What I Learned Growing Our Instagram to 20K Followers Using Video
At the time of writing this our Instagram following is sitting at 23,100 followers. I say it’s quite the achievement in one year. Not an easy task. I (Wesley) personally filmed and edited over 95% of the videos, all while trying to build a great business, deliver projects to clients and bring a new baby into this world. Of course me posting on Instagram was very low on the list of priorities, but it didn’t come without effort.
If you look at our engagement, it’s quite high relative to other accounts with the same amount of followers and I’ll tell to you why I think that is.
We are consistent, we post the same style, and we are targeting the same type of person. People know what they can expect. And we are not chasing viral trends. All that said though, a lot has to do with the story/content, and maybe equally important the first 3 seconds of the video.
What Instagram tells me when some of my posts go viral, “this post is taking off, a lot of non-followers are sharing it”. So based on that, non-follower shares = higher impressions = more followers.
I find myself making content that inspires me. What’s on my mind at that current moment. Generally these types of videos are great and do well but only for my current followers. If I want to make a “viral“ video, it usually requires talking about something controversial or something that everyone agrees on but is not often discussed.
Now, all my content is for other people in the video industry. The reason I went that way instead of doing videos targeting my clients is that I have a lot more to say because I’m in the trenches. I think of it as my journal. Writing content for my clients, and building an audience that way would’ve been 100x more difficult. In some ways I regret this decision because I’m doing all this work and not really attracting new clients. But… but but but… I did learn something.
I can’t even tell you how many people reach out to me almost on a daily basis telling me they want to work for Winter Summer. I literally can’t answer all the messages and emails.
If I had a company that’s bottle neck was finding talent then I would do what I do and make content for the industry I’m in. But if you’re objective is to find clients, then you should make content for your clients.
Maybe I took the wrong path. I felt that I wasn’t quite ready to create content for my clients but I don’t regret it though because it still does come with benefits.
It brings me a form of social proof knowing that Winter Summer is followed by over 20 000 people. Another big thing is that it’s taught me so much more about video in general. What works, what doesn’t, being efficient in the production process and most importantly, how to tell a story. It has drastically improved my writing and storytelling ability.
For now, I will keep posting on Instagram for other video professionals and continue building my following. I’ll also focus on creating client-focused content on LinkedIn.
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I’d be happy to answer!