Kaitlyn Rhodes (0:00)

Welcome to an episode of Call Her Creator powered by Stan. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Rhodes, and today we're going to be talking about growing your first 1,000 followers on Instagram. This is my updated strategy. I did a episode on this last year around January, and of course things change on Instagram week to week. So I felt like it was time for me to update the this strategy from a year ago when I first recorded this episode. You know, there was some features that weren't out yet. A lot of features actually. Trial reels weren't out, the edits app wasn't out. There's been DM changes, story changes. All the above has changed in a year. So today we're going to talk about how you can go from 0 to 1000 using a step by step strategy that I put together for you. Now, the advice I'm going to share with you today has helped thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs that are just like you. They, you know, show up online, they feel like they're posting all the time, they're following the latest trends, but nothing is really sticking. So it's my mission for all of you. I have a social media agency, I have a podcast, I have an Instagram that I teach all this stuff. My mission is to help you grow on Instagram. And so that's what we're gonna do today. If you seem to be stuck with a hundred followers, 200 followers, you're feeling burnout, you're posting daily, or you're confused about what actually works, then today's episode is for you. Before we get into today's strategy, I want to highlight a review from Chrissy C3284. I'm trying to increase my reviews over on Call Her Creator Pod podcast. So whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify, if you'll leave me a review. If you listen to this podcast and you like it, or, or maybe you get to the end of this podcast and you really liked it, please leave me a review. It really helps me know that I'm doing my job and it will also help my producers to see that we all need a little bit of Call Her Creator in their lives. So Chrissy says, as a social media manager and online business owner, Call Her Creator Podcast has become one of my go to tools for growth and inspiration. All her episodes are packed with practical tips, mindset shifts, and real talk that actually helps me take action and not just feel motivated. I always walk away with something, something I can apply immediately. If you're growing a brand or Business online, this podcast is a must listen. Thank you Caitlin and thank you Chrissy. I love showing up for you guys. So thank you for your positive feedback. Again, if you have the time and you feel like I deserve it, please go leave me a five star review. All right. Instagram growth, it's on your mind. You're at the right place if you're struggling right now. A lot of what I'm going to be talking about is inside my Instagram growth starter pack, which is in my stand store. I'll link it in the show notes too. But inside that starter pack you'll be able to access a 60 days reels challenge and guide, a 30 day marketing plan, a stories challenge, and then I also have a profile audit review in there so that you can review all of your stuff on your own. Some of what I'm gonna be talking about today on this podcast is inside of all of this starter pack. But you'll have it step by step, nitty gritty, more detailed inside of those documents. So I'd love for you to check that out in the show notes below. Grab it. All right, so one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to Instagram growth is that they just start posting content without any type of strategy behind it. And don't get me wrong, I do believe that one of the best things you can do when it comes to showing up online is just start. But you will see faster results when you have a strategy in place, when you know what you're going to post, when you know who you're talking to, when you know how engagement works, when you realize that the algorithm is in out to get you. All of what I'm going to teach you guys today is going to help you be better at growth and it probably can cut your time in half as far as how long it's going to take you to grow your account. If you listen to some of these tips I'm going to give you and stop just throwing spaghetti at the wall. So the first part of all of this is deciding what you want to be known for. Who do you want following your account? So the first step you want to do here is figure out what your niche is and then come up with content pillars that are going to support that that niche. Are you into finance? Do you like helping people save money? Do you love interior design? Are you a real estate agent? Do you own a med spa? And you want to help people with their skin care? Having an overall niche and goal is what's going to help you come up with connective content that nurtures your audience and truly builds a community and makes people want to follow you. Connective content. If you're like, what does that even mean? It's a word that I've kind of coined here. It basically helps you spark emotion for your audience. So that could be you making them just feel seen and heard, or maybe you teach them something, or maybe you make them want to share a post with someone else because it's so inspiring to them, or it just hits them in the heart. Those are usually our goals when it comes to creating content for our client. We always want to come up with connective content. And the best way to do that is by coming up with your niche and then your content pillars to support it. I'm gonna walk you guys through a specific example in a minute, but before we get there, the, the part two of this is knowing who you want to attract. So what do you wanna be known for? And then who do you want to attract? You want ideal followers. You don't just want an influx of anybody and everybody, because what happens with that is, you know, for example, going viral and say you bring in like 30,000 new followers. Well, if you're posting content to these new 30, 000 followers and they're not connecting with it, then they' probably not engaging with it. They're not liking commenting, sharing it. And so your Instagram post just honestly, they start dying from the algorithm because the algorithm thinks that no one likes it. But it's not even that no one likes it, they're just not connecting with it. So having an ideal follower in mind is going to help you come up with good content that they connect with, that they engage with. So who is your ideal target audience? Are they women? Are they both genders? Do they have kids? Do they like to play pickleball? Do they work out? You want to get really nitty gritty on who you're speaking to so that you talk to them specifically when you post. This also help you helps you come up with all of your content, right? So let's just say, for example, that you are an interior designer. Okay? So when it comes to interior design and content pillars, we want to balance inspiration, education, connection, but also convert them. So like the salesy type content. So an example for an interior designer, I'll give you a couple content pillar ideas. The first one I would think would be design tips and how tos. This is going to be your educational content, right? So you're going to teach your audience how to design like a pro Even a small space. Or maybe they're on a budget. Doesn't matter. The content pillar there is that you're teaching them how to design like a pro. So some examples of that would be like three mistakes that you're making to make your living room look smaller. Or how to style a coffee table in five minutes. Love that one. Before you buy that rug, here's the rule of thumb for sizing like you're actually educating them. Stuff that they probably couldn't just find on Google, man. I mean, these they probably could find on Google, but it'd take a lot of research where you're, you're right here just hitting that pain point. As soon as you post that content with this kind of hook, they're gonna keep watching if they're interested in that. The next content pillar for authority and inspiration probably be something like project highlights or transformations that you've done. So that's you showing off your work to build credibility, inspire people to book. So maybe that's showing you before and after room reveals. Maybe you're spotlighting a client and what they said about you. Or maybe you're just showing the transformation of the client's bathroom or something like that. Maybe you are giving them a peek into one of the most challenging projects you've all you've done, how you got around it and why it was so rewarding to you. That's gonna set you up as the authority in your industry and then for like the conversion type content that's gonna be more salesy type that's like services, your services and your offers. So you wanna make it super crystal clear about how people can work with you or buy your products. So what's included in a virtual staging design package? How to know if you need a designer versus a decorator design help without the big budget. Here's how my room refresh service works. All of these are going to show that you have an actual service that they can purchase. So this is kind of what content pillars look like. You're coming up with content that is specific around your niche and your target audience. So backing up a minute before you even start posting. I probably should have talked about this first. You've got your niche, you've got your audience, you've got your content. But imagine now people see your content in their Reels tab or on their Explore page and they go to your profile. This is the next step here, is having that profile all dialed in. So first thing I look at when it comes to a profile is your picture. If you're the face of the brand, then it should definitely be a picture of you. Well lit, maybe professional. If you want to remove the background and put a bright color behind you so you show up on the stories tab more brighter, feel free. I have a good example of this over on my own page. I don't have a bright background behind me, but it's just a professional clear photo of my face. And then from there my page name is filled out with my first and last name. And then social media agency, because that's the keyword I want to be found for. I own Influence Marketing Studio. I'm trying to attract busy business owners who can't handle their social media, so they hire me and my team to take over it. So social media agency is my keyword. From there we're looking at your bio. People are going to skim through that. So you want to make it short and sweet. Line breaks, maybe throw in some emojis in there. I'm going to pull mine up for a minute because I don't even remember what mine says right now. Okay. Caitlin Rhodes, Social media agency, your trusted partner for all things social media and biz. SM marketing agency owner, 15 years experience. And then underneath those two lines I've got host of call her creator and CEO of influence studio. So I'm also plugging in my businesses, right? So this kind of gives a very grand overview. I'm a social media expert. I own a social media agency. I've got 15 years plus experience. Experience. I'm a podcast host and an agency owner. I, I'm telling them enough to why they should follow me. So one thing in that starter pack, the Instagram growth starter pack I was telling you guys about, I have a free, well, it's not free if you buy the starter pack, but you've got your bio checklist in there. And what that's going to do is that's going to walk you through all of those. It's going to teach you how to come up with that bio in there. But if you need some examples, go ahead and Google keywords in your own industry right now and see what other people are putting there and pretend that you are your target audience and you land on their page. Do you like what they have to say? Does it make you want to follow them? Do they have their story highlights filled out? Do they have a link in their bio that you know goes to some type of page that makes you trust them and want to buy from them? Those are little things that you need to be looking at when it comes to the bio. As far as stories go to the Stories highlights. I actually had a one on one with a client this week that didn't even have the Stories highlights feature, which was crazy. But we all know Instagram is a little weird and finicky sometimes. But what I was telling her is when it comes to Instagram Stories highlights, I like to just put some Bingeable type content in there. So like, for my own, I have a start here, story highlight, where you can just, you know, learn who I am. It's an introduction to me and what I do and why I do it. And then some of my other story highlights are my membership because I have an Instagram growth membership. So that's my service or my product. And then testimonials. I like to share wins from my clients in there. And then I also have a how I help highlight too, which goes into my social media agency, my trainings, my podcasts, all the above. So don't sleep on your your story highlights either. Okay? So we've kind of talked about dialing in your profile, coming up with your content. Now I gave you ideas on your content, but when it really comes to posting, one of the biggest questions I get is, well, how many times a week should I be posting? Or how many times a day, what does that look like? So I believe that when you're just getting started with Instagram, you need to create a schedule that you can keep up with. Whether that's twice a week, three times a week, five times a week, whatever. It's going to be different for everyone. I personally post 14 times a week, which is a crazy amount and I don't expect anybody else to do that. So for today's episode, we're just going to say that you do 15 posts for the next month. That really works out to like 2, 4, 6, 8, 3, 6, 9, 12. That works out to like 3 and a half maybe post for the month. And I think that's doable and easy. So if I were you, I would break those 15 posts up into different formats. Because the one thing with Instagram is they want you to use all of their different formats. So reels, carousel stories. I'd probably break it up to like, let's see, there's four weeks in a month. I would try, try, try, try to do two reels a week. But if you can't, that's okay, you know, do what you got to do. But if we were to do two reels a week, two, four, six, eight. That would be eight reels for the Month. And with those reels you want educational, relatable, inspirational and you want to show your face. So educational you're going to teach them something relatable. You're going to post stuff that other people in your industry would relate to. Or maybe you have the same pain points as your target audience so they're going to relate to it. Put yourself in someone else's shoes. What would they see and be like, oh my God, I relate. And then the other part of that is inspirational. Maybe that's an inspirational quote or maybe it's a really great story or something that, you know, evokes that emotion and inspires them. And typically when people are inspired, they'll share it to their stories. So you get in front of other people or they'll send it to a friend or family member. So I would stick with those three types of content and then refer to your content pillars with specifically what you should be posting with that. And then so that's 8 reels out of 15. What do we got left? 7. 7. So 8 reels. I'd probably do 4ish carousels or static images. So carousels are the posts that have up to. Actually I think you can do 20 now. Let me see what a carousel Instagram. I know for a little while it was 10. It is now they're still saying 10. Isn't it 20 now? I don't know, I'll check. A carousel basically though is where you can upload more than one photo, right? So you're getting people to swipe through. The longer that people stay, stay there. Swiping through the algorithm is watching that and saying, oh this person likes this content. I'm going to keep showing her more of Caitlyn's content because she sat there and looked through this one. And then static images are kind of like bite sized value bombs. That might be like an infographic or an introduction post. We actually just dropped a template in Club Influence this week. It's a static post, so it's just one page but it's like you and your cutout and outlined and then there's little arrows pointing to little things about you. Like I love this, I dislike this. I started this business because of this. Here's three things I wish you would know or something. Something like that. That's a, that's a value bomb static image, right? So it's enough content on there to keep them there for a minute cuz they're reading through all of it. If I was going to just post a photo dump then I would Do a photo dump of like a carousel with a couple different photos so they're having to scroll through it. See what I'm saying? So you want to keep people on that post as long as possible because that's showing the algorithm that it's valuable to. They'll continue to show more content to that person. And then some supplemental content with this would be stories. So like posting polls on your stories behind the scenes, sharing fun updates. Like maybe you're showing off your team or maybe something happened, maybe you're showing some personal sides of you. Whatever it is, I do keep stories to a minimum because I don't want to post too many or people just skip over them. And the more that people skip over your stories, the more you start to get pushed to the back of the line. So if you're on Instagram, if you're in Instagram, just like on the homepage and you see stories at the top, that's the line I'm talking about. So if people keep skipping your stories, you're going to get get pushed to the back of the line and you want to be at the front so that when people log in, they see your face and they click on you. Now, the goal with all of this content is not to go viral, even though I know everyone loves to go viral, get you fast followers. But really the goal for this, you know, next four weeks of you posting is to two things to build trust with the right people. But we're also going to be using this as your testing phase. So you're going to put out a lot of content in your first month or two because we want to see how everything performs. And then at the end of those 30 or 60 days, we can go back and check your analytics and see what kind of content performed really good, what kind of content performed bad. What should we maybe skip over? What should we push next week or the week after or the month after? I typically for my personal the Caitlyn Rhodes account, I will take my top performers, like the top three ish. And then when I create content for next week, I typically will pick that same topic, but I'll do like a different version of it. For our Influence Studio Instagram page, I've actually had the girls start reposting old post that performed well the first time. Some of those are performing well again, some of them are performing even better the second time. I haven't really seen a repost do worse than the first time. As long as you're being picky with what you're reposting so again, you want to repurpose content that already performed good the first time. And then sometimes we'll tweak the hook just a little bit. Like, if I think there can be an improvement in a. In a hook, I'll change it. If I like the hook the way that it was, I'll literally leave it be and just change the music on there. We just did one for influence, and it was Darby had done a talking head video of her explaining, like, Instagram growth tips that we should leave behind in 2025. And so I think the first time they posted it, I thought that the hook was a little generic. So this time around, I made them change it to something a little more specific. Like Instagram growth trends were ditching in 2025, whereas the first time we posted it, I want to actually tell you all the difference here. I want to show you how small the tweak was. Okay, so the first time we posted it, the hook was stop doing these four things on Instagram. Now, the second time that we've posted it, we have Instagram growth trends we're ditching in 2025. So we're going to kind of play around with this and let this post and see how it performs. But that was us repurposing something and tweaking the hook. So don't feel like you have to just repurpose the same exact thing. You can always change some things on there to see if it performs better. All right, so let's talk about reels for a second, because I still feel like reels are the number one growth tactic for Instagram. So I kind of want to talk to you guys about what I'm seeing working right now versus how it was a year ago. So trending sounds have always performed pretty well over on Instagram, and they still do, especially if you jump on a trend early in its prime. So, like, you're jumping on an Instagram trend before everyone else uses it, and it gets all saturated. Still like doing that. And I still think that should be a big part of your content strategy. Now, I also have really started loving talking head reels, and that's basically of you just getting in front of the camera and talking to your audience. Now, there is a very thin line as far as how long a talking head video needs to be if you want to maintain watch time. So watch time is super important on Instagram. It's what helps the algorithm understand what your content, not understand what it is, but understand how your audience is liking it. So if you've Got a full watch time. Like if they're watching from beginning to end, then the algorithm will continue to show it to more and more people. But if you've got a really short watch time, people aren't really watching it. That signals to the algorithm that it's not performing very well. So talking head reels, I like to talk for, you know, Max is 30 seconds, but I would really try to keep it around 20 seconds. And when you do a talking head, I typically will start with a pain point or something really crazy that I just found out, like a tip or something. And then I'll like tease them about how to fix it and then I'll tell them to comment a keyword to get the full strategy. And then from there I'm pushing them to a blog post on our Influence Studio website or I'm sending them to a Google document that has the information there and I'm giving more information there. But notice I'm making them comment a word before I really give them the nitty gritty of, of whatever it is. I've seen those performing really, really well. I actually have a reel right now that's going viral. It's been going viral since December. So December, January, February, March, April, five months. This reel just continues to bring in leads for me. And it, it, it is literally like 10 seconds long of me saying, you know, I'm a normal person, but I can still do X, Y, Z. And here's how I do it. If you want the full strategy, comment the word xyz. And so that's performing really, really well right now. If you think of a way that you can put that for your own industry, highly suggest trying that. We've been testing this out for some of our clients too. Pay attention to your hooks. That's really the biggest thing when it comes to reels. You can have a really good video and you can have a really good insight or value to give them. But if you don't hook them in in those first three seconds, they're probably going to keep scrolling and your, your video just ends up dying in the algorithm. So have a strong hook. There should be a text hook which is over top at the top of your video. And then there should be some kind of visual hook, whether that's you like your hands in the video or you pop out from somewhere or you're just moving around something that catches their eye. I also suggest keeping it simple raw. Some of my best performing videos right now are Me After Pilates in My Sports Bra or Sweaty My Hair's not done. And I just look like a normal human being. I just feel like people are starting to connect more with that versus a year ago when I was using the prettiest filter and I was in front of a ring light every single time I posted a video. I don't do that anymore. I don't care anymore. And then if you're just getting started with reels, I would at least tell you to try posting two to three times per week. I want you to have sustainable growth rather than burnout. So if you can't handle three reels a week, then start with two reels a week. Just something that you can commit to and stay consistent with for at least the next couple of weeks to get some data on your content. Reels are my specialty. My 60 days reels challenge is in that Instagram growth starter kit that I talked about in the Show Notes. But Besides giving you 60 days of Reels ideas and hooks and prompts, I also teach you editing features in there. Now that I'm thinking about it, I need to add in the new Edits app that the Edits app has not been added into the Reels Challenge, but that's something that I will update. And if you do buy the Reels Challenge, I'll be sure to email you that updated version. But Edits is side note, new feature out for Instagram. I just started using it, you know, the day that it came out, I started using it and I'm liking it so far. It's very similar. It's like if Cap Cut and Inshot had a baby, they would have edits. It is exactly the two apps mixed together. There's some extra transitions in there that we never had over on the Instagram regular app. There's new sound effects, there's cutouts. There's all kinds of things in there that we didn't have before. So I actually really like it. I know there's some people hating on it, but I like it. All right, step four, you've optimized your profile. You've got your content, you've got your real strategy. Now you're going to engage. So the biggest, biggest fail that people make on Instagram is that they're not engaging with their audience. So to the algorithm, it looks like no one's home. It looks like you're just posting and ghosting, and that's like the worst thing you can do on Instagram. So we need to make sure that someone's home. So I spend 15 minutes, you know, every other day or every day on the app, commenting on other people's posts, replying to stories, replying to my own comments. I'll even go to the Explore page and I'll look for different posts that pop out at me and comment on those. But you just want to let them know that someone's home engagement is a very underrated growth tip on Instagram. All right, to close this out, I've got five things to avoid when it comes to Instagram. Okay? The first one is posting without a strategy or winging it. Obviously, we kind of went through that at the beginning of this. When you post without strategy, it one, makes it harder on you, and two, you end up talking to no one because you don't even know what you want to be known for or who you're trying to target. So it's just a mess. Two, is obsessing over your followers instead of obsessing over your content. I know it can be disheartening when you do feel like you're posting all the time and your page just isn't growing. But if you really sit back and kind of reevaluate your content, go into those analytics, go look at your dashboard, go see what's actually performing, right, and figure out how you can continue to lean into those topics a little bit harder, that is going to be so much more productive than you crying over your follower list. Number three, ignoring your DMs. If you don't have time to reply to DMs, set up DM automation. Stan has DM automation. Many chat has DM automation. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. It is really nice to have when someone comments a word and it is instantly delivered to them. One thing I've taught before to all of my students is that there's like a huge percentage of people. If you don't respond to them in a certain amount of time, they go somewhere else. So having that set up as a safety net, I suggest doing it for engaging again, 15 minutes every other day. 555 strategy. I've got a podcast episode about the 555 strategy and how to increase your engagement. So please listen to that episode after this if. If you do need help with that. It's super underrated, but it definitely works. And then number five, which I realized my list actually was three, three mistakes. So I gotta come up with this at the top of my head. I think number five would be, oh, keeping up with updates and trends. Right? So I'm not just talking about like, trending audio, but I'm talking about, like If Instagram puts out a new feature, try it, test it. They say that when Instagram has a new feature, they favor accounts that use those new features. Now, I heard someone debunk that the other day, so I don't know if it's true or not, but I typically if something comes out new on Instagram and I can use it, I will try my best to use it. So like adding music to your carousels, that was a new feature. I started using it. We've seen good engagement from that. Testing trial reels. I've got trial reels over on my Call Her Creator account, so I'm playing around with that. It took me about 60 days for a real trial reel to actually perform well. So don't get down if you have tried trial reels and they're not performing for you, it takes some time. But I will tell you my strategy there, Secret Sauce was reposting reels that had performed well the first time and just doing it again because they'll push that out to people that are not following you already. And then, yeah, I think that's, that's about it. When it comes to the mistakes, there's more. So just not doing it is the biggest mistake. Just sitting there and thinking, oh, I wish I would have started earlier or sooner or I just don't know what to post or, you know, throw out your excuses, I don't care about them. You just need to start. And as soon as you start, it's this freeing feeling in your heart when you start to finally get that traction and people start noticing you. It's a good feeling. So you just have to start. Okay, next step for all of this is just to execute on everything I said. Your strategy, content engagement. Strategize, you know, your what, your who, your why. Create your content pillars and start posting them. Engage with like minded accounts and build your community. The best tip I can give you all when it comes to building a community is to just start. So the longer you wait, the harder it is to start again. If you want to grab my Instagram Growth starter pack kit, it's in the show notes that will help you get started. If you liked this episode of Call Her Creator, I hope you will download it because then you'll get notified next Wednesday when their newest episode comes out, which is really, really good. You don't want to miss it. I also want to highlight. I've been interviewing really good successful Instagram business people for the last couple of weeks, so I've got some really good episodes. If you haven't listened to them yet. Megan Hall, Jenna Peterson, they both have made millions of dollars from Instagram. So we kind of walk through their strategies, their highs, their lows, what they did. So they've been really valuable. So if you haven't checked those out yet, that should be your next listen. Thanks so much for being here. I will see you next week.