The Fastest Ways to Grow Your Instagram Following as a Birth Doula
Wanna know all of my secrets to growing my Instagram from zero to 30,000 followers in less than 2 years?!
If you’ve been wondering how to get a real grip on your Instagram strategy, then get out a pen and paper and grab some popcorn, this episode is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this episode:
How to get your posts in front of entirely new audiences…
The right way to set goals for your Instagram growth…
A few common Instagram growth strategies that you should never partake in….
… and a whole lot more!
Let’s go down the *infamous* Instagram rabbit hole.
Do doulas need to be active on Instagram, and if yes, what’s the fastest gain to gain a ton of followers?
Social media has the power to change your entire life. You can make a full-time income, become fully booked in-person, AND sell online offers solely through your Instagram.
But you HAVE to see it as part of your core business model. You have to give it the attention it deserves, and you need to understand your overall digital marketing strategy.
Whew. It seems like a lot… but we’ll just take it step-by-step!
Here are my 4 key techniques to grow your Instagram account as a birth doula. (Plus maybe one *bonus idea*)
#1: Create sharable content.
Always ask yourself, “Would someone share this to their stories?” This goes for both reels and grid posts. Stories give your content the opportunity to show up in front of other people’s audiences. Which is incredibly valuable for growth.
Keep in mind that when you share Instagram posts to your stories, you're not sharing for the caption most of the time. You’re just sharing that original picture or graphic.
So when you ask if your content is sharable, you're not asking, “Did I write a good caption?” No, you need to be asking yourself, “Is this picture that I’m uploading to Instagram, is that shareable?” Or, “Are these first 15 seconds of this reel shareable?” Because that's what will show up on other people's stories when they share your content.
I need you to put that on a freaking sticky note. Write, “Is this content shareable?” Anytime you're creating content, just have it out where you can see it.
#2: Create thought-provoking content.
Thought-provoking content = content that helps people see something from a different perspective, content that shakes things up, or content that is a little bit divisive even. (but not divisive for the sake of being divisive)
I listen to Brandon Lucero’s podcast pretty frequently, and he once said,
“You should make divisive content, but don't just make content that's whiny and bitchy. Because if you make content that's whiny and bitchy, all of the people who consume it are going to be whiny, and they're going to be bitches.”
That's definitely not the kind of audience or clientele you want, right?
So don’t be whiney, don’t be bitchy, but absolutely add some spice to your content.
Some questions you can ask yourself when you're posting this kind of content are, “Would somebody really disagree with this?”, and “Would somebody else really, really, really love me for having the courage to say this?” If the answer is yes, I can tell you that that content is going to be awesome, and will probably be sharable, like we talked about before.
#3: Spend more time on Instagram.
If your goal is to grow your Instagram (why you’re probably reading this blog…), you’ve got to be spending more time on the app.
Soooo you guessed it, the first step is to start posting more. An easy way to ensure you don’t burn out on social media, but still have content consistently going out is batching your content! This will keep you off of that content-creation-hamster-wheel that we all hate so much. You get to rest easy, knowing that every single day, rain or shine, a post is going to go out.
Awesome. Now this gives you the freedom to spend your 15 minutes or 30 minutes of dedicated Instagram time per day (let’s be real… it’s probably more time than that…) using valuable engagement strategies and showing up authentically.
Speaking of authentic, the most authentic form of Instagram content you need to spend time on is your stories. Post your face and post your voice every single day in your stories to really connect with your audience. Use your stories as a tool to start creating conversations with your followers.
Interact with other accounts in your same niche—other doulas, other childbirth educators, other nurses, whatever your niche is, because people are going to start finding you on Instagram if you're *spending time on Instagram.*
If you are posting in the comments under another doula's posts (maybe another doula with a lot more followers), now her followers are going to see that. And if your comment was fun, or spicy, or stood out in some way, people are actually going to click to your account.
Now, if you're really starting from scratch, and I'm talking zero followers, I definitely would start batching content first just to make sure you are putting out content on a regular daily basis. But you’ll have to do something a little bit different because you don’t have a lot of people interacting with you.
You’ll need to be a little bit more proactive. Any single person that likes any of your posts, you’re going to go to their page, follow them, interact on their posts, comment, respond to their stories and start conversations in the DMs.
Give people the love and engagement that you want on your own page. (The golden rule. Treat others how you want to be treated.) Because how would it make any sense to just expect everyone to interact and engage with you if you're not giving that same energy?
#4: Pay attention to your analytics.
Every single day, especially if you're starting out, even if you have less than 1k followers, you need to be tracking how many followers you gain and lose each week.
Don't pay too much mind to the unfollows… While I do think it's important, it's more important to see your daily average and understand what kind of posts are causing the unfollows.
On the flip side, it's also important to know if you gained a ton of followers from one post, and to hone in on that particular type of content. You could also compare your stories activity to how many followers you gained within a week.
Within your business Instagram analytics, you can actually see what kind of posts got the most engagement. When we're talking about engagement for social media purposes, we're talking about likes, shares, saves, comments, follows, and taps to your website button. Alllll of those things count as engagement.
Every now and then, I want you to go in there, take a look at the posts that got the most engagement, and then start making more posts like those. It seems really, really basic, but it's something that will absolutely change your life, especially if you are feeling like you're on that content-creation-hamster-wheel.
Something else I want you to do when it comes to analytics is to set goals for your Instagram growth.
I like using percentages in my goals. For example, when I first started out (I’m talking <50 followers on Instagram), my goal was always to increase my followers by 10% every seven days. Nowadays, since I have 30k followers, if my followers increase by 1%, that is insanely high. So as you gain followers and achieve goals week after week, your goals have to adjust to the new numbers.
But here's the thing, now that I have 30k followers on Instagram, my page is almost a machine that works for me. I don't have to put in as much effort as I did starting out, so I actually pay less attention to the weekly analytics. Now I look closer at the monthly analytics to keep track of how much is my community growing.
So fear not, checking your analytics every. single. day. won’t last forever. But I still definitely recommend continually setting goals for your page. You're not going to have growth if you're not measuring your results. Or you’ll have growth, but you won't understand why. You won't know what happened and you won't be able to recreate it.
The 5th *bonus idea* I mentioned earlier: Optimizing your profile.
This is something that we do at the very beginning of Birthworker Academy when we start talking about creating a sustainable online business.
Ask yourself a few simple questions, like is your Instagram name searchable? Do you have the word doula, birthworker, lactation consultant, L&D nurse, whatever you do, do you have that in your Instagram name? Does your Instagram bio make a statement? What makes you different?
Your bio is a key factor in gaining new followers. Someone who hits your page for the first time needs an optimized bio in order to capture their attention. So make a statement! Why are you different? Why should they follow you? Why should they care? What are they going to get if they stick around? Is there a clear call to action in your bio?
Once you do commit and optimize your profile, anyone who lands on your page is going to be a lot more likely to actually follow you. That’s what we want!
So now that I’ve covered the 4 things you should do, I’m going to dive into 4 things you should NOT do.
#1: Do NOT do a follow-for-follow or follow trains with anyone. Ever.
Do not eeeeever go to a doula Instagram group and post your Instagram and say “iF yOu foLLoW mE i’ll fOlloW yoU!”
Seriously. Don't do that. You need to gain your audience authentically. You need followers who are actually interested in your content, not people who you asked to be interested in your content.
#2: Do not turn your personal account into your birth account, especially if you are just starting out.
Engagement really matters. And if your audience is not interested in the exact post you're posting, engagement is going to be low. The Instagram algorithm is not going to push out your content to more people if your current followers aren't even engaging in your posts.
On your personal account, if you have random followers from your high school, or your 40 cousins who are all men, or your parents, old friends, whoever it is, 99% of them are *probably* not interested in your birth stuff. So we don't even want them on your account at all. It’s not harsh, it’s just strategy.
So…start a new account. I'm telling you, it's a little bit daunting, but I grew mine from zero to 30k in two years, and I know you can too.
#3: Do not ONLY focus on building connections with your ideal clients.
Now this one is a little bit weird. Bear with me. You want all of your Instagram followers to enjoy your content, that's really important, but you do not need all of your followers to be your perfect client. Let me repeat, you do not need all of your followers to be your perfect client. You do not necessarily need them to be pregnant moma who is going to hire you, but you do need all of your followers to enjoy your content.
Something that I hear a lot is people saying is, “Hey, don't make content for other doulas, only make content for pregnant moms.” And yeah…it makes sense.
What they mean is that as a doula, we shouldn't really care if other doulas follow us, right? Because other doulas are not going to hire us. Moms are going to hire us. We only want the moms who will hire us to consume our content.
But…here's the thing. This is where I disagree. Because for me, other doulas on social media have been the biggest gift! I make shareable content (like I talked about before), I share it on my Instagram, other doulas share my content to their pages, their followers see me in their stories, and I get new followers! What’s to lose?
Now, the biggest jump I've ever had in followers was 600 followers over a weekend. The reason is, you guessed it, because another account (a much bigger account) in the motherhood niche shared my post to their stories! If I were to only make content specifically for pregnant moms, then no other doulas would be interested and repost to their stories. No way would my account would have 30k followers right now. There's no way.
You need to create content that is interesting to a wider variety of people. When you look at your account and you think to yourself, “Oh, there's only doulas following me, there are no moms following me.” I want you to not see that as a bad thing! And I want you to use that to your advantage and really start creating some seriously good content that's shareable, and really lean into the fact that your doula followers are going to be sharing your posts to their own audiences, and you're going to grow your audience that way. Be grateful for the doula followers.
#4: Do not pay money to boost posts.
Now here's the thing. I love ads. I run ads every single day. You’ve probably seen my ads. I think I've probably spent over 10 grand in ads this year alone. But here's the thing—ads are a phenomenal idea, but not without strategy.
If you have been toying with the idea of boosting posts or using ads, I want you to ask yourself these things.
Do you have a website with all of your ad tracking setup?
Do you have a landing page with a freebie? Is it converting at over 40%?
Do you have your funnel setup? (Meaning do you have that freebie linked to an email welcome sequence?)
Does your email welcome sequence convert those people into paid clients at a rate that would translate into a good return on your ad spending?
And if any of that is way over your head, or if you think you're ready to take that next step and start running ads with the correct strategies, hang around.
In this community this coming fall (2022), we are planning on coming up with some programs or maybe even a membership to help you advance your digital marketing skills, so you can start making some of that recurring income.
And that's why next week, we are continuing this conversation and diving into part two on this same subject. We are going to talk about why you honestly might not even need 10,000 Instagram followers before you make $10,000 from your Instagram audience.
And of course, we're going to chat about some of the ways that you can actually serve your audience on Instagram in a way that leads to money in your pocket. So next week, I will actually be talking about how it's possible, and what you should do to start making money from your Instagram account.
Thank you very much for being here. You know the drill—I will see you right back here next week to wrap up this two-part series.
thank you for listening
If this episode lights you up, I’d love it if you’d rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. After you review the show, snap a pic and upload it here… and I’ll send you a little surprise as a thank you.
Your feedback helps this podcast grow and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Birthworker Podcast on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode.
a free gift for you!
Grow your income and make a lasting impact on the global birth community (even when you’re not on call for a birth).
✨ GROW YOUR IMPACT
Learn 12 ways to grow your impact (and make more money) as a doula even when you're not on call.
✨ TIME-SAVING TOOLS
Systems I use behind the scenes in my doula business to make my life easier.
✨ BIRTHWORKER ACADEMY
Go from side-gig doula to full-time birthworker... so you can impact lives all across the world.
more episodes for you...
Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.