Instagram and I, a story of love and….. more love

Almost every day I get questions from friends: how did you get all those followers?
How do you get all those likes on your pictures? (even if I don’t consider my likes count to be great)

How can I connect with brands and start earning money?

How can I connect with customers for my business and sell more?

So Let me tell you my story. I started using Instagram almost 5 years ago. And trust me when I tell you that if I knew (or cared for) then what I know now my followers could’ve been much larger at this moment.
Probably as most of you I started Instagram because it was cool to share my moments and pictures with my friends. my first pictures were very poor quality and some not very interesting.

I would post several times a day, use one or 2 hashtags and not care much about the rest.
As I was using the app while commuting or just chilling in the beach I started seeing those feeds with beautiful pictures and started following them. all this made me think about my own profile.

I knew how to take good pictures so I started posting some pictures from my camera after editing them in Lightroom.

At that time I was in the Real Estate, eventually, I sold my camera because It was too heavy to have to care it around at all times. iPhone was getting better and new editing apps were popping in the app store.

Even that I was in the real estate business I still was posting my food and my life. I was getting followers but I was not focusing on a business side yet, it was just a plain fun for me at that time.
Something that maybe you knew already about me is that I think there is always something new to learn so I was constantly learning online or going to classes in the Realtors Association.

One of those classes was on Social media. Did I mention I spend 20 years in online marketing, web design, general marketing? I understand and get very easily to any new tech or media platform or trend.

So there were not much to teach me in that class, however, Something new for me was that instructor insisted for us to post all our listings and open houses and post only about Real Estate in all our social media. It was a little bit in disagreement with what I was thinking about developing my social media, but I decided to trust a 70ty years old expert in social media.

Don’t know why….

I will not say I believe age is related to knowledge on latest trends, and that was why I actually paid attention to the guy but I do think that class was less than basic and people could learn more from youtube.
Even that, as I mentioned, I thought that He knew what he was talking about and did pay attention to him and started posting Real estate things. after a while, I was not posting every day. I was not feeling right posting so much Real Estate and I started losing followers. Of course I gained some, but those were other realtors who were also posting real estate things, not clients who I was trying to catch. After some time I went back to posting my personal things on my Instagram. As I really felt posting only RE wasn’t the right thing to do.
I went back to posting about my life, my journeys, and my adventures. But it wasn’t until a bit more than a year ago that I took my Instagram seriously and started looking at it as a business.
For those who think I built all my following before the changes in the algorithm (when it was easier) well no. I did have a nice number of followers then, but it was just after the algorithm was first introduced when I started taking it seriously. Not because of the changes, it was just how timing happened.
Even that I had my knowledge of how to grow social media accounts I took some online classes with popular Bloggers to learn from them and their techniques. I spent a good amount of money and tons of time.

The day I started to write this post it went on and on and on talking on different ways of growing your Instagram and tips on what I did and this is how my  Success Instagram Guide.
That book is all  about the exact things I did and still do to grow my numbers.
And the engagement would be the most important part.
Here is when I must say that guide is so complete and clear that by reading it you will see what are the mistakes that you are making and will be able to correct them.