Instagram. Hundreds of millions of users, the infinite potential to market your handmade products and to grow your shop. Free. Sounds freaking perfect.
Yea – except, in reality, getting found on Instagram and getting sales from it – especially if you’re starting from scratch or don’t have many followers at all can feel like climbing a mountain.
You might even be wondering if this is the right platform for you. I get it.
Sometimes it does seem like the only prerequisite to being successful on Instagram is to… be successful on Instagram.
So really, how can YOU start growing your Instagram? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this video with the 3 KEYS to growing your shop’s IG account organically (that means for free – without using paid ads) and without using any shady tactics that would just get you banned.
BTW, I also have a FREE social media planner for makers that you can get right here.
#1 – YOUR IMAGES: what you should and shouldn’t post to grow your account.
#2 – YOUR CAPTIONS: what work VS what doesn’t so you finally know what to say.
#3 – ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY – or HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO LIKE, COMMENT AND FOLLOW YOU, so you can hear more than well… crickets.
Get excited – this is gonna be awesome! Let’s dive in.
THIS FREE PLANNER WILL HELP YOU CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN FOR YOUR HANDMADE SHOP. KNOW WHAT TO POST, WHEN TO POST IT, AND WHAT TOOLS TO USE!
First, I want to make sure that you and I are on the same page here. This isn’t JUST a “get as many followers as possible” game, if you’re here I am assuming you’re selling products, and your end goal is to SELL said products. Growing your following is important, yes, and this video will help with that but if you only focus on the number of followers – you’re already focusing on the wrong thing.
There are some accounts out there with hundreds of thousands of followers who aren’t making sales from it. And on the other end, there are many much smaller accounts with 500, 1000 followers who make sales thanks to Instagram regularly.
So – which one would you rather be? And don’t you feel better knowing that you might not actually need 50000 followers to be “successful” on Instagram?
Now that we’ve got this out of the way let’s start with NUMBER ONE and our elephant in the room. Instagram is a PHOTO app and although captions are important too and we’ll talk about that in a second, if your photos aren’t making people want to stop scrolling, you’ve already lost the battle for their attention.
And more often than not this happens because you’ve forgotten what IG is and isn’t. And Instagram isn’t a shopping app – so don’t make your profile look like a catalog where all I can see are your products on white background.
Instagram is a lifestyle app. People come to the app to be entertained, inspired and motivated, not to shop. Does it mean that you can’t sell on the platform? Of course not. But it means that the intention to sell can’t be what you lead with and that starts with your images. Instead of selling people your product, sell them the lifestyle AROUND your products.
Selling on Instagram comes from making real connections with users on the platform, making them feel connected to your brand, so you need to make your feed look less like a catalog and more like a magazine.
Yes, it means that when you share images of your products it’s much better if they are styled/lifestyle images than white background images.
No, it doesn’t mean you need to be a pro. All you need is a smartphone with a camera and you can absolutely take pictures like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Or this one:
It also means that you can and should share MORE than just your product images. How about sharing super simple images of funny or inspirational quotes? Or even stock images of things your customers could relate to?
Selling winter knits? You’re allowed to post a beautiful picture of a snowy mountain.
Selling diaper bags? How about a fun quote about the struggles of being a mother?
To sum up: sell a lifestyle, not a product, and think magazine, not catalog.
Well, don’t you just love writing an Instagram caption? Always just flows out of your fingers and into your phone, and then people start commenting and replying to it straight away. Or maybe not?
Look, I’m joking around but I know this isn’t funny. Writing captions probably isn’t your favorite thing to do and if you don’t get any traction from them it’s easy to start resenting the whole process – and to stop posting altogether because you just DON’T KNOW what to write.
Let’s fix that!
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes it’s not and you actually need to make your captions something potential followers and customers can relate to – so that they like, comment and follow you. Again: don’t push your products down people’s throat, instead sell them a lifestyle, a story, a memory, an emotion.
Here’s an example of what not do:
“New spring hair bow collection is now available in my Etsy shop! Click the link in my bio to shop now!”
And here’s what you could say instead:
“The time I spend every morning helping my daughter do her hair is one I cherish more than anything. She’s growing so fast, I know that soon she won’t need my help anymore (or want my help – let’s be honest here 😅) so I am making the most of this precious time we have to connect and spend some quality mother-daughter time together. That’s why I am excited to be releasing a new hair bow collection for spring – so you have more great excuses to spend time with her talking all things braids and ponytails (my daughter’s fav at the moment is a super high pony 🤷♀️😍👩👧Take a look via the link in my bio and let me know below: what’s little one favorite hairstyle?”
Which one do you think someone is more likely to like or comment on? Which do you think does a better job at selling the product, even though it’s not actually directly selling it or saying anything like “SHOP NOW”?
That’s right, the second one.
What you want to avoid is people reading it, thinking “ok” and keep scrolling because they’re underwhelmed and can’t relate to the caption at all. This is totally what would happen with the first example I gave you.
In the second one though, you’re actually sharing a story, connecting with them on a memory they probably have too, and you’re actually asking them to comment below and engage with you. Much better.
Look, don’t be that person who posts on Instagram and just waits for people to like, comment or follow you.
YES, everything I just taught you still needs to get done, you need to post scroll-stopping images and relatable captions BUT you can’t just throw a few hashtags in and wait. Hashtags aren’t enough and you certainly can’t rely on them alone to grow your account.
When you’re a much bigger account with a lot of traction behind you already – then yes, maybe that is enough. But if you want to GROW and you’re still somehow a small account – you can’t expect people to find you, YOU have to find people.
Yes. If you want people to engage with you, you have to engage with people. This is what organic, real, no gimmick growth really is about. Find some time every day to like and comment on accounts of people who are likely to buy your products.
For example, if you sell baby diaper bags, go and comment on profiles from moms or on mom community account on the app.
When you do, they will see that in their notifications, be stoked, check you out AND BOOM because you have a great feed with great images and great captions – they’ll start following and buying from you!
Next, I invite you to watch this amazing training that will help you craft a perfect Instagram BIO or make sure that your existing one is up to standard. It’s a part of my paid course, “Instagram for makers: from A to sales” and you can watch it for FREE here.
Aurevoir!
you might also like…
If you want to be found in search results on Etsy, you need to optimize your product listing for SEO. And if you want to
There has been a lot of talk in the Etsy community — and I mean A LOT of talk — about Etsy’s payment account reserve
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a HUGE advocate for using email marketing to grow and scale your handmade business. But you may
grab this free
social media planner
Hello,
I am doing small online business of hand made jewellery and I also used to advertise on Instagram but it didn’t work. This article gave me the courage to restart it again with lots of engagements.
Thanks for the wonderful article.
Thank you so much, Priya! I’m glad it was helpful and good luck building your Instagram! 🙂