How to Retain Followers on Instagram
We will talk about how to gain followers next week, hold your horses, jeeze!
Last week we talked about WHY you should focus on retaining followers on Instagram first. This week we are going to talk about HOW to retain those followers because your current audience members are your MVPs, and we treat our MVPs nicely around here 😘
First, let's talk about why you may be losing followers.
I asked my own audience on Instagram what makes them UNfollow brands on social media, and their answers were spicy. They were also pretty much identical to when I asked this same question two years ago, so… at least we’re consistent, yes?
Anywho, here are the major themes of what makes people unfollow brands on social media:
Let's break down each of these answers and how we can avoid making these mistakes on our own profiles.
Only Ever Selling:
I expect you'll tire of me saying this, but people are not on social media to be sold to! Of course, your audience knows you're a business and therefore knows that you'll sell to them eventually, but you have to balance that sales content with valuable content—i.e., content that's either entertaining, educational, or engaging.
I recommend following the 80/20 rule: try to only sell 20% of the time and give value the other 80% of the time. (This could look like 1 sales post for every 4 value-added posts). Give them so much value that when you DO make a sales post, they aren’t so bothered by it.
Repetitive Content:
What if you had to eat the same thing for dinner every single night for a month? That would get old REAL quick, wouldn't it? The same is true for your content. If you're posting the same boilerplate content every single time, your audience will yawn and hit the unfollow button (in that order).
I recommend coming up with 3-5 content pillars that you can cycle through every month. Here are some examples from some of my clients:
Luxurious Tasting Experiences: Highlight art & architecture, exclusivity, and how your staff supports that experience.
Cool-climate Syrah: Highlight the different vineyards you source from and their proximity to the ocean, how the cool climate affects the sensory experience of the finished wine, and why Syrah does so well in a cool climate.
Wines made to age: How the winemaking process affects ageability, how to store wine for proper aging, and how your white wines are also extremely ageable.
Sustainability: Sustainability in how you treat your employees, how you farm, all the way down to the glass and labels you use.
Pleasure: in community, in food, and of course pleasure in wine.
Shenanigans: Content that is just for fun and, honestly, a little ridiculous
Bucolic Plague: (I also call this: “the gentlefolk farmers”) Basically, any content that shows agritourism, farm life, etc.
You can also include some of the classic wine social media tropes like bottle shots (what I jokingly refer to as “bottle porn”) and “visit us,” but come up with a few categories that are unique to you and your brand, and again, cycle through them. Don’t post, for example, three bottle shots in a row. Mix them up! Maybe something like Bottle Porn>Sustainability>Shenanigans>What’s up in the Winery>Bottle Porn>Visit Us>Sustainability… You get the idea.
Overly Flashy/Overly Crappy Visuals:
Gone are the days when an overly curated feed reigned supreme. Having your content always being too polished can make people think you are always selling (see point number 1 on why that's bad). That being said, social media is visual and quality content is still important. You, therefore, need to strike a balance between too polished and not polished enough.
Some brands I think do a good job of this on Instagram include @tablascreek, @tankwinery, and @foxenwines (yes, my client, but their numbers don't lie).
These brands have visually striking content without being overly polished and mix cell phone photos and videos with professionally captured visuals seamlessly.
Irrelevant Content:
People in your audience started following you for a specific reason: they want to learn more about your wine and keep up to date with what you've got going on. So it can be extremely jarring to them when you are constantly posting content about, say, your kid's soccer practice.
Listen, if your winery sponsors your kid's soccer team (is that legal?), then an occasional story about it or reference to it is cool, but when the posts about your wine, winery, vineyard, etc are being overpowered by soccer photos, then you don't have a winery account, you have a soccer fan club account.
Every post you make should serve a purpose and help you reach your business goals, so when you go to make a post, really think about whether or not it's doing that for you. If not, then post it on your personal account.
Your Company Values Don't Align With Your Follower's:
This might be a tough pill to swallow, but not everyone's values align with yours. And here's the thing, you WANT to weed out those people with differing values, because you want to make sure you are reaching the right audience.
I talked about this back in June 2020, but one of the reasons brands saw so much backlash on social media when the Black Lives Matter movement was reinvigorated was because they rarely (if ever) shared their values publicly.
By regularly sharing your social and environmental values, you tell your audience not only what you stand for but also what to expect from you. Now, more than ever, people are voting with their dollars: they will support you if you are open about the causes you support (and if those values align with theirs).
Listen to this podcast episode to learn more about why and how you should be sharing your company's values in your marketing.
Your action item today:
Audit your social media and see which of these mistakes you may be guilty of. Then, use the advice above to make improvements starting this month! You'll likely be very happy with the results.
Love, peace, and chicken grease.
