How To Build An Instagram Page…After It’s Deleted

I know, strange right? Why on earth would Instagram delete a harmless blogger account?

Well, there’s a myriad of reasons but that’d be too long to go over. I will, however, share this little insight – Instagram is very particular about people who disobey their Community Guidelines. In my case, it was I grew too fast and I followed more than 20 people (that I genuinely liked) in an hour.

The emotional reaction I had that morning when I woke up and realized I was locked out of my account, made me really think about how much I loved the platform but that’s another post for some other day. The point is, I was devastated, especially because I had just built this account to over 2K followers over 2 years. It was like a lot of blood, sweat and tears just disappeared in an instant – in the blink of an eye.

Nevertheless, after failed countless attempts to contact Instagram’s Customer Support through their ticket system over the weekend, I decided to start over.

I was scared to say the least, mostly because I know how hard it is to build a loyal Instagram following but it had to be done because it was a key component of my blog’s success. Here’s how I did it:

• I chose a name that was close to my previous account. This was for brand consistency but also so that previous followers would recognize me and re-follow.
• I completed my profile and posted a photo with a caption highlighting my new account. Yes, I changed my profile picture, filled out my bio and added my website link. However, the most important step I took was posting a photo and in the caption explaining the reason I had a new account. I knew that the worst-case scenario, former followers would be curious about my name and check out my post to see what was up. I made sure they didn’t have to search hard for an explanation or dismiss my new account as bogus.
• I visited Iconosquare. If you haven’t registered your blog’s Instagram account on Iconosquare then you are missing out! Among all its free features, it gives you analytics that are tailored to your account, including when you should post based on when your audience is online. I actually was in luck because this analytics software kept all my information from my previous account, which leads me to my next point.
• Follow, follow, follow! Using my old account’s Iconosquare info, I followed all my previous followers and then I connected to my Facebook friends. It took a week but I soon had a healthy following and averaged 100 likes per photo.
• I implemented my content strategy. I really used the opportunity to start over to better brand myself. I re-evaluated everything, especially how much I posted, what filters I used and what hashtags I commented with.

Following these 5 simple steps and engaging with my followers has rewarded me with an account of over 1000 followers in half the time it took me before. Now I’m not discounting the work it requires to build such a following but I wanted to share what I did so that if this happens to you, you have a plan of escape.

This was originally written for and posted on Brown Girl Bloggers