Eva Reder — August 13, 2018 — August 13, 2018
I’m a growth hacker. But recently my growth hacks have failed me on Instagram. But let me share the lessons learned from my most successful account: A ROSE GARDENING ACCOUNT. It’s not the largest account I’ve ever grown but it’s the most engaged. And the surprising thing is: I haven’t even tried to grow it. The expectation for the project was just to make sure their content gets reposted to Instagram from their highly engaged Facebook page which the owners grew to over 18,000 followers and hundreds of shares per post without any paid spend.
Fast forward, a year and I built this account from scratch and the account had grown to over 7,000 followers. Their followers were the most engaged community I’ve seen out of all the other accounts I managed and actually grew. Over 1000 likes on any picture. Hundreds of comments. No automation or shoutouts from other pages.
While some of the other accounts I manage are struggling to get 200 likes on pictures after Instagram changed their algorithm, the flower account is still going strong.
Here’s what you can learn from their success:
PEOPLE LOVE FLOWERS.
1) The more NICHE the better. Don’t start “just another lifestyle” account. Know your audience.
In my client’s account: rose garden lovers in Germany.
Get as specific and as niche as you can. Expand from there.
2) Provide content that actually brings VALUE to people.
Too many people start accounts or blogs so “other people can keep up with their life”. That may work if you’re Kim Kardashian and people actually want to know what’s going on in your life but for most other people that’s not how you build influence. Your mom will love it but everybody else is selfish: why would I consume your content over somebody else’s. A selfie with a quote won’t do it.
My client’s account provides real value:
– beautiful pictures of roses from some of the best rose gardens in the world (they travel to all of them themselves, or get pictures from the owners) and hand-crafted captions (sometimes too long for Instagram to let me post them). They write about how to take care of the specific rose, when to cut it, where to grow it, the history etc.
And rose lovers love their content. We have followers from all over the world (they even care enough to read the auto-translated German to English version on Instagram) – BECAUSE their content is truly valuable and not as readily available on other platforms.
3) They are consistent
People know they can get their flower-fix at any point by just visiting this account. During the time that we grew the account, the owners used to post every single day which got people used to it. They started building a habit with their audience.
4) They crowd-sourced content
Because they love roses so much they know everybody in the space. They keep posting “friend’s” pictures with new captions and their friends LOVE it. They feel appreciated because their photos of their precious roses get the love they deserve by being featured on our account.
If you do it right & still produce a lot of your own high-quality content, crowd-sourcing is a super powerful tool and helps you pump out enough content at all times.
Unknowingly, the owners of this rose garden account are beating every other account I’m managing in terms of followers: engagement ratio and it’s hilarious because they aren’t even trying.
So if you’re trying to grow your account make sure you take these golden nuggets serious: find a very specific niche, provide real value, stay consistent and you’ll see followers will flock to your account.
reinbacher / Pixabay
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