How do you scale a new brand on Instagram? If you been following me for a while now, you know that while having my blog, I’ve since started two new brands. A girl friend of mine reached out after I shared my growth goals with Paper and Poise and I figured I would share the things I did to scale a new brand on social media. This is helpful for you in the early stages. This is how you start before the website, before a ton of followers, this is the work; the work you can’t skip over. These are the things I did and at least had in order before deciding on November 14, 2019 that I was going to launch.
I didn’t plan for a specific day, I literally did an ANNOUNCEMENT post on Instagram, I had been working behind the scenes and just went for it, but still had enough of a plan to get to where I am now.
All of that said, today I’m sharing 3 ways to scale a new brand on Instagram.
Create Your Plan In Advance to Scale A New Brand
In order to scale a new brand you need a plan. You need some sort of information about what you are going to do. It is essential that you write down whatever it is you want to do for the brand you’re creating. Paper and Poise is not a new project for me. I created the name back in 2017 when I had my first brand Gold Labl. My original plan was to make Paper and Poise an invitation business because I loved paper and had every intent to be an event planner; at the time it all made sense.
Until it didn’t make sense anymore. Once I was ready to start my blog, I knew I had to do something else with Paper and Poise and while I didn’t know at the time what that would look like, I for sure wasn’t done with it. I had already invested in my logo, email and domain name so that wasn’t an issue, but I didn’t know what it would look like so I sat on it for a year or 2. It wasn’t until year 2 that I started understanding and making my plan. Creating your plan to scale a new brand looks a lot like answering a ton of questions and taking small steps. This isn’t where you have to have all of the answers, you just have to start answering.
Questions I Answered to Position Myself to Begin
- WHAT is it that I’m actually desiring to do or create?
- WHY? It’s fundamental that every brand you create has a solid why.
- WHAT will I name this thing?
- WHO is this for?
- WHAT logo design ideas, color ways, font styles am I interested in?
- WHAT do I want my audience to feel when they see it?
- HOW can I start small, now and build up my community until product (or service) launch?
- IS there a need for this?
You’re probably like… that’s what you did? It seems silly, but having clarity about these things is what keeps you in forward progress. I use Evernote, one of my favorite platforms for ideation and writing, I have a running sheet titled Paper and Poise and it’s a bunch of research and links to things, exact color hexcodes, font names and questions that needed to be answered so I could move forward. Again you don’t have to have ALL of the answers, but having a sense of what you want will allow you to create those small goals and start to scale; answering these questions also help with clarity as you move forward.
Scale A New Brand by Creating Small Goals
Small goals make scaling up feel so much easier. My first goal with Paper and Poise was to build name recognition. I was stepping into totally uncharted territory, but I felt like my plan was in place, I felt like I was doing something unique and slightly different then what I had seen, or not seen for that matter and I started to grow.
One of my second goals was to have enough content to be able to post everyday for at least a month or two. At the time I hadn’t begun using my planner and my first product wasn’t even out (aka not having it all together), but with my logo, color palette and stock photos I began to post as often as I could. Stock photos are a great way to scale a new brand on Instagram as long as transitioning into your content is smooth and seamless.
My third goal was to get my product out and printed, etsy shop up and open and photos taken for Instagram. After that my goal was growth, 500 and then 1000. I’m saying all of this to say, whether it’s a product or service, you’re going to have to start building before all of your ducks are in a row. You can absolutely tighten up along the way, but creating the small goals get you closer and allow you to scale a new brand a bit quicker.
One last thing, add dates to ideas and things as they come up. It gives you a reference point and really puts into perspective how much you can do in a certain period of time. You’d surprise yourself at what could go down in 6 months.
Start
Just start! You can’t scale a new brand if you don’t start. I mentioned earlier that I made an announcement post on Paper and Poise November 14, 2019. I broke 1K followers before July 2020, so it took me 6 months to scale and monetize my new brand. Imagine if I didn’t start then? Use your small goals and small wins to guide you to the starting point. The really fun thing about Paper and Poise is when I was starting, SO MANY OTHERS WERE TOO! It was almost like a community push to get our pages up and running so we could start sharing our paper and planner obsessions.
Often times the one thing holding us back is starting. Starting requires action, action requires you to make moves that position you for what you want to move towards. You can’t scale a new brand if you don’t start. Start taking pictures, start envisioning and drafting the idea, start using an Instagram feed planner like UNUM to organize photos. All of this is a starting point.
In a devotional I read recently it mentioned how important it is to make decisions that move you forward every day. It mentioned how we should stop viewing our decisions as good/bad, right/wrong, but rather view them by whether they move us forward toward our goals. This was major for me and is really major for us all. When you scale a new brand, the fact that it is unchartered territory is usually more than enough to make us questions our decisions, but changing our mindset about those decisions should give us a bit more comfort around getting started. I hope this post helped you some and gave you a little confidence boost. YOU CAN scale a new brand, whether it’s your first or fifth, it’s possible.
