Meet Carrie, our social media manager with a love of good food and worldly traveling. When she’s not jetting off halfway across the world, Carrie can be found behind her iPhone, trying to capture the perfect Instagram photo from our latest event. When it comes to creating a viral Instagram account, her philosophy isn’t “build it and they will come.” There’s a lot more to gaining relevant followers than just posting. Today, Carrie is sharing her favorite accounts with us, and how you can steal their skills to get more followers.
Sidecar Doughnuts
@sidecardoughnuts
50.3k followers
“Their photos make me want to lick my phone! They show everything from the creation process to the display to the customer delight for a full, behind-the-scenes experience. Sidecar Doughnuts promote community involvement and giving back, and they share/repost fan photos for continuing engagement.”
Copy This: have a pattern to your posts. Sidecar Doughnuts’ posts have a certain rhythm to them. Fan photo, finished doughnut, doughnuts in the making, etc. and the pattern starts again. This account could just be a bunch of pictures of doughnuts on a plate, but instead, they added variety by putting their treats in multiple different settings.
Beautiful Destinations
@beautifuldestinations
3.8m followers
“It’s all about travel and I can live vicariously through these insanely vibrant photos posted by fans all over the world. They don’t use a ton of hashtags but with nearly 4 million followers, they don’t really need to be discovered. It’s the perfect place to escape the mundane by just scrolling up or down, and if you like to travel like me, you might just get your own photo featured.”
Copy This: Set a certain standard for your photos, and only use the most beautiful you can get. This platform was made for sharing high quality, eye-catching photos, so don’t settle for anything less.
Julia Hengel (of the blog, Gal Meets Glam)
@juliahengel
582k followers
“She’s insane and perfect and in a way, it’s irritatingly perfect. I follow her because her fashion is on point, her staged photos taken by her photographer husband are perfectly done and she can afford to do all the things I save for years for – like traveling for months on end, or buying an endless supply of Chanel. Plus, she has a husband who doesn’t grunt and complain each time a photo is requested. That being said, I like accounts who give us a peek into “real life” not staged perfection. A photo of her hair on a humid day in Georgia or her looking like a drowned rat on a rainy day in Paris would be much more appealing to me.”
Copy This: Have your photos tell a story. Not everyone can jet off to Paris on a whim, but anyone can capture the adventures of their life and share it to Instagram. Julia tags all the locations, restaurants, and products in her posts, gives a backstory, and does her research for relevant hashtags to promote the area wherever she goes, and these places have noticed. Now, she get rewarded for promoting her vacation destinations to her 582 k followers.
Whole 30 Recipes
@Whole30Recipes
220k followers
“I follow them, along with other paleo accounts, because I need healthy inspiration. They recruit other Whole 30 followers or paleo cooks to do Instagram takeovers for a week. This account posts real images (not overly staged) with actual recipes. I hate following foodies accounts that post about how good a dish is and then don’t tell you how to prepare it or where to get it. #annoying. These are real people, not professional chefs, who are eating healthy and leaving their recipes and tips for other non-professional chefs to try (or to pass off to their husband to cook, in my case).”
Copy This: Share relevant content. This account has found their niche and shares exactly what their followers want: real food, and how to make it. Listen to your followers, find what they respond well to, and keep doing that.
Happy Instagramming from Carrie and BG Digital Group, where we make marketing that matters!
