This Instagram strategy grew my account by 1000+ followers in under a month - here's how to use it for yourself

I launched my new Instagram account for my social media content creation agency, Creatorly Media, on June 3rd, 2021 - and now, as I record this on August 11, 2021, we've just hit 1700 followers on the account. Right now, the Creatorly Media account is growing at a faster and more reliable rate than my own personal account which was originally the driving force behind this business, and today I want to tell you why that's happening. Specifically - how I was able to get the Creatorly Media account to hit 1000 followers within a month of launching - and how we're on track to hit 2000 before the account hits 3 months old. This strategy will work best for you if you're also trying to grow a business or brand account, and even if you're growing a personal brand or influencer account, I think you'll find some helpful nuggets throughout this episode that will help you augment your growth as well. Don't hit that pause button - and let's get into it!

What kind of posts do you create within this framework?

Tweets
Memes
Reels
Quotes
Graphic Carousels

Why does creative curation work so well for Instagram growth?

The first major reason why creative curation helps you grow on Instagram is because it produces super relatable content.

Fun fact about me: when I was younger I always wanted to be a writer, and I wrote a ton of fan fiction and also original fiction. Eventually, I got bold enough to seek out feedback from my writing - now, I have an older brother who has always been a bit of an armchair media critique. He actually was the first in our family to start a YouTube channel where he reviewed so-bad-they're-good movies - and that's what got me into making YouTube videos in the first place - so there's a fun origin story for you. Anyway, the point is, when I first got my gifted-kid older brother to read through my writing, one of the biggest critiques he had, especially of my early vampire romance stories (yes, cringy, I know) was that the main character felt like a Mary-Sue - or, in layman's terms, a self-insert character. If you're familiar with writing techniques or criticism, then you might be familiar with the idea of a self-insert character.

In the world of writing, this is a criticism usually associated with lazy writing that's main purpose is wish fulfillment for the author - which makes sense why my brother brought it up in regard to my fantasy vampire romance novel that I wrote when I was 14. But anyway..,

The reason why I bring up this story, and the concept of a self-insert character, or a Mary-Sue, is that while in writing it is generally a pretty cringy thing to do - it's actually a perfect strategy for creating viral-worthy Instagram content, as part of a creative curation strategy.

Here's what I mean: when you're creating memes, graphics, tweets, or Reels that you want your ideal audience to share one of the best ways to influence them to share your content is to make it relatable - make them feel seen, create the kind of content that makes your ideal follower feel like, "man, I was thinking the exact same thing."

People on Instagram love to share content that feels like it reflects their personality, their interests, and their values. So if you can get into the mind frame of writing a self-insert character, except instead of yourself - it's your ideal follower - then you're going to be great at creating effective sharable content. Just like how Stephanie Meyer made us all fall in love with Twilight because we could see ourselves in Bella Swan - you can make your ideal audience fall in love with your content if they see themselves in your brand.

It's also highly shareable.

The key feature of this kind of content is that it is inherently shareable. This means that your followers are encouraged to share your content just by nature of the format of the content itself - they don't need to be asked to do it in a call to action, they will simply see the post and be prompted to share it in and of itself. Because of this, this type of content is amazing for organic growth.

Here's how it works: your existing followers see your content on their feed, they relate to it, have that "man, I was thinking the exact same thing" moment, and decide to share it to their story because they know that their friends or followers will also relate to it, find it funny, etc. So they share it to their story - and then, a few of their followers who see the story and also have that "man, I was thinking the exact same thing" moment will love what they see so much that they tap on the image, click on "view post" and end up on your profile. They're scroll - see themsleves in all of your other awesome, shareable content, and hit the follow buttom and become a part of your audience. And that's how through just sharing relatable and shareable content, you're able to passively grow your account.

And finally, it's sustainable.

The third reason why I think the creative curation strategy for content is so effective for business brands is actually more about logistics than it is about the effect of the content on your audience. Here's the thing about creative curation - once you have a strategy in place, you can create about 10 posts - which for the Creatorly Account is a week of feed content - in about an hour. 10 posts in an hour - that's an unprecedented rate in my experience. Compared to how long it takes to write the captions and shoot the content for my personal account, it's lightning speed. And it means that this strategy is actually sustainable for business owners who want to do more in a week than just create content for their Instagram.

This strategy is so efficient because about half of the content you're sharing is actually made by someone else - you're simply curating it. And for the other half of your content - it's a mix of fun memes that are quick to make in Canva, and then maybe one or two more hefty pieces of content that you'll spend most of that hour on.

How to use the creative curation strategy for yourself

Step 1: Define your target audience - get specific and detailed

Make a list of media references
Make a list of relatable experiences
Make a list of accounts that your ideal follower is already following or would like to follow (follow them and check their accounts often - this is how you can find content for curation)
Make an ideal follower profile

Step 2: Decide on your content schedule

How often do you want to post? For the Creatorly Media account, we post twice a day on a weekdays, in the morning it's a tweet or a meme graphic, and in the afternoon it's a Reel
Think about the type of content that your ideal audience will respond to the best - and then decide on a repeatable schedule that you can use over and over again.

Step 3: Establish your visual branding

Decide on brand colours and fonts if you haven't already - and if you have, now is a good time to check-in and see if you think your existing branding vibes with your ideal audience
Make Canva templates for all of the different types of posts that you'll be making frequently

Step 4: Curate and create your content

Start by looking for content to curate - this will also help to get your wheels turning for what you're going to create later.
Look through the accounts we made a list of in Step 1 - and save any content from those creators that you come across that you think will be applicable to your audience. In this part of my process, I scroll through Twitter, scroll on TikTok and look at the discover page of TikTok as well, to find content that would be relatable to our target audience.
After you've curated about half of your content for the week - it's time to create a few pieces. This is where you'll reference your list of media references, or relatable experiences, and see what you can mix and match to create some funny memes. One way to get your creative juices flowing with this is to go to giphy.com and just view the Trending section - see what gifs a lot of people are using at the moment, and see if any of the reactions or emotions in those gifs could relate to one of your items from the relatable experiences list. Find a combo that feels particularly accurate or funny, and you've got a winning combination for a viral meme.

Step 5: Schedule

Now that you've got your posts curated, or created in Canva, the last step is just to schedule everything. I like to schedule my content in Later - you can schedule your meme and graphics for auto-publishing and your Reels as notification posts - basically allowing you to set it and forget it. All you'll need to do throughout the week is check-in at the time you need to post your Reels, publish them, and then, I would recommend taking a couple of minutes to reply to comments and DMs while you're logged in.

Whether you're growing a business account or a personal account, I hope you were able to take some helpful insight from my explanation of my latest favourite Instagram - creative curation.