The 3 Types of People You Must Be Following On Instagram
Now if you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 10 years (no offense to anyone who has been living under a rock!), chances are you have an Instagram account and you’re using it to promote your leathergoods brand to your ideal customer and following. You’re being a good social media user and shouting it from the rooftops about how amazing your business and brand is. You post photos of your work, you let them know about sales and giveaways that you’re doing and you share behind the scenes photos with them, right?
You’re like “hey you guys, look at me!”
Thats all great, but who are you following? Does who you follow really matter?
Should you be following your friends, family and those awesome people who post photos of their lunch and their pets? OR could you be using a more strategic follow strategy? The answer is yes, it does matter and there is absolutely a strategy behind who you follow on Instagram and it’s quite simple
FOLLOW THE PEOPLE WHO YOU WANT TO BE WORKING WITH
Follow the people who are your competition, press and stores. So that means not following friends and family on your business Instagram account unless they actually are your ideal customers and have followers of their own who would also be your ideal customer.
The reason why you want to follow the people who you want to work with is, because then your feed remains clean and full of those people only. Instead of wasting time and getting sidetracked by what Aunt Judy ate for dinner last night or how adorable your college roommate’s children are you can focus on what is going to make an impact in your business - finding and attracting your ideal customer. It’s all about streamlining the process!
Keeping your following to only those that you want to work with or those that are your actual ideal customer helps to keep your Instagram presence consistent as well. Now no one knows exactly how the algorithm works but we do know that Instagram is working very hard to show its users MORE of that they do like and LESS of what they don’t like. So by keeping your feed streamlined to people who have followers who are your ideal customer or are related to growing your business in some way is going to allow the algorithm to do it’s job and continue to suggest ideal customer profiles to you as well as to suggest your profile to your ideal customer.
There are 3 groups that make up the people that you want to work with. Your competition, press and media outlets and shops and stores.
FOLLOWING YOUR COMPETITION ON INSTAGRAM
You might be thinking, I don’t want to work with my competition! I want to destroy my competition!
Hang on though, as I teach in Lucrative Leathercraft, when you know your competition you know your customer. You can use your competition to really get clear on who your customer is especially when you’re first starting your leathergoods business.
There also might come a time in the future when you will want to collaborate with your competition. Collaborations can be so helpful to help build and expand your network. Collaborations allow you to get infront of a large group of your ideal customer at once and can be very effective for building your list and making more sales.
FOLLOWING PRESS AND MEDIA OUTLETS ON INSTAGRAM
Follow press accounts for blogs, influencers, magazines both online and print that have your ideal customer as an audience. Just by commenting and engaging with these accounts will get you infront of your ideal customer.
Following these accounts also helps you to build the relationship with those media outlets. Doing so will set you up for the future when you pitch your products to them asking them for features and stories about your brand.
Pitching your brand to get press is one of the best way to widen your network and increase views and traffic to your website. If a blog is already familiar with your brand before you pitch to them, they’re more likely to give you a positive response.
FOLLOWING SHOPS AND STORES THAT FEATURE WORK LIKE YOURS ON INSTAGRAM
Again, following these accounts, puts you infront of your ideal customer. Simply by engaging with these accounts allows you to reach a large group of your ideal customers at once.
When you want to scale your business in the future you will probably want to sell to stores and if they are already familiar with your brand when you go to pitch you’ll be more likely to get a yes.
ARE YOU FOLLOWING THE RIGHT ACCOUNTS ON INSTAGRAM?
Follow your competition, press and store and engage with them on social media allows you to you build a relationship with them as well as with their audience. Every time you comment on a post, yes the account owner is seeing it but also their audience - your ideal customer is seeing it too. This is key to getting people to come back and look at your feed, your stories and your profile and then click back to your website. Ta da! Hello website traffic!
So is there a strategy when it comes to who you follow on Instagram? You bet there is! Follow the people who you want to work with that have your same ideal customer.
