Instagram is a great platform for fashion accounts. It’s an image-based platform where beautiful photos stop the scroll long enough to read captions.
Fashion Instagram can even go one step farther with shoppable posts that help create a more complete, immersive experience for followers.
As with any account on Instagram, follower growth is one of the most important pieces of an Instagram strategy.
After all, without organic, engaged followers, your account won’t be able to build the community and be used as a marketing tool.
Unfortunately, growing your following can be a difficult task. It can take a lot of time, and it seems like strategies are changing as quickly as the Instagram algorithm.
Today, though, we have five tips for fashion Instagram accounts to help you get more Instagram followers, whether you’re a fashion Instagram influencer, brand, or business.
1. Make Sure Your Content Is Eye-Catching
Instagram is a visual platform, which is what makes it perfect for people in the fashion industry. Because of this, though, you have to have high-quality, scroll-stopping images that really resonate with your ideal followers and audience members. Many fashion Instagram accounts have beautiful images, so you need to make sure that yours are stunning. Content creation is the heart of your Instagram success.
Your content also needs to be unique – show some behind-the-scenes photos in both your feed and your stories. Showcase your team, your events, and your other non-glamorous shots. This can help you stand out in the fashion Instagram world.
When you do post traditional fashion shots, create a well-composed image that is striking, like @miamiamine does in the image below. Make sure your outfit contrasts well with the background so it stands out. You certainly don’t want the fashion getting lost in your posts!
2. Be True To Your Own Style
This might be our most important tip. The best way to attract followers who will want to stick with you (and potentially become customers) is to be yourself. If you try to take on another person’s style, your audience won’t get to see and know who you truly are. People can tell when someone’s being inauthentic, and they can especially tell if they know that they’re doing it just to create a brand or build a following online.
“My top tips for growing a fashion Instagram account are:
- Consistency, so your followers can know when to expect to see your posts
- Engaging with your followers; making sure to respond to their comments, and commenting on their posts
- Showing your personality; Relatable content that will draw likeminded followers.“
— Fashion influencer, Amanda Shannon, @sheworeitwith
The best thing you can do is create an account that is unique and genuine. Your followers need to be able to know and follow along with you and your story. By sharing information about your life or just highlighting unusual fashion choices, you’re giving your followers a look into who you are. If you’re sharing your personal side and the style that you love, your account will become far more relatable. In an online world that’s becoming more and more crowded everyday, people are looking for other real people to connect with and follow online.
Julianna does a great job of bringing her followers into her life, as well as highlighting her unique, affordable style. Her posts are always bright and colorful, and she’s always ready to talk about her latest Target or Old Navy haul.
3. Use A Mix Of Professional And Lower-Quality Photos
This goes right back to our theme of creating a real, relatable brand presence online. Some fashion Instagram influencers are so hung up on only posting perfect, high-quality photos that they miss the chance to share some great moments because the photographer wasn’t there.
This is an especially important tip if you’re an influencer or are otherwise building a personal brand. You want your followers to get to know you, so they can gain trust in you and then later decide to buy from you or support you in other ways.
“Make sure you’re consistently engaging with other accounts – especially ones with the same niche as yours.” — Fashion influencer, Aly Ross, @alylross
Overall, younger Instagram users are gravitating toward more raw and real photos than overly-filtered and edited images. They like to see the raw, real and candid side of the people and brands they follow. As movements like #AerieReal take off and call for a stop to retouching, the younger generations are beginning to follow that mindset more and more.
Instagram has also given you a great outlet for less-professional images and posts: Stories! Users expect stories to be real, candid and somewhat simple overall. Sure, having some pre-created or branded stories is great, but overall people expect to see posts created in-the-moment with the user’s smartphone.
“My advice to anyone wanting to increase their following, no matter their niche is to… engage! In order for any relationship to grow, there must be a connection. The most effective way I’ve increased my engagement, which led to increasing my followers is by engaging with my followers via stories!
Showcasing to my community, my day to day especially, the most interesting parts. I also, give them the opportunity to express themselves, by asking questions or recommendations. Lastly, using stories features, such as polls, questions, music, and hashtags, allows you to engage with a bigger audience.“
— Fashion influencer, Gabriella Rossa, @gabriellarossaa
@Anticahome is a fashion brand that does this well. They show some nice behind-the-scenes moments and images from in their store, while also posting more professional, curated images as well.
4. Create A Theme
Having a theme for your fashion Instagram account can benefit you and your followers. If you’re debating whether to post a certain image or choose a particular outfit for your next shoot, you can easily refer back to your theme and ask yourself if it will fit well. Themes are great for easy decision making, and they’re a great tool for fashion Instagram influencers.
They’re also great for your followers because having a theme helps deepen your branding. After a while of posting images with the same theme, your followers will begin to associate that theme with you and can recognize your posts as they see them. Potential followers who visit your profile will also be able to look at your grid and see your theme. If it appeals to them, it helps them make the easy choice of following you.
Instagram themes help keep your fashion account cohesive and pulled together. It can also show your potential followers what they’re likely going to get when they follow your account. Your theme is a quick snapshot into the life and times of your account, so make sure you give it some thought before choosing.
One great example of an account with a theme is @glamlifeliving. Hannah has a soft, warm theme on her account, but her photos are also often glamorous as her handle would suggest. Just as she has, you can use your theme to tie in your branding.
5. Re-Create High Engagement Posts With Similar Outfits
If you have a few photos that you know had high-engagement, you know what your next handful of posts should be. Fashion Instagram influencers do this frequently. Keeping track of images that received high engagement is a great way to know what your audience really wants to see from you. Sure, you can also ask them what they want to see by using a poll in your stories, but the best way to know is to keep track of what they engage with most.
This is why keeping an eye on your Instagram analytics is one of the most important tasks you should be doing. By monitoring what is resonating with your audience and comparing it with what fell a little flat, you can know exactly what content to create and can predict the engagement on future posts.
If you have a particular post that performed very well, consider doing it again, but with a slightly different outfit. You already know that your audience liked this type of post, so you’re likely to get good engagement again. This in turn, can help your account’s overall engagement rate.
One account that does this well is @venus_is_curvy. Many of her photos are actually taken near this same white wall. This creates consistency for her audience, and she can see which poses and outfits perform better than others because her background is often the same. As you can see here, in just a day she’s already gotten over half the likes she got on a similar post two months ago.
6. Bonus Tip: Use Fashion Instagram Hashtags to Your Advantage
Hashtags are a great tool to reach more people on Instagram. You can have up to 30 hashtags in a single post, and we suggest you use all 30 of them. That’s 30 free chances to be put in front of your ideal audience. The important thing to note here, though, is that you need to use hashtags strategically.
“Organize, prioritize, and revitalize your hashtags:
- Organize them to be cohesive with your content and audience you’re trying to reach.
- Prioritize them as an important and crucial piece to each and every post (to be posted under your post within the first minute of posting).
- Revitalize them every other month to reach new people and keep your account and follower growth from becoming stagnant. Rotate hashtags.”
— Fashion stylist and blogger, Miss TK, @bymisstk
There will always be fashion Instagram hashtags that are trending, like #OOTD that you can certainly use to expand your reach. But it’s also important to use less-popular fashion Instagram hashtags. Unless you have a massive following already, chances are your fashion Instagram posts will be lost in hashtags with over a million posts. You can still use them, but don’t rely on just those alone. Use the other 28 or so hashtags you have available to you to target smaller, more specific audiences.
For instance, #outfitlove has under 250,000 posts, unlike #outfitinspiration that has almost 10 million posts. Fashion Instagram user @laurranel does a good job of mixing up her hashtags. She uses some big hashtags like #fashion and #outfitideas, but she also uses smaller fashion Instagram hashtags like #scarfseason and #fashionbaw. It’s also great that she added the scarf hashtags because the Instagram algorithm wants to see you using hashtags that relate to things that are in your photos.
5 Tips For Fashion Instagram Accounts
So there you have it – five tips for fashion Instagram accounts to grow their following, plus a bonus because hashtags are just so important! By implementing these tips, you’ll set your account up for success in growing an organic following of other fashion Instagram users, who are excited to follow you and see your posts.
Bonus Content
For those who enjoy content in visual form, here’s an infographic material on this topic. Share on your website by using the embed code below!
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Author
Wyatt is a writer who brings a unique voice to every piece of content he creates. Whether crafting insightful articles or punchy social posts, Wyatt has a talent for making even the most complex topics feel relatable. When not writing, Wyatt enjoys hiking, reading mystery novels, and discovering local coffee spots.
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