Instagram is one of the most influential social media platforms, especially among younger adults and families with children.
Growing the number of your account followers and your overall engagement can be incredibly helpful to communicate your events as well as to minister to people who don’t yet come to your church.
Here are five tips beyond the basics of hashtags to help grow your Instagram engagement:
1. Audit your posts
One of the first things that you need to do is to take a look at your posts. Take note of which posts did well and which did not. Look at the ones that did well as a group and ask some questions:
- What features do they share?
- What was their tone?
- Are there any similarities in the images themselves?
- Do they share a common hashtag?
Once you have established some similarities among the ones that did well, do the same with the ones that did poorly. Craft a new post from that knowledge base and track how it does.
2. Look at all forms of engagement
Instagram’s algorithm doesn’t just operate on likes, it also looks at how many people bookmark a post, send it to friends and make comments. Pay attention to the types of posts that do well in the different categories.
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3. Audit a similar Instagram account that has more followers than yours
Do the same thing you did in Step 1, but with a larger account. Make sure you calibrate for their scale. They, most likely, will get many more likes, etc. than you. Make sure you judge their posts against themselves and not against yours.
4. Follow people who like posts from similar accounts
A great way to increase your followers is to go to a similar page, click to view who likes one of its posts and follow those people. They will very likely get a notification about your page and check you out. What’s particularly powerful about this tool is that you can get exposure to people who are actively participating in the platform and actively engaging with similar content.
5. Share popular memes that are on brand
Some memes (such as the AI-generated Jesus flipping over the tables image) get popular quickly and are not only funny for your followers but also can get you picked up in other feeds when people are looking for the image later. Although it’s important to not fill your feed with other people’s memes, doing it with regularity can help you build some momentum.
And an honorable mention in this top-five list is something to not do: Don’t buy followers. It can be cheap and it can make you feel good, but buying followers throws off the Instagram algorithm and will end up keeping you from reaching the people who might actually be interested in what you have to offer.
Instead, take the time to follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to a healthy Instagram account. If you need more ideas, make sure to harness people power!
Jeremy Steele is a writer, conspirator and spiritual entrepreneur who refuses to give up on Christianity. He spends his time resourcing the dreams of the next generation and helping it discover paths to spiritual enlightenment and connection with God. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, and is associate pastor at Chesterbrook UMC. Find more about him and his work at Jeremy-Steele.com.