Happy New Year! We're officially in 2019 and I don't know about you, but I'm counting this week as the first week back (last week was a trial run!) I've been working on some content for the new year and high up on my list was to share my year on Instagram so that's what today's post is all about. 2018 was a really good year of growth for me on the platform, practically doubling my following from 27.7k at the start of the year to 54.7k by the end, and despite not having any tips or tricks to share - what I do have is a detailed look at my year on Instagram: my top performing photos, the rise (and fall) of my following monthly and a few things I've noticed along the way. Whether you want to learn more about Instagram or simply have a nosey at what happened throughout the year for me, then I hope this post is insightful.
I keep a note of my growth across my social channels throughout the year, usually updating this monthly so I can keep track of how I'm doing. I find it's a really good way of knowing what did well for me and what to make the most of next year. I've been doing this for a couple of years (I began keeping track of my follower count in 2017) and so I really noticed similarities between months in 2018 and 2017, when I do well and don't do so well. It's really interesting and I would recommend keeping a little book of statistics to look back on, especially if you're doing this full time or just looking to understand your followers a bit more.
I started the year with 27,743 Instagram followers and made a note of my follower count at the end of each month as well as my top 4 photos based on engagement.
January 2018
Total follower count: 30,517
Followers: + 2,774
Most popular photos:
February 2018
Total follower count: 31,996
Followers: + 1,497
Most popular photos:
March 2018
Total follower count: 33,956
Followers: + 1,960
Most popular photos:
April 2018
Total follower count: 36,215
Followers: + 2,259
Most popular photos:
May 2018
Total follower count: 36,770
Followers: + 555
Most popular photos:
June 2018
Total follower count: 38,101
Followers: + 1,331
Most popular photos:
July 2018
Total follower count: 40,271
Followers: + 2,170
Most popular photos:
August 2018
Total follower count: 40,240
Followers: - 31
Most popular photos:
September 2018
Total follower count: 41,523
Followers: + 1,283
Most popular photos:
October 2018
Total follower count: 44,912
Followers: + 3,389
Most popular photos:
November 2018
Total follower count: 51,727
Followers: + 6,815
Most popular photos:
December 2018
Total follower count: 54,717
Followers: + 2,990
Most popular photos:
What I noticed
1. The two months with my lowest performance: May and August, I went abroad. There could be a multitude of reasons as to why the two seem to correlate - a lack of posting and checking social media whilst away on my behalf; perhaps my followers aren't interested in holiday content; or, it could be down to the Instagram algorithm. I've heard a few rumours that Instagram won't push your content to all your following if the photos are abroad (assuming that your followers aren't interested). I have no idea why this happened, I'm simply speculating. I just know that for me, in 2018 there was a clear correlation between travel and lower performance.
2. October marks the end of the summer rut. In 2017, I was at a real slump on Instagram, constantly losing followers but this all turned around in October that same year - I've written more about this in an older post: One Year of Blogging Full-Time: A Year-Long Diary - and whilst the circumstances weren't the exact same in 2018 (I only ended a single month with a loss of followers), it was still the month where things turned around in terms of likes, engagement and of course, followers gained. Followed by November which was literally an insane month for me!
3. Repeating outfits is ok. You can see repeated outfits pop up as my most popular images throughout the months which shows that it really doesn't matter if you share the same outfit multiple times, people will still engage. I think there's a misconception around the idea that our content/clothing/style needs to be new, new, new all the time. I personally have always enjoyed sharing outfits multiple times because in reality, I wear outfits more than once *shock* I would go as far as to say it's important for us, as bloggers, to be able to showcase outfits and pieces of clothing more than once because the idea of always needing to buy new clothes is detrimental.
My final thoughts
Instagram will forever be a conundrum, a platform filled with secrets and algorithms that we will probably never really understand but it's one of my favourite platforms and always has been. I thought sharing this post could be interesting to some of you and I actually really enjoyed putting this together believe it or not! Looking back on the year is something I really want to do more of.
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