4 years of being a creator on Instagram, what I’ve learnt, my struggles and successes

Today marks four years of being on Instagram, I’ve had a lot of highs and lows in life over my Instagram career (hmmm, can we call it a career?). So I’m going to share with you how I have found the last four years on Instagram, and I’m going to be as honest as possible.

For my first two years of using Instagram for BooksNest, I saw fairly slow growth. I wasn’t making it past the 1.5k mark and just seemed to be stuck there. I didn’t really think too much on it because I loved creating content and being part of the community. Also looking back at my feed, my photos really weren’t pushing the boat out, so I was unlikely to ever grow anyway.

But around September time in 2018, so two and a half years into my Bookstagram life, I joined a new comment pod. This was also around the time I started mixing my feed up a bit and trying out a new theme and filter. This ended up shaping the photos you currently see on my Instagram so really this was beginning of my growth on the platform. From this point onwards I saw my account grow in following and engagement, hitting 10k followers in May of 2019.

I’ll go into more detail now about why I think all of this happened, what I’ve learnt and the harsh truths of creating content on Instagram.

For me, Instagram comment pods have worked wonders

For anyone who doesn’t know what a comment pod is, it’s a group chat on Instagram of up to 15 members, you each share your latest post and like and comment on the other posts shared. The aim of this is to help boost engagement on your post within the first hour of it being live, the golden hour for Instagram’s algorithm to decide if it should push your post to more people.

There is a lot of speculation about pods and if they are worth it, but for me, I’d say yes. I’ve also seen people say Instagram doesn’t like pods and being in them damages your engagement, but I can say from my own experience this is not true. What Instagram doesn’t like is bots, so as long as your pod is within Instagram’s platform and is filled with accounts you genuinely like, you should be absolutely fine.

Read my post about what Instagram Pods are and how you can join one. 

Sometimes you have to mix up your photos and change your style to adapt

As with any platform, algorithms are constantly changing, so as a creator you need to be ready to change too. I’ve had various different themes and filters and the one I’m on now has done me really well. But the actual content in my photos has changed a lot even throughout my time using my current filter. I look at my analytics and study what does well on my feed and try to take more photos like those. It’s all about trying new things. If your engagement and follower count isn’t growing, you may need to switch it up a bit and maybe a few different times until you find something that sticks.

Don’t be afraid to try new things, they could result in you reaching a whole new audience! It took me a while to change up my feed, but I could see it wasn’t growing anymore, so I looked at what was doing well and took inspiration from that.

Some books just aren’t popular on Instagram

Unfortunately, the book featured in the photo on Instagram does have a huge say on how well that photo does. The lesser-known the book, the more likely the post won’t perform as well. I’ve even seen highly popular books not perform well on several different occasions in my posts. I’m unclear as to what the pattern is here, and whilst it’s apparent that anything featuring a Harry Potter book will always do well for engagement, it is still very much a guessing game.

There’s not much we can do about this and I will still be posting photos of lesser-known books too, but it’s good to be aware these posts may not perform as well.

Here are some shortcuts on Instagram to help save you time on the platform
Here are some more tips to grow your engagement and reach 10k followers on Instagram

You have to be present on the platform and not just there to post and go

I think this is one of the most important things I have learnt during my time on Instagram. This platform wants you to spend time on it, by engaging with other users you are appealing more to the Instagram algorithm. But more importantly, you’re creating a positive reputation for yourself within the community. We’re a tight-knit group and the more you comment, like and follow users, the more your account is likely to pop up and be promoted and the better your reputation within the community will be.

I use the word community because that’s what this platform feels like to me. And in a community, you have to give to receive.

You need to give your followers a reason to comment

I want to like and comment on every post I love, I want to engage with that content and that user. But sometimes it is tricky to leave a comment when a caption isn’t written very well. Instagram is all about the photos, of course, it’s a visual platform. But it’s also about the caption you put alongside your photo. If you’re not writing an engaging caption then why should anyone be commenting on your post? I always make sure to include a question in every post so I can help my followers know what to say in the comments of my photos.

Those are all of the tips I’ll leave you with. I hope they help, they are based on my own experiences over four years of posting photos to Instagram.