In February 2020 I started to change my posting routine I started posting regular and used buffer to schedule may postings. As I planed my postings ahead I felt less stressed and less pressure to be consistent in my postings. Post by post the content I shared changed: I shared more personal stories and allowed myself to be more open and vulnerable.
The caption section of my Instagram postings got longer and longer and I shared my stories also on my blog and on LinkedIn as I felt that these platforms were more suitable for this type of content.
Still Instagram played a major role in my content marketing. As the quality of my content changed, I realised that had to change the way I used hashtags to increase the reach of my content. So far, I had selected hashtags that were popular or I found sexy or specific to my personal brand.
But maybe that wasn’t what my audience was looking for. And the was my audience anyway?
I believed in an organic approach to identify my audience. That means I I didn’t determine my audience upfront but to find out in the process of posting to whom my content was resonating and who was reacting to my content.
The hashtags played a major role in this strategy to reach out to the unknown fans. I needed them to dress up a little.
Here are some helpful resources I found:
I had no idea how the Instagram algorithm work. This video by Dominique gave me some insights and some hints how to explore the topic further.
If I wanted my hashtags to perform better, I needed them to align with my content. But what did that mean exactly?
Using popular hashtags did not seem to be a smart move.
Now I use RiteTag to get suggestions for my visual and written content. And I use hastastic to evaluate the hashtags and find better ones. I find the Daily Post Count metric very helpful.
I get some basic figures about me and my postings on Ninjalytics and on IQ Hastags.
I still haven’t found what I am looking for:
Instagram tells me how often a hashtag is used in a post. And it shows me the most popular post for an hashtag. This does tell me very little about my audience as I don’t want to win a popularity contest.
Conclusion
I started scrappy because any marketing strategy is better than no strategy at all. Think big is not the right way for me as I try to be specific and try to find the least viable audience.