I bet you want to know the secret hack to grow your fishing Instagram account by 1000 followers a week. Now, this won’t happen overnight. You will need to gain a little traction in the beginning.
This blog post will help you learn and get there a lot quicker than I did. None of these methods will cost you a dime. You don’t need a giveaway contest to reach your goals. Oh and by the way as of right now my Instagram account is at 17854 followers. Let’s see what it is at the end of this article.
1. Use the analytics
Of course, you can see how many likes you have on a post and how many comments. But, have you ever wondered how many times your post gets shared or how many followers you got from one post? Well, Instagram tells you all of that in the analytics.
You need to know what type of posts your followers like the most. The real test to see what your followers like is if they are sharing it. If they think it is cool enough to send to a friend than you have succeeded with a post.
There are a couple of ways to check this.
Under a post click on view Insights
What I am looking for is how many times it was shared and how many followers that post got me. You can see in the graphic below that this post with no paid advertising got me 1,578 shares. 1,164 visited my profile. This particular post got me 87 followers so far. Imagine throwing a post up and knowing you would get 87 followers.
Another way you can check what resonates with your followers is by clicking down in the bottom right of the page on your profile photo.
Next click on the 3 horizontal lines in the upper right-hand corner.
After that look 3 rows down and click on Insights
It will take you to the content page where you can see your top six posts of the last week. The numbers show how many times the post has been seen.
Now click over to the audience and it shows you all the demographics in a couple of easy to read charts.
Why is all this important??
You want to deliver what your audience likes and wants. If the analytics teach me that people love big bass, fishing memes or kids fishing than I may want to incorporate those type of posts in the rotation everyday. Experiment with new stuff also. Do not overthink your posts. One of the most important things is being consistent.
2. Be Consistent
Post every day. It is plain and simple. Stay in front of people and Instagram’s algorithm will give you more love. It is more than just posting. This is a fishing page. If you have a fishing page you should love to fish. I consistently fish every week or do something fishing related every week.
Every time I go fishing I take the GoPro with me and chronicle what I do on the water. You may want to invest in a good camera and a chest mount
If you have a fishing youtube page than you can just take some of your edited fish catching clips and post them on Instagram. People love to watch fishing video’s and fishing tips on IGTV.
If you own a bass boat than you have to have a voice-activated GoPro and a YOLOtek Powerstick with you. This thing will keep your GoPro charged all day and you will get some awesome fishing videos. Maybe some of them will go viral like mine did.
When I posted that video on Instagram it went viral. It did over 15,000,000 views. Fox News, Inside Edition, Ridiculousness, and America’s Funniest Home videos all played it. It also helped my Instagram get off the ground in the beginning stages.
My goal is to consistently post 7 times a day on Instagram. I try to post a couple of memes that I recreated with some of my pics using the phonto app. I don’t mind sharing other peoples content also and giving them credit. I try to post some Big Bass pics. I try to post one IGTV video of myself fishing and catching bass. And last but not least I will post a couple of my fishing photos that I edited in the Lightroom app and make look amazing and esthetically pleasing.
If you look at a post and your jaw drops or it is big fishing news or something you have never seen before then post it. Odds are your followers are going to like it also. That is the type of stuff that is going to get shared and spread like wild fire to new people who do not follow your page.
3. Provide Value
Something as simple as doing weekly tackle tips on your page or IGTV is a great way of providing value. Ask yourself how you can provide a little bit of value so people will keep following you. Remember not everyone has been fishing as long as you have. You may be teaching someone how to get into bass fishing. Maybe you go over one of your favorite knots.
Show off your new fishing items that you ordered. Nothing is off-limits for your Instagram. I like to announce who won major tournaments and share the results from Major League Fishing, FLW, and Bassmaster tournaments.
Maybe you could go live to your audience and give a fishing report about your local lake. Tell people how you caught them that day.
Anything that provides value to your audience you should share.
4. Use Hashtags
Displaypurposes.com is a great hashtag tool to help you find the appropriate hashtags for your posts. Just type in the word or words that relate to your post (fishing, bass fishing, redfish, smallmouth bass) and it will generate the most popular niche hashtags for your keywords. I like to have them saved in categories on my phone. So I will have 30 for saltwater fishing and 30 different ones for bass fishing.
When it is time to post you can just copy and paste them after your description or verbiage of your post. Instagram only lets you use 30 hashtags per post. I use every single one of those. It is a great way for people to discover you. You can follow hashtags on Instagram so they should be on every post.
5. Use your Stories
Imagine taking 18,000 people and putting them into a room. You would need an arena for that amount of people. Now imagine 50,000 people. At a certain point, you are an influencer on a small scale. Do not let this go to your head.
People want to know what you are up to during the day. If you go to the gym, eat at Moe’s, or see something funny than take a picture or video and post to your story. People like to know there is a real person on the other side of the page. They want to get to know you so help them do that.
Also, once you get over 10,000 followers you unlock the swipe up feature in stories on Instagram where you can post links. So if you have a blog, youtube page, or affiliate links you can send them there a little easier with the swipe up feature.
6. Post Yourself
Show yourself to your audience. Do not just be a page that shows funny meme’s. What is the point? If you a physical product brand do not just post your products and ask people to buy, buy, buy!! Remember as we talked above you have to provide value.
Instead, maybe show a picture of you catching a bass with one of the lures that you have for sale. This gives value because it lets people know that the bass are eating that particular bait at that time.
Regardless every time you go on any fishing trip take tons of photos. Then go to the Lightroom app and edit the pictures and make them look high def. and professional. This is the type of stuff that will keep people following your page.
It will also provide more opportunities for you later down the road. Things like affiliate deals, advertisements, and free product will come knocking on your door. Brands and affiliates will not be looking at meme pages with no face or personality behind the page to work with.
7. Post cool content-Be original
There are plenty of things that you can share on Instagram. If it is cool to you then it will be cool to your audience.
However, be original and develop some of your very own cool content. Maybe you could do a video on Flippin a jig into a solo cup. Or you take your camera with you while you fish and show yourself hooking some nice bass. Get different vantage points and shots.
I personally have done well with taking videos of my son catching bass on top water in a local pond. I just cast it out for him and let him reel it in and record with my iPhone.
You want to collect as much fishing content as you can so you always have something original to post. Nothing is worse than posting the same thing every couple of days. Look for ideas from other people’s fishing pages that you look up to.
No $$ needed but it can help.
If you took notice I have not mentioned spending a dime to grow your fishing account on Instagram. I did not mention buying followers. Buying followers is the dumbest thing you can do. They most likely will be bots and won’t be real people. If they are real people they are probably not interested in your fishing content and will not engage with your content.
I did not tell you to do a fishing reel giveaway. I have done those and they are decent. Honestly, you can get more followers by posting great content. Find something awesome that your followers share over 1500 times.
You also do not need to pay anyone for a shout out. It is not even worth it unless you have something cool like a giant bass or a viral video like I had. When that video started going viral I sent a DM to big influencers and said, “Hey I thought this video would be great for your audience. I am the person in the video so feel free to use it. Please just make sure you tag @hookdonbassin. I hope you enjoy and I love your page.”
This approach worked out great.
If I was going to throw any money at something to grow my page I would use the Promote feature. When you look at some of your post analytics like we discussed above and you see that a particular post gained you a lot of followers than you should promote that post. I would maybe do a $5 budget for 3 days and chose an audience like my followers. Instagram does a great job of targeting the right people for you and walking you through the process.
Only promote the posts that are doing exceptionally well in terms of followers gained. Do not base it on comments, likes, or shares. When promoting follows are what matters.
Bonus Tip: Fishing pages tend to do better during the warmer months. Fishing is more front of mind throughout the world. Make sure you have great content ready to go and take advantage of this plentiful follower time.
In Conclusion
So you don’t need a bunch of money to gain followers on Instagram. You need to start with awesome content and study what your followers like.
Be a real person. Show some of your life to the world. Respond to comments and DM’s. Help your followers and provide value. Be tactical and squeeze in stuff you know that will help you gain a lot of followers. If you make it all about you then you will lose followers.
I must say after I reached 10,000 followers my page started to grow a lot faster. I am not sure if that is by coincidence or not. Now I am consistently doing 1000 followers a week. Sometimes I hit that mark in five days.
Let’s review the 7 step formula on how to grow your Fishing Instagram page:
Use the analytics
Be consistent-Post 7 times a day
Use hashtags
Use your stories
Post cool stuff
Post yourself
Provide Value
Alright, guys and gals I hope this helps you grow your IG pages. For more tips why don’t you just follow my fishing page on Instagram @hookdonbassin and watch the growth first hand.
PS. By the way, at the start of this blog, my followers were at 17,854 and now 1.5 hours later they are at…….drum roll please…….17,883. So I gained 29 followers in 1.5 hours without posting anything new.
