Becoming an influencer: First milestone completed! How I got over 5k followers in 3 months (and you can, too)

Steemians ♡ Hello,

Okay, I didn't get EXACTLY 5000 followers in three months. I wanted to shamelessly see if that would lure you into reading further. Mehehe. 

I DID, however, get over 4000 followers in 3 months. I am now at 5200 and started with fewer than 1000 when my account had no purpose other than to post random life updates that nobody really cared about because I had no idea how to Instagram. 

Can I just share with you my excitement for officially being a micro travel influencer? I'm about to get my first brand collaboration. Hard work DOES pay off. Woohoo!! 

And also, hi. I was so excitedly starting to write this post I forgot to ask how you are. Sup?

Before we get into any "tips and tricks" that we can find on thousands of other blog posts (spoiler alert: "engaging" isn't enough these days), I'm going to share with you the absolute fundamentals I discovered to start a successful Instagram account. 

Imagine that these fundamentals are your floors, your walls, and your roof of your little Instagram account house. The growth, the numbers, the statistics, the actual influencing, etc is everything that is inside your Instagram house. But you can only get those beautiful designer furnitures, stainless steel appliances, and knick-knacks IF you have 100% built and mastered the solid foundations. Otherwise your house will fall apart when the first storm comes! (I did real estate for a while, can you tell?)

Nowadays I am primarily a coach, so I like to ask questions rather than giving advice. The first one is: 

What is your account?

What I mean specifically is what is your industry. Are you a business that sells aquariums? Are you a fashion blogger? A meme account? Are you a personal brand? Are you another Jenner fan page? 

The areas are nearly unlimited because once you know what it is, you have to find your NICHE (e.g. mine is female digital nomad lifestyle within travel). I cannot stress enough how important it is to know your niche. If you have no idea who your peers are (NOT your "goal" accounts or Instagram idols, big difference), it's going to get very hard to start in the first place. Because once you understand EXACTLY what and who your niche is, you can begin to...
Collaborate with your peers and dominate your niche. This is actually a point in itself but there is one more thing that is more important that needs to come first.

Second question. 

What is your content?

This point is even more important than the first one because it is simply THE most painfully underrated, misunderstood, and neglected key step to becoming an influencer orwhateveryouwannnacallit.
If you're reading this because you are interested in growing your following (whether for professional or personal reasons, doesn't matter), I want you to write down the following:

Do Not Compromise On Your Content. 

I want you to memorize this every time you snap something on your camera or your phone. 
Unless you're Beyonce, nobody (ok maybe your mother or your best friend) is going to follow you just because it's you. The only reason someone is going to follow you is your CONTENT. Period. 

We need to break this down into separate parts:

What are you bringing to the table that your target audience wants? E.g. if you're a personal brand, the answer would be authenticity. Your story. I genuinely believe that people have a bullshit radar (whether consciously or not) and I listen very closely to mine. Don't force anything, don't sugarcoat shit (or even worse, straight up make up a story) and don't stage your life. As a traveler account, some of my photos may be staged to some extent- after all they're a represention of the excitement of being a female, working, full time solo traveler - HOWEVER, the caption is where my character and story comes to play. My photos wouldn't have half the value without the caption. As a passionate writer, the caption is where I get to demonstrate my personality, my quirks, my brains, my story, my me. The good and the bad.

Now to the other part. How is the quality of your photography? WHAT are you photographing? Why are you photographing it? How does your target audience relate to this photo?  What value are you bringing through your content? Is it funny, inspiring, beautiful, moving, ..? 

There are two aspects that are meant when talking about IG content quality: The individual photo and the feed as a whole. Your feed is where someone new, who just clicked your profile, goes window shopping. If it's not very clear from the beginning what your account is offering, they won't follow along. The same goes for the aesthetic of your feed. If it's not aesthetically pleasing, if it's overwhelming and messy, they probably won't follow along either. And to the other individual photo aspect; if they like your feed and they are considering "going into your shop" aka following you by just checking out one of your posts, it better be a good quality one that also makes it clear what you're about. Because if they check out one of your photos, they're already halfway there and you get a second shot at having them sold to follow you on your journey. 

To give some visual context, let me share some great examples of before & afters of my own account. 

Random blurry selfie with terrible lighting from March: 

Same face (plus a story), post from last night: 

This is my feed from January-March of this year where I just used Instagram for fun and posted sporadically a few times per month:

My first nomad chapter in Asia, where I began to post someting daily to share my journeys: 

When I realized this could really become something I enjoy, but had no visual direction and was still using my iphone: 

Started using my Canon and ditched the gym selfies late May:

Finding my "female traveler" shots to make it clear what my account is about without losing too much of my own spark: 

This past week and how much I've stepped up my photo game over the last two weeks simply by getting Lightroom and finding my aesthetic! I'm pretty happy with how my feed is looking now :) What do you think? 

Lastly,
Here's my trick, my little secret:

Never, ever buy followers. 
Let me tell you about that time I started a meme account about a year ago (@bloodyblister, RIP). I posted three memes per day for about a week, bought my first 300 followers because back then I, too, felt insecure starting from nothing, and guess where that lead? Nowhere. I realized I had no idea what I was doing and I lost motivation (I also didn't prioritize the time to build an account from scratch). 

Buying followers is like eating food because you don't want to waste it, even though you're full. You're going to regret over-eating 30 minutes later when you've fallen into a deep food coma, and then again a few weeks later when you've gained a few pounds. Buying followers will come back to bite you in one form or another, sooner or later. Just don't. Especially if your plan is to build a professional account with the intention of monetizing your audience. That's pretty much the entire point and the origin of the term "influencing". It's truly no longer a numbers game, but it's about follower quality and trust. How are you going to influence people/bots who don't even know of nor care about your existence?  

If this was helpful, interesting, informative, or anything else valuable to you, please do share your thoughts, upvotes, and feedback! I would love to hear what you thought and if you would enjoy another one of these. Episode 2 of becoming an influencer? 

Good night and have a great week,

Naomi ♡