What is a Personal blog on Instagram?
Personal blog can also be termed as an online diary of an individual on Instagram. Instagram allows a 2200-character limit for captions. This limit is adequate for microblogging.
A personal blog is written by the author about things that interest them and eventually invites an audience that shares similar interests. It can focus on any niche like beauty, food, lifestyle, daily life, politics, or sports.
How to start personal blogging on Instagram?
- Create a professional account: Having a professional account can enable the individual to access Instagram tools that can provide data like audience demographics timestamps and more. These can help analyze and tailor the content for the target segment.
Go through these steps, create a professional account and begin your personal blog.- Go to settings in your Instagram account > Select the ‘account’ option >
- Scroll to the bottom. You will find ‘Switch to professional account’ Or ‘Add new professional account’ select the preferable option.
- Upon the professional account creation, it will ask you to select amongst options for ‘what best describes you?”
- Select ‘personal blog’
- Build a niche: Building a niche enables the individual to demonstrate consistency around a certain topic and keep the interested audience engaged. This also enables brands to understand the blog’s potential to promote their products or services and continue the collaboration for future work. As mentioned earlier, niche can vary depending on the individual’s interest.
- Create attractive graphics and profile feed: Instagram is primarily an image-driven platform. Attracting the audience requires attention-grabbing graphics that will interest them in reading the microblog as well as invite them to the profile. The same is required to keep them engaged within the profile.
- Create enticing post content: Although it might be a challenge to create concise and enticing within the 2200 character limit, its rewards are equally beneficial. Upon establishment of the Instagram blog, the individual can also choose to have a website for much longer. It is necessary to ensure that Instagram personal blogs contain a call to action at the end of the captions to invite the audience to the website
How to find a niche & determine its potential reach?
Beginning an Instagram blog for an individual is an exciting new avenue. However, It consists of multiple aspects that need careful consideration before beginning.
Why choose a niche: It is one of the foremost aspects, as it determines the blog’s category and its audience. Picking the correct niche depends upon criteria like interest and potential. It is recommended to pick a niche before beginning as changing the category in between can lead to losing or confusing the audience.
Determining its potential reach: While picking a niche it is ideal to determine its potential simultaneously as it helps the individual to maintain a structured flow of progress. It won’t halt the individual and reconsider the future potential the blogs can hold.
One can begin by considering the blog category, the audience it targets, the industry market for the niche, competitors, and their works and brands the blog could potentially work with.
How to pick a niche: One can pick a niche depending upon their interest levels and research its potential within the audience and industry. Researching established bloggers within the same category can help build confidence within the niche.
If an individual is facing difficulties in selecting a narrower category like travel, beauty, or money blogs; one can begin with broader criteria. Lifestyle blogging is the most commonly used category of blogging as it can consist of travel, fashion, food, and more. It can also help in understanding which topics are suitable for the author, which resonate the best with the audience, and upon analysis of its potential reach.
Although it has a great potential reach and a large number of topics to cover, it lacks the ability to establish expertise and audience confidence within the blog for credibility. It is recommended to eventually show a gradual transition from the lifestyle blog to the narrower niche.
Transitioning to a narrower niche:
Instagram money bloggers: Multiple money bloggers begin with topics emphasizing the finance sector like budgeting, banking, loans, taxes, or investments. Although Money blogs as a niche have a large potential, narrower niches have further potential as it builds a brand focus. These blogs can primarily be based on investment or cryptocurrency depending on the audience’s responses and growth potential.
Instagram bloggers that went from broader to narrower niche blogging
Larissa D’Sa: She is a renowned Indian blogger and awarded for her travel blogs today. She initially began as a lifestyle blogger and has been known since 2013 for the same. She covered topics like fitness, food, and fashion along with travel blogs, however in 2016 she made travel blogs her niche.
Strategies to reach a wider audience
- Instagram stories: Instagram stories and highlights can contain hashtags, behind-the-scenes, product/services promotion, or polls for audience interaction. It can increase audience interaction as well as enable them to share it with their followers increasing blog reach.
- Relevant Hashtags: Hashtags are an excellent way to reach the audience beyond the target segment. They can be used in posts and stories to increase blog reach and engagement.
- Geotags: Geotagging posts are helpful as Instagram enables users to find posts from a particular location. Although it is most useful for travel blogs, it can also be useful for other blogs through generalized tags like Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore.
- Audience interaction: Linking and responding to the audience and their comments are essential to develop connections as well as to increase the interaction on their part. It also encourages other users to engage in the comments.
Benefits personal blog on Instagram
- Humanizing the content: The personalized touch in blogs is an excellent way to introduce and convey the author to the audience. It enables higher resonation with them.
- Networking: It allows the audience to reach out personally and foster connections with the individual as well as the blog. It also enables various individuals in the audience to engage and network among themselves in comments.
- Lead generation: Instagram’s e-commerce has witnessed an excellent rise, and established an ideal platform for lead generation. It is easier to be discovered by brands and results in benefits for both, the brand and the individual.
- Insights: Instagram algorithm upon analysis can show the potential of the blog and enable catering to the audience.
