Collaboration over Competition: How to Grow Your Instagram by Supporting Others

If you’ve been researching how to grow your Instagram following, you’ve likely heard the buzzword “collaboration”. We love preaching collaboration over competition, but how can you tangibly use this advice to grow your Instagram following?

First of all, let’s reframe how we think about Instagram growth. While the numbers on social media feel incredibly important, the truth is they aren’t always the most important thing when it comes to success for your business. When you are thinking about goals for your Instagram, think about the community and the conversations you are growing, rather than the numbers at the top of your bio. Are you getting more DMs? Are you encouraging more comments on your posts? Are you noticing individuals starting to share more of your content? That is all growth, and that is the kind of growth we are hoping to see in 2021!

One of the ways you can encourage Instagram growth in 2021 is collaboration, and here are 3 ways we encourage you to do that:

Share posts from others in your community!

The easiest way to “collaborate” on social media is to have other individuals and businesses share your content. Not only does this help promote your business, but it helps to have other individuals “endorse” your content.

Without directly asking others to share your content (which we’ve all asked our family and friends to do!) how can you encourage this? The easiest way is to make sure you are sharing content from others! Make sure you are supporting others by sharing their posts, and let the law of reciprocity do the work.

Pro tip: When sharing other’s content in your Instagram stories, make sure you tag them so they know you’ve shared their post!

Partner with other brands

When thinking of ways to collaborate with other businesses or business owners on social media, we love competitions, giveaways, challenges, or even content collaborations. These are a great way to introduce each other to your audiences and increase your following and engagement.

When choosing businesses to partner with, it can be difficult to get over the mental hurdle of thinking of others as your competitors. Everyone is guilty of this on some level, but the truth is, you can’t grow on social media by sticking to your bubble! Your “competitors” likely have followers who love the concept of what they offer, but it isn’t a perfect fit for their needs the way your offer is! The same goes for your following. Sharing your networks with each other helps you both grow, and better yet, makes sure you are cheering each other on along the way!

Work with influencers

Collaborating with influencers is another fantastic way to showcase your business to new individuals and build your community. When seeking influencers, make sure to find individuals with audiences similar to yours in demographic to ensure you maximize your results!

Rather than making your influencer campaigns a one sided transaction where they are purely talking about you, we like returning the favour! Make sure you are introducing your followers to this individual.

Want to collaborate with us? Send us a message! We’ve love to grow together.