3 Tips to Grow Your Dog’s Instagram Account
There are so many goals you can have on Instagram! Some people want to make friends with other dog owners. Some people want to catalog their lives with their dogs. Others want to build an account as an income stream. And of course, some people want to do all of that and more!
Most people identify “growing” as a primary goal of their Instagram account. But in order to do so, you need to gain followers and increase those followers’ engagement with your content. As someone who has been in the dog Instagram space for over six years, I’ve learned a lot about what to do…and what not to do:
Do: Be relatable.
Remember, it’s not dogs reading your content – it’s other humans! It seems obvious, but it really is something people often forget when writing their captions. It’s important for others to be able to relate to you. When they relate to you and feel like they know and understand you, they will naturally want to follow your content.
Along these lines, try not to post purely “fluff” content! It may be dog Instagram, but it’s also ok to post about serious topics, your opinions, and yourself. In fact, a balance of light “fluff” content and more personal, serious content will really help others get to know you and relate to you.
Likewise, posting photos of yourself will help people put a face to the name and the writing! This is why you will see many successful dog Instagram accounts post photos of themselves with their dogs frequently. Posting photos of themselves (usually including their dogs, haha) helps others relate to them! They aren’t just a mystery dog owner the internet. If you struggle to get photos with your dog, check out this post.
Finally, it’s called social media for a reason! Treat it like it’s social. Respond to your followers’ comments. Comment on their posts. Converse with others in direct messages. Ultimately, social media is about being social with others and building relationships. Maintaining a social focus will help others get to know you and will help them relate to you.
Don’t: Talk from your dog’s perspective.
Talking from your dog’s perspective is cute, but if your goal is to grow your account and engagement, writing your content from their perspective is not the way to go. Because your viewers are other humans, writing from the dog’s perspective becomes a subconscious barrier to relatability.
Of course, speaking from the dog’s perspective is a creative choice and you may make that choice for other reasons. If you do choose to post from the dog’s perspective, I would suggest not writing in “dogspeak” or “baby talk.” With so many misspellings, it can be difficult to read and understand quickly, making it another subconscious barrier between you and the other person reading your content.
Finally, if you do choose to write from the dog’s perspective, especially in baby talk, make sure to keep it out of the DMs! It becomes confusing and makes it difficult to uphold a real conversion – and at the end of the day, there’s really no need to maintain the illusion of the dog speaking when it becomes a private conversation in the DMs. I know I’m talking to another human.
Do: Use hashtags.
You have room for 30 hashtags, so use all 30 to maximize how many people see your post!
I recommend using mostly small to medium size hashtags, generally between 250K-500K uses. It is always good to experiment and mix it up, but usually, focusing on small to medium size hashtags will yield the best visibility. These hashtags are busy enough that people see your posts, but not so busy that your posts get pushed down in the feed quickly.
You want to niche down to dog related hashtags. It helps the algorithm identify your content and push it to the people who want to see it. I like to use hashtags from a few different dog categories: general dog hashtags, breed specific hashtags, dogs of [location], hiking dogs, etc.
But you don’t want to niche down too far. There are plenty of dog lovers who don’t have dog Instagram accounts or aren’t regularly searching dog hashtags. But they still may want to follow you – so you want them to be able to find you another way! Use hashtags from some non-dog related hashtags to reach these people: general hashtags, location hashtags, hashtags that encompass another theme of your account like photography or adventure, etc.
