How I’m Rebuilding My Instagram After a Summer Off (and How You Can Too)

Have you ever let Instagram slip through the cracks because, let’s face it, life happens? Maybe between soccer practice, piles of laundry, and trying to keep your sanity intact, your account went a little silent? Yeah, me too.

In this episode of Mompreneur Mastery, we’re tackling the very real struggle of reviving your Instagram after it’s been collecting dust for a bit. Whether it’s been weeks or months, I’ve got you covered with a no-BS, doable strategy to bring it back to life—without losing your mind in the process.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Post With Purpose Memebership

Find & Fix The Gaps In Your Instagram Strategy Quiz

1 Month of Conversation Starters Content Calendar

Music courtesy of Pixabay

Transcript

Sydney: 0:39

Okay, moms raise your hand. If you have ever taken a break from Instagram, because. Life just got a little too crazy between like sports practices or games, trying to keep the house some semblance of clean. and just like running your business and managing your entire family. Sometimes Instagram just kind of falls to the wayside and has to wait. I totally get it. And that was me. In a big, big way over the summer. so if you've been staring at an inactive Instagram account with very little to no engagement, slow follower growth. And wondering what you can do to bring it back to life. This episode is for you. I am going to walk you through exactly how I am reviving my Instagram account. After a long break. how I am getting my engagement back, how I am getting qualified followers again, and the best part, it is totally doable because I'm doing it on a mom's schedule. And I'm going to tell you how you can do that too. Welcome back to mompreneur mastery, simple Instagram strategies for busy moms. I'm here to help moms like you grow your business, using Instagram without the overwhelm. and like I said, today's episode is all about we're fiving, kind of dead Instagram accounts. So if you have been feeling guilty about not being super consistent at any point in time, I want to first give you permission to just let that go. I've been there. you're running a business and a household and it always seems like. things are gonna fall into place and there's going to be some kind of order in the chaos. Something happens to mess it all up. That big changes come. something always just pops up and kind of ruins that. that's life and it happens. And it happened to me in a big way over the summer where I was posting very consistently engaging frequently. and all of that, just kind of. Went away. Which I'm fine with and you should be fine with it too. It happens, you know, I love Instagram. I love what it can do for businesses, but it's not necessarily always a priority when big things happen in our lives outside of business. And the truth is Instagram. Doesn't have to be perfect every day. that's kind of one of the reasons I love it. So, like I said today, I want to dive into what happens when you take a break from Instagram and how you can revive your account again, after taking that break, For me over the summer, it was a lot of traveling. And hanging out with my kids, hanging out with family, and then our family kind of changed and someone moved in with us. So all of these things just took priority over Instagram, which is totally fine. It happens. If you are ever feeling bad about these breaks, please remember that consistency is important, but it's not the end of the world. reviving an account is doable It's certainly not worth it. If the cost of consistency is your mental health. Or your kids? Take the break. Take a step back. It's totally fine. when you're ready to jump back in, this is what you do. I totally understand that when you're ready to come back to it, it feels really daunting. I felt that way. I went from having like a high engagement rate, pretty solid follower growth two absolute crickets and both of those sections. it felt very daunting. and I was very overwhelmed with, oh my gosh, where do I even start? How do I start this? It's kind of like when you've had a super crazy week and all your laundry is piling up and kind of just threatening to take over your entire house. and you don't even know what to start with, but you have to do it. But once you start with one load and you fold it and you put it away, everything else. It just gets a little bit less daunting every time with that first step. So don't feel like you have to do it all at once. I'm not telling you to do seven loads of laundry in one day, we're going to start one thing at a time. Engagement is like the heartbeat for your Instagram account without it. Instagram, isn't going to show your content to anyone. you will be posting to crickets. The thing that tells the algorithm, Hey, this account is alive. It's kicking and it deserves to be seen by more people. So make sure to prioritize both content that gets engagement and the super, super duper Under utilized thing called outbound engagement. Liking commenting, replying to stories of people in your audience. People that your audience follows, complimentary businesses to yours. The more people that see that the more people will interact with your content, so you can, Get that engagement. But also. Like I said, get visibility by people in your target audience so you can get that follower count back up And not just any followers, you always want to prioritize people that are in your target audience so that they actually engage with your content. These two things very much tied together. outbound engagement accomplishes both of them. So even just like 10 minutes a day. Can make a huge difference. And it did for me. When it came to increasing engagement and increasing my followers. the next thing I did, and this might sound kind of scary was I deleted followers. Yeah, you heard that, right? I went through and deleted inactive followers and I used the Instagram. tool. When you go to your followers, there's an option to look at followers that might be spam. Deleted all of those, because all they're doing is dragging down your engagement rate and you don't want that. If they're not in my target audience, if they're not real people, I don't really want them there. That's not beneficial to me, even though it kind of inflates that follower number and might make me look more legitimate. It is not actually helpful to my business. That is very much a vanity metric. And I don't want vanity metrics. I want actionable metrics. Which one of them can be engagement. So focusing on quality followers over quantity is really important here. Once you clear out those inactive accounts, those spam accounts. Your engagement rate will improve because the people that are left are the ones who actually want to see your content and actually want to interact with it. And that paired with outbound engagement really, really helps to get that visibility. Get that engagement right back up. And make sure that you are getting followers that are in your target audience. And then when it came to creating content, after doing these two things, I wanted to create content that sparked engagement. The key here is not posting just for the sake of posting to have something on your feed. Right. It's about creating content that gets people talking. After break, you really want to come in full force. And get interactions with your post, whether it's. Comments. Shares. Saves. Those are like the three biggest ones when it comes to getting more reach on your posts. So focus on that. A lot of the times this can be super relatable content. It can be content that is extremely valuable. It can be content that, is a little divisive in nature. If you use, kind of device of hook. That peaks interest in intrigue. And can start some really interesting conversations. Because, like I said, all of these things work because Instagram loves interaction. So anytime you can start a conversation or get a share. or a safe when people interact with that content. Instagram takes note of that and shares that post to more people, which is going to help your account and your business in turn. If you're not sure what to post to get engagement, the easiest, easiest thing to do. Is to look at your insights and pass posts and see what got a lot of comments. What got a lot of shares and repurpose it or replicate it. if it's been a while, since you've posted it, you can totally do that. Checking your insights saves a ton of time and guesswork and stress. When it comes to creating content. I always always recommend it. and that is the fourth thing I do was tracking progress. The scheduler I use is called metrical and it has a really great reporting feature that I love so much more than like the Instagram insights or, Mehta business suite. And I checked the metrical analytics once a month, sends me automatically a very detailed monthly report of my progress on a whole bunch of different things. But when I want something quicker. Because I'm working really hard to get this account active again. I use a tool called flick.tech. you can use this. It's completely free for just this feature, but they can send you weekly reports of your most engaging posts, the different engagement, rates, just those kinds of metrics that you can use and immediately take action on. It's just like a very quick, actionable thing, that I don't have to go searching for an analyze, and like a monthly progress report, which that information is super valuable. But when I want like, Quick, lots of engagement over a short period of time. As I'm trying to revive my account. These weekly reports from flick tech are super helpful. No one has the time to just like, guess your way to success on Instagram guest, your way to more comments or shares or saves. You need to know what's working and what isn't. So you can adjust your strategy. Using these kinds of tools and tracking your progress in your insights is really key for that. Here are. The kind of typical rates for things. So like a typical follower rate. Which you will be able to see in your insights on the metrical report or on the flick tech weekly report. Is normally anywhere between two to 6% depending on your industry. So if you're somewhere in there, you're doing great. The average engagement rate on a post. Is around 6% and that's based on 2024 numbers. So this current year. And you can find this by taking the total number of interactions on a post, dividing it by the total number of followers you have, and then multiplying it by 100. If you want to do it yourself, or you can use. A tool like metrical or flick tech to do it for you, which is very nice. Especially if you're not a math, girly, which I am not. So that makes my life easier. But those are good things to track it. And they at least give you, very specific things to work on for your account. And like I said, using outbound engagement, which is so important. I have an entire monthly training, dedicated to it inside post with purpose, my membership. When done correctly. It has such amazing benefits for your growth, your visibility or breach and your inbound engagement on your account. because all of these things kind of tie together. So those are the first steps that I'm taking. I have seen an uptick in growth. Since. Deleting. A whole bunch of people. and I've seen an uptake in engagement Last week, my post that had the most engagement was 25% engagement rate, which is pretty amazing. so definitely doing well and because it got that much engagement, it also got a lot of new reach and new followers. you can see how all of these things kind of tied together. these are definitely the first steps you want to focus on when reviving. kind of debt or inactive Instagram account. And then after this, the next step that I'm going to be working on is fostering deeper connections. Now that I have that engagement back up now that I have people in my audience that are interacting with my content. So they see it more often. They kind of are getting an idea of who I am and how I work. I want to take it to the next level and start turning that engagement into a deeper level connection, because that connection is what converts followers into clients. And this is all part of the five-step Strategy for Instagram sales that I teach inside posts with purpose. So, if you want to learn more about the five step strategy, what to do in each of the steps, how to build real connections with your audience while you keeping that engagement high and being able to convert those qualified followers into customers or clients, depending on your business type, there'll be a link below and you can check out posts with purpose there. I go really deep into strategies like these, So you can grow your Instagram in a way that feels manageable and effective without wasting a whole bunch of time on guesswork or chasing trends and hacks that you see online. So, if you have taken a break from Instagram or you feel like your strategy isn't working, you can also take my find and fix the gaps in your Instagram strategy quiz to see where your count could use. Just a little extra love. the link for that will also be in the show notes so you can get personalized feedback and super actionable steps you can take on how to revive your Instagram account. So just to do a quick recap, if you've taken a break from Instagram, the key to reviving your account is focus on engagement. First, clean up inactive followers, clean up those spam and bot accounts. Create content that sparks interaction. Don't forget to track your progress. so you can adjust as needed. And please, please do not forget strategic outbound engagement and do it with intention. It's not about being perfect. It's not about posting all the time. it is just about being really strategic so that you can get the results that you need to make sure your Instagram is actually supporting your business and not just kind of ending up being a time. Suck. Don't forget if you do have to take a break, don't feel bad about it. Life happens, taking breaks as a part of any journey, whether it's like life or business or work. But when we do a little bit of strategized focused and have a solid plan, you can bring your Instagram back to life, get an active again, and you can see even better results than before. So don't forget to take the find and fix the gaps in your Instagram strategy quiz in the show notes to get your Instagram back on track.