What if I told you there were many easy little adjustments you could make to your instagram account that would not only increase your follower account but also gain you new clients?

I have been on instagram as a professional for 4 years now & in today's video I am going to share the top mistakes I see on people’s accounts on a daily basis.

So let's start with the most common mistake & the easiest fix- YOUR LOCATION. You would not believe the amount of business accounts I come across without a single location in sight. Not in their bio, captions, post location or even their website some times. PEOPLE! How are potential clients supposed to book with you if they don't even know where your business is?

First of all, put it in your bio right now. That is most important. Make sure it is somewhere on your website. If you want to go one step further, add the location & use location hashtags in your post- even if you aren't a business, this will link you with other local accounts.

The second thing that just grinds my gears is inconsistent posting. If you are trying to grow on any platform, especially instagram, you have to post multiple times a week. Ideally every day. I come across so many platforms that post once a month. Others that maybe were consistent for a while then don't post for 3 months at a time. In this specific case, you are basically losing all that momentum you were building when you were being consistent.

Now that being said, don't post too much either. You don't want to risk being flagged as spam. If you start getting flagged, instagram can (& will) suspend your account. In the past i've been suspended for 24 hrs, a week and one time I was even threatened with a month, thankfully I dodged that bullet! If instagram sends you a warning, take it seriously and close the app, don't touch it for 24 hours.

On to the content itself! Stop posting low quality nonsense! I know I'm a professional photographer so maybe I'm a bit more sensitive to this than others but please stop posting blurry photos or cropping so you're chopping off the head or feet.

This is also relevant to your profile photo. Choose a good quality, up close, crisp/ in focus photo. This will help you stand out amongst the many instagram users.

The last mistake I see all too frequently is a lacklustre caption. Now, I’m not saying you have to write a novel- it's not about length, it's about quality. You can write a lengthy caption if you are sharing a story or something educational but otherwise, I wouldn't waste your time. Especially if you're like me and words aren’t really your specialty.

That being said, play to your strengths- my account is more on the goofy side so I try to make my captions a little witty and relatable. The most important thing is to include a call to action or engagement. What I mean by this is telling your audience what you want from them.

This could be “comment a heart below if you love these photos”, “click link in bio for this”, or ask them a question, “what is your favourite photo?”, “how cute is this dog?”, “are you excited for summer?” ALWAYS followed with a “leave a comment below”. It's so simple but it encourages engagement with your audience. People love direction.

So today we talked about the many mistakes we see on instagram but if you want to learn more about our exact instagram strategy, check out our online course and mentorship program, Floofy Studios Photo Academy, it's available on our website. I'll leave the link in the description. It really dives deep into everything I know as a dog photographer from technical to business & everything in between. It will take you from an amateur to professional dog photographer so you can also build the successful business & dream job you’ve been striving for