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Steph Compton (steph.sci.access on Instagram) built up a strong following before she launched her website at stephcomptonnutrition.com. In the last episode, she talked about building a newsletter subscriber list from her Instagram audience. Today, she shares tips for making the most out of your Instagram account as a creator or business.
Finding Your Voice is the First Step
“I have found my voice probably in the last year or so,” she admits. “It took some time getting on the platform, learning how to communicate effectively, how to make good graphics, how to make good swipe posts.”
In the beginning, Steph focused on subjects she personally wanted to communicate. Now she incorporates feedback from her followers and uses a pattern to present those topics and information.
Don’t Be Afraid to Reuse Content!
Instagram is a place where you can repurpose and reuse content to appeal to different audiences or people who may have missed the original posts.
“When you’re creating content for a platform like Instagram, you can go about saying similar things in so many different ways,” she says. “For example, I’ve had posts on metabolism where I’ll go into things like: Is your metabolism slow? What does your metabolism look like? How does your whole body metabolism work? How do the calories feed into that? What is cancer metabolism like? So I have this one topic of metabolism, but I can approach it in so many different ways and I can rehash it again for the people who may not have seen my ‘Is your metabolism slow?’ posts from a year ago.”
Text vs Image Posts
With Instagram, there are various posting options: image only, images with text, and text only.
Steph uses text posts for topics she calls ‘heavy hitters.’ “If I think that a subject is going to be interesting or needs more depth and knowledge, I’ll usually make that one a text post,” she says.
If she wants to make sure that people find a post on the grid, she includes a photo with text so that they can easily see what it’s about. Anyone looking through her grid can see that this post is about metabolic flexibility or that post is about cancer metabolism or this post is about accessibility.
“If you’re thinking about Instagram and growing a following, you want to have people engaging with your content,” she says. “Everyone wants likes, everyone wants followers, but what you want is people who are sharing your content and getting it in front of new people and saving it so that they can look back on it later.”
One of Steph’s posts, titled ‘Mitochondria Aren’t Shaped Like Beans,’ got 85 comments, 209 shares and 180 saves, so it has reached around 6,000 people and 43% of them weren’t following her.
Staying Accessible
Before making a post, Steph will create alternative text so that screen readers can correctly interpret the photos and imagery.
“It might be something like “Image features a graphic of an animal cell showing the inside of the cell including the nucleus and mitochondria.” Different things. Then I might say, “This photo also includes a graphic of a mitochondria that looks like a bean.” If I have some graphic in there, I’ll also describe that within the alt text, so that the information isn’t lost on there.”
Just Get Started!
Steph recommended that anyone interested in building and growing an Instagram platform simply get started and follow their instincts.
“You definitely need to do what feels best for you. You’re not going to find out what that is until you actually get into it. What feels best? Do you only like making Instagram stories or do you only like making Instagram TV episodes? I know plenty of people who do all those things and don’t post often and are just on their stories or mainly focus on taking videos of themselves and posting that.”
She said that a big part of growing her audience was simply showing up.
“I don’t post every single day. I didn’t post today, but it’s just showing up. You’re in your stories, sharing something, you’re sharing other people’s posts or you’re talking to people in DMs. So many of us get bogged down by ‘I lost followers’ or ‘I’ve not been gaining any followers.’ Full transparency, I worry about that too sometimes. You go through dry spells with the Instagram algorithm all the time, but I try not to get bogged down by that because I know if I just continue putting out good content and I keep serving, that is how I’m going to build an audience.”
Conclusion
“Sometimes I joke that I have so many Instagram friends,” Steph says. “I have so many people I’ve never met in person that I talk to on a daily basis because I’ve been able to make those connections. Talking to people and serving that value, I think, is the most valuable thing that you can do.”
If you would like to connect with Steph Compton directly, you can reach her at steph.sci.access on Instagram and StephSciAccess on Twitter or via email. Be sure to also visit her website at stephcomptonnutrition.com.
If you have questions or feedback about this episode, please leave a comment below!
