Today I’m talking about the Guardians Instagram account and it’s phenomenal growth by 57% in just one year over 800,000 followers on the account.
So the funnel works like this; they use Instagram to lure people in to their funnel so they create engaging content for free in the hope that those people will become readers of their website and starting using their apps.
And then, eventually, those people will become paying members of the website.
That’s the basic structure of their funnel.
They achieve outstanding growth by focusing on core guidelines; to target a younger demographic.
So they are focusing on environmental issues, human rights issues, and animal welfare.
And they are also focusing on solutions – where other news organisations just focus on problems.
What are the mechanics of this?
How are they really achieving this kind of growth?
Well, they actually have a team of three people posting content every day – and then they have another entirely separate team that focus on distribution.
They also have journalists, video producers, and designers who all contribute content on the Instagram account and this really mixes things up and it keeps things interesting.
But it does make having a consistent editorial style a little bit of a problem for the Guardian.
The team, on average, post three pieces of content to Instagram per day.
And it’s a mix of original content that’s designed specifically for Instagram, and then they use existing content from the website, and then they also make sense some third-party content so they might use content from independent filmmakers.
They also have reoccurring Instagram stories.
These are really powerful because they hook people in and keep people interested in the brand.
One of those weekly stories is called ‘fake or for real’ and they ask Instagram followers to guess whether a story is fake news or not – and then a journalists will reveal the truth about the story.
And each one of those stories gets around 50,000 views per week.
Another story that they use on a regular basis is called ‘Brexit bites’.
This takes a complex issue like Brexit and simplifies it down to make it easy for their followers to understand.
So there you’ve just got all the main elements of a strategy that the Guardian newspaper are using to increase their Instagram following.
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