How to Grow Your Dog Instagram Account in 2021
If you are trying to grow your pet influencer account on Instagram, you probably know by now that it isn’t easy. The dog Instagram niche is very saturated, which can make it difficult to grow. But whether you’re a small account looking to grow your following or a large account trying to improve your engagement rate, these 4 tips will help:
Be relatable.
It’s easy to forget how important relatability is – after all, we are looking at cute dog photos! But don’t forget that it isn’t dogs, but other humans, interacting with your content. Your content will perform better if it is relatable on a human level.
What does this mean? Don’t just post fluff content – post about yourself! Your followers want to know about your dog, but they also want to know about you. Posting photos with your dog will help your followers relate to you more and feel like they know you.
However if you aren’t comfortable with posting photos of yourself, fear not! You can improve your relatability by sharing your opinions, asking your followers questions, and interacting with your followers in your direct messages and comments.
At the end of the day: it’s social media. Treat it like it’s social.
Don’t talk from your dog’s perspective.
Sure it’s cute, and we all did it in 2015. Fortunately, the dog’s perspective has lost a lot of popularity over the years. And there’s a reason for that – speaking from the dog’s perspective may be cute, but it’s less relatable. It creates a subconscious barrier between you and the other human reading the content.
If you make the creative choice to speak in your dog’s perspective please don’t speak in “dogspeak” – my name for baby talk. You know what I’m talking about: “I wuv my mom becuz she gibs me chimken,” etc. While it’s cute on occasion, regularly using dogspeak creates a huge barrier to relatability because it is difficult to read and understand, making it more difficult for your followers to interact with your content.
Use hashtags.
Hashtags are a great way to improve your reach on Instagram and help potential followers find your account.
I recommend using all 30 hashtags to maximize your reach – that gives you 30 different places that your content will be listed. 30 different places for your potential followers to find you!
Generally, I recommend staying in the small to medium range. A good rule of thumb for hashtag size is hashtags with 250,000 – 500,000 uses. These hashtags will have enough activity to get your content noticed, but not so much that your content gets pushed way down in the hashtag listing.
Make engaging Reels.
The biggest benefit of Instagram Reels is that the Reels tab pushes your Reels out to both followers and non-followers. This is currently the best way to get your content in front of potential followers.
Reels engagement is also exponential. Once you start getting engagement on a Reel, you get a lot more engagement. Views beget views.
The combination of Instagram pushing your Reels to non-followers and the exponential growth potential makes the Reels algorithm incredibly powerful for growing your account. Well constructed Reels are the key to growth in 2021.
