getting new followers because she was easily discoverable the algorithm knew who to show her content to and that's the proof that Instagram SEO works if you're someone who is looking to increase your overall engagement on Instagram I have a guide that you can download below 20 powerful strategies and hacks for increasing Instagram engagement yes this guide is completely free and the best part it was created by HubSpot who as you know is
sponsoring this video they wanted to give this 20 5 page bundle of wisdom to all of you for free inside of this guide you'll get a list of all the latest strategies tips and tricks to help you increase your engagement on Instagram because let's be honest I think we could all use a little engagement pickme up when following their tips you'll definitely learn how to leverage some of the Lesser known features on Instagram and start to see more likes on posts and gain more followers you can use the link in my description to download the
guide for free or you can use the link in the pinned comment I think it's amazing when Brands want to help share free value with entrepreneurs influencers content creators so just a huge thank you to HubSpot for sponsoring this video tip number three take action based on your goals one of the most common mistakes I see on Instagram is people doing things that are completely pointless and won't help them Reach their specific goal they're just like doing a bunch of things because other people are doing that strategy or other gurus say hey you need to
be doing this so they're doing all these things but it's wasting their time because it's not going to help them get the results that they specifically want to see so ask yourself right now what is your goal with Instagram is it to grow on the platform increase engagement make sales and find clients what's like the number one thing that it's okay to have all of those things be your goal but if you could prioritize which one is the number one goal because each of these goals will require different actions from you and if you're not
seeing the results that you want to see right now it's likely because you're taking the wrong action or your SEO strategy could use in work but it's likely because you're taking wrong action what actions should you take then if you want to make sales establish your Authority create pinned posts that introduce who you are and what you educate on and what your offer is place call to actions in your bio to lead people to a freebie or a resource or a product that you have created focus on creating highlights that will generate income if you're
a fitness instructor maybe you could have a highlight that says all of your favorite Amazon workout gear and each link is an affiliate link that's generating you income or if you're somebody that sells products you can have a highlight that lists out all of the products you sell with links to those products if you're a fitness coach you could even have an FAQ that answers all questions about your coaching offer if your goal is to make money focus on the things that are going to make you money now if you want to increase engagement engage
spend time every day engaging with your current followers by commenting on their posts replying to comments on your posts and getting into people's DMS with the goal of increase in engagement you can really post any sort of content but for nurturing my audience and increasing engagement I like to post stories and photos this is is going to look different for everyone so what you're going to do to figure out what sort of content increases engagement for you specifically you're going to go to your analytics right now and sort by post engagements so you can see
the top posts that have the most engagement see what the common factor is of those top posts why did it get the most engagement was it a call to action were they photos were they carousels were they reals What posts got the most engagement comments and people interacting with you and then what posts got the least engagement and what were the common factors there so if you want to increase engagement go to your analytics and see what already Works to nurture engagement in your audience now if your goal is to grow on Instagram what should
you focus on reals reals reals I know I know everybody says it everybody says it why does everybody say reals reals is the only form of content where Instagram has literally said themselves it was designed to reach new new people that algorithm that is behind reals was constructed and designed to help you reach new profiles and new eyes the trick is to treat every real as if it's somebody's first time coming across you or your profile you can add call to actions at the end saying follow for more event planning tips follow for advice and
staying in shape follow for this this this or even comment your top questions about blah blah blah send me a DM if you want more information about blah blah blah we all know reals will help you reach new eyes and help you grow but what else can you do to help you grow on Instagram in your bio say why someone should follow you literally say why somebody should follow you in your bio so many people skip this step but tell the new viewer what value you provide my BIOS is something like tips to actually grow
on Instagram and monetize the platform so like if they follow me they gain wisdom and knowledge about how to do those things what does somebody gain from following you and tell them that in your bio and then spend time engaging with people who don't follow you reach out to more people if you want to reach more people also study analytics we talked about this for increasing engagement but same thing for increasing your followers go to your analytics and rank your post by two things you can rank them by followers or you could rank them by
reach when you rank by followers that's going to tell you hey these posts got you more followers and then the ones at the bottom those ones didn't get you new followers and same thing for reach is going to say hey this is how many profiles or accounts that this post reached like this post reached this many profiles so that means you can reach more people when you try to recreate the success of the top performing posts and studying again those bottom performing posts to see okay what didn't click with my audience what can I improve
on study the analytics to see what posts get you more followers to begin with if you want to learn how you could get 10,000 followers and make $1,000 in 100 days on Instagram then I 100% recommend taking my free 1-hour master class that's linked Below in this training I teach you the ultimate 100 day Instagram road map so that you have Clarity and know exactly what you have to do every single day to hit your growth goals so be sure to check out my 60-minute free Master Class if you want to see more rapid growth
and make money on Instagram in 100 days tip number four DMS DMS are the most overlooked feature on Instagram but it's literally the driving force for your success I don't think there's a better word for it basically when you think back about the signals that Instagram is looking at to prioritized posts they're often looking at how well you know another account or how often your accounts cross paths how often you're engaging with other people are you two friends basically now since there's not really like a relationship status on Instagram the best way that they can
assume you're close to somebody is by who you're dming because that's really the most intimate form of communication that Instagram has so the more that you DM someone the higher they will rank in your stories and in your feed like if you open your Instagram app right now and you see the story bubbles up top it's probably people that you're talking to often or if not talking to often engaging with the most so if you want to rank higher in someone else's stories or feeds then you want to be getting in their DMS now like
sliding into the DMS can feel weird and when I give this top people are like uh well how do I do that naturally that's weird cuz personally I'm not a fan of cold dming someone you know like if somebody follows you and you're just like hey thanks for the follow like that's just weird to me that's not my personal preference that's okay if that's yours to each their own but that's just not for me so instead how I like to get into someone's DMS is by replying to their stories so I'll go to a recent
post of mine pull up the list of people who liked that post and anybody who has like an active story bubble I'll click on their story see what pops up and write a reply like wow what a view you know like if it's a picture of a sunset be like oh my gosh that's so beautiful because it's not a really a cold DM that way it's showing that you are one of their fans their consumers and you're just replying to their stories you've already consumed their content and if anything you're engaging with their content so
doing this will definitely help you increase your engagement but also it'll help build a more genuine and loyal following which is what Instagram is all about at the end of the day now tip number five adapt I have some good news and some bad news the bad news is that Instagram is always changing so your strategy will also be always changing but the good news is that Instagram is always changing which means anytime a new feature rolls around that's an opportunity for you to be an early adapter and get favored by the algorithm for example
when reals came out the first adapters were the people who hopped on it in the very beginning instead of resisting change now if anybody knows how frustrating all these changes could be it is me it is all in Educators out there we all know how frustrating it is to keep up with all of these changes literally every week so to help you keep up with those changes and new features what you could do is follow accounts like myself on Instagram Adam misseri who's the head of Instagram and announces when these changes happen even the Instagram
Creator account I also like to follow Adam aeri and Instagram coms on Twitter in case Instagram's ever acting a little weird Instagram also has a Blog blog that they update pretty frequently so any recent changes or updates to their app will be published in their blog it can be hard to keep up with all the changes but when you're following accounts that will announce those for you or you have a reminder on your phone to maybe check once a week so you can stay up to date yourself it can be incredibly helpful to be a
first adapter to these new features or early changes now remember if you want a full Instagram algorithm breakdown you can watch this video next where I teach more about signals and how you can work with the algorithm instead of against it thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next one follow your joy bye
