Grow Your Instagram Followers (and a rant about Etsy) | Erin Killian | Episode 703

Erin Killian | Episode 703

Erin Killian is a ceramicist and writer based in Southern California. When she’s not wrangling her three young boys, you can find her in her backyard studio making simple, functional pottery. Before she moved West, she was a journalist with NPR in Washington, D.C. and has written for the Washington Post and Fodor’s Travel.

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What was the number one thing you did to intentionally grow your Instagram follower numbers?

It felt kind of funny to do this, but I started to look at potters that I admired who may have had a similar style to me and I then looked at their followers. I would then go in to their followers and started to follow their people. And then they would start to follow you back… especially the accounts that didn’t have that many followers would tend to follow me back.

There is this tactic out there where people say to follow a bunch of people, wait a few days to see who actually followed you back, and then go back and unfollow all the people that didn’t follow you. Is that a tactic that you employed?

I did do a little bit of unfollowing. To be honest I really didn’t feel right about doing that, and so when I got up to the 1,000 mark, I totally stopped doing that. But yes, I’ll admit to doing a little of that. I just didn’t want to have 3,000 followers and then it would muddled. I still wanted to be inspired by my own feed. So that was also a part of why I would do the unfollowing.

I’m not saying that tactic is wrong, because here is a little spin on that… The other side of that coin is that if you do the follow, it is intended to create a relationship and build community of likeminded people that you can talk with. I am wondering if that is the reason that you went about it with that approach?

Yes, but I also did want to grow my Instagram following. So it wasn’t just for community. I wanted to get more eyes on my pottery too. It is really tricky… I was selling at an in-person show two years ago, and I met this woman who said, You have a really great Instagram. I’d love to meet with you and teach you how to grow your Instagram. I think she was wanting to sell me her services and I thought, You know, I can do this myself. So this became the challenge for myself to figure this out. It was an intentional business idea… I’d like to grow my Instagram because I’d like to grow my business and I’m going to figure out how to do this.

One of the standard tips is that we are supposed to post regularly and you said that you started to post every single day. The question I have is that you have been posting regularly, but there is a severe lack of one thing in your feed that I thought would be a critical part of the ingredient mix of Instagram growth, and that is videos.

Yes, that’s true. My best friend in town says that I need to do more videos, and I’m all, Yeah, I don’t love doing the videos. Part of it is that I have a really small space that I work in. I work in an 8 by 10 studio in my backyard and it’s really hard to capture a video without it looking armature-ish. I love the videos where their studios are gorgeous and I feel like my space is very practical and it works for me but showing off my space is not been my desire.

I like that you have had growth in spite of the lack of videos. So then does one picture a day really make that big of a difference?

I have noticed that when I do two or three a day, there is a jump; I get more followers. But I am not actively trying to grow my Instagram anymore, but I have noticed that. I do that when I have a shop update because I just want people to see what is going to be available. What I’ll do is I’ll do a firing and then the shop update is going to be in the next week. Then I’ll have only a good four or five days to try to fit in something like 30 pictures. So I’ll put them in my Stories and I’ll post more often. As a result I have noticed that in those weeks my Instagram followings will jump that week. So I think that posting more than once a day will be beneficial for people trying to grow their Instagram.

Did you also change your account to a business account so you could see their minimal analytics?

Yes, I did.

How do you protect you account? Do you have double authentication on your account?

I think I do. I try to do the most secure approach, but I’d have to go back and make sure. Now that we are talking, I’d have to go back and make sure. I have noticed that people that are doing giveaways have been getting hacked and I feel for those people.

What are your best Instagram hastags that you use for Instagram followers to find you?

I don’t know because I just use the same ones over and over again. What I do is I go and post a mug and then I’ll copy the post of the mug that I posted before.

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