Adelaide’s Instagram Journey
We are by no means experts on the wonderful world of dog Instagram but we’re hoping to share our story in an effort to document our journey as well as inspire and empower you to grow your Instagram following. We are still a humble account navigating the waters of Instagram dog fame, but it’s been a fun journey so far and we want to share it with you.
In this blog we will highlight our steps to getting to 1000 followers, to 5000 and then our plans for beyond. We will also disclose what we did not choose to do, in an effort to keep an account that still feels truthful for our story. Of course, everyone’s journey is different so take it at your own pace and tell your unique story!
Let’s start from the beginning. Before we even got Adelaide, we knew that we wanted to start a dog Instagram for her. With Ryan being a professional photographer and both of us being actors - we love high quality photos and have a flair for the dramatic.
What did we do intentionally to grow her account to 1000 followers?
Participated in Follow Trains/Loops
Joined Iggy groups on Facebook/Instagram
Tag and get featured on breed-specific round up accounts (@iggiesoftheworld) or other product accounts that align with our values (Open Farm, Buddy Belts, etc)
Google hashtags
Started our blog
Let’s discuss:
Participated in Follow Trains/Follow Loops - beware!
First off, what is a follow train/loop? We didn’t know at first either. A follow train/loop is a post or message thread where you are required to follow all involved (including the hosts) or risk being removed from the “following” festivities. We stumbled upon them in the beginning when searching accounts on the explore page. I think as a new puppy on Instagram there are many accounts that will invite you to a follow train/loop. Now, we will admit that they are not all doom and gloom. When we first started, we found some really great accounts to follow that were all eager (and motivated) to follow us back. It seemed simple enough. We followed the accounts, then they followed us back. While some accounts were active and engaging, we realized quickly that many of these were just not the accounts we would organically choose to follow. We wanted to follow our breed specifically and find other sighthounds. We also found a love for comedic accounts with high quality photography. If you’re looking to participate in a follow train/loop, we won’t scare you away from it... but our advice would be to also start searching your explore page or follow a hashtag that peaks your interest!
Joined Iggy Groups on FB/Instagram
We are very fortunate to have a thriving community of Italian Greyhound owners that have groups on Facebook as well as many very active and engaging accounts on Instagram. Just after we met Adelaide for the very first time at the breeder’s, we were added to the Facebook group in our area for Iggy owners (Toronto Iggies Society). This group was a huge comfort for us in the beginning when we had no clue what we were doing. Owners on this group post everything - the good, the bad and the ugly. We get to learn from experienced owners about how to care for these unique creatures. We’ve seen helpful information about leg breaks, stomach issues, and seizures as well as what to do if your dog eats something WEIRD. It really feels like a supportive community where we celebrate together and help those owners in need. To be honest, this group was one of the biggest inspirations for writing this blog. We found that there just weren’t enough people talking about these little creatures in a big way - so we wanted to be this voice for our community. We’ll take this moment to thank everyone involved there and in our online Instagram community that take the time to reach out when Adelaide has been sick or acting up. We continue to learn about these beautiful dogs and plan to keep documenting our personal experience with Adelaide. Other Facebook groups for Iggies include: “Italian Greyhound Lovers” and “Italian Greyhound Owners”.
Tag and Get Featured
Specifically we are talking about tagging accounts that do round ups (their purpose is to feature others accounts) or that sell products we believe in. We started this in the beginning and continue to tag accounts in our posts in an effort to get featured and keep spreading the love. We’ve been lucky enough to find some great accounts such as @iggiesoftheworld that specifically share Italian greyhound accounts. This is another way we also find the up and coming iggy accounts! We were featured a few times in the very beginning and we imagine this helped connect us to our specific community. We also made an effort to tag our favorite companies in our posts about products that align with our values. We love Open Farm foods and treats for their quality and sustainability so when Adelaide is enjoying their products, we capture it. They are very active on their social media and we enjoy staying in touch with them. Another company we adore is Buddy Belts. Adelaide started wearing a size 3 when she was maybe 5 months old and it was even a smidge too big. She now still wears size 3 and is on the last two notches. For her first birthday we decided to splurge and get her a matching leash and buddy belt set in the new Canary yellow colour, her signature colour! They will often share photos on their account of real dogs wearing their product and we’ve been honoured to be featured. It’s nice to help promote products that you really believe in. So unless you’re getting paid the big bucks as an influencer, our advice would be to start small. Use this time as practice. Take amazing quality photos with a good camera if you have one and good lighting (near a window if you have zero equipment). All of these efforts will hopefully get you noticed when you tag those accounts you already love to follow.
Google Hashtags
Of course, there will be many people out there in the online community talking about hashtags - just about everyone is using them and they’re a really great tool for helping you find things and helping people find you!
We’ve found the most helpful advice to be the following:
Choose a variety of hashtags from very specific to a bit more broad
Create your own unique hashtag #iggyadelaide and include it in your bio if you want people to see it even more
When you hashtag, visually separate your caption from the hashtags (there are lots of different ways to do so) OR put your hashtags in a comment below
Keep experimenting! Maybe one hashtag works well for a while but you might want to change things up and see if you can bring more eyes to your page.
Bloggity blog blog
We started this blog in an effort to increase awareness of this unique breed and their many quirks. When we were first researching the breed, we found a lack of written information from owners explaining their own experience. We wanted to form a narrative that would follow Adelaide’s entire life so that any new Italian greyhound owners might have another means of learning about their own dog through the lens of Adelaide. We’ve had so much fun writing the blog, and while it’s not our primary outlet for sharing her story (we update more frequently to Instagram) we’ve found it helpful to have another outlet that allows us to express our experience more fully. In a blog we can provide more explanation about Adelaide’s story both about her success and failure. While we’re on that topic, we’d like to add that this specific blog post is a little outside the box for us. We know that we don’t have the largest following on social media, but we have found steady growth and are pleasantly surprised by the continued support across the world. It is fun to think about how Adelaide’s following has changed from day 1 until now. We continue to learn and find more ways to be involved in documenting her life.
With all of our efforts, we had 1000 followers even before Adelaide came home with us. This was also possible because of our attentive breeder - Shalane Woods. Without her photo and video updates in the month leading up to Adelaide’s “gotcha day” we wouldn’t have had too much content in the beginning. This of course wasn’t necessary, but it was nice to have some photos of her when she was very small. We were fortunate enough as well to have visited our breeder to initially meet the pups (we took pictures then) and to see Adelaide again once we knew she was the dog for us (we took even more pictures then). The first thousand followers seemed to happen organically even if there were follow trains involved.
After the first thousand followers, we got really good practice talking to new owners because the experience was happening in the moment. We didn’t have to wait anymore because Adelaide’s personality was being revealed to us every day. We learned about our girl’s unique traits and sharing them felt truthful and fun. Adelaide is an energetic and well-socialized pup. She loves treats. She loves other dogs more. We took her to puppy socialization class at our local training centre (When Hounds Fly) where she learned about the value of hot dogs and the joys of mingling with puppies. In the beginning we took her with us on adventures where she got to see the world from her little travel bag. Once she was old enough/had all of her vaccines at 16 weeks, we were able to put those social skills to the test in the real world - and boy did she thrive. These are the stories we’ve told. They’re real and fun to talk about with other iggy and dog owners. So we thought...how can we keep telling these stories and continue to reach more dogs/owners on Instagram?
The Climb to 5000 Followers
To get to 5000 followers we brainstormed more ways to become engaging and creative members of our community. The following are intentional things we did to keep telling Adelaide’s story.
To get to 5000 we:
Took high quality photos
Made video edits
Created interesting and engaging captions
Went out in the world and met real dogs
Made business cards for in-person public events
Engaged followers in creative ways
Launched our first merchandise to sell on our site
Took SkillShare classes
Let’s break that all down.
Took high quality photos
Part of our wife and husband partnership is using each other’s skills to best serve our joint ventures. We are both actors but also lucky that Ryan is a professional photographer. You don’t have to be professional, but having the skills and awareness of key technical elements can really help. Ryan has been translating his skills as a headshot photographer to pet photography and Jess assists.
One thing about taking great eye-catching photos is making sure that your dog is as comfortable as possible. You want to see your dog’s spunk and happiness. If your dog looks upset in anyway, trust us that it can be seen in the photos. You can see body language that signals they are just not ok with having their photo taken. The obvious ones are a tail between the legs or shaking, but it could even be that your dog is shying away from the lens or looking down. We’ve noticed that sometimes Adelaide needs a warm up before we start snapping a million photos. The backdrops and lighting set up we have can be intimidating, so we make sure there are a lot of high valued treats (chicken or hot dogs) and the experience becomes fun for all involved. If Adelaide is not in the mood, we give her a break or try the shoot another time. Just because the photographers are ready doesn’t mean the model will be too. We try our very best to respect Adelaide’s space and make sure she’s having the best time. If you want to learn more about our experience, read our blog posts: “Adelaide the Model” and contrastingly “Adelaide the Un-Model”.
Having a basic knowledge of editing can be very helpful to help make your photos eye-catching. If you don’t have programs such as the Adobe Suite or Procreate, get well-accustomed to the settings on your phone or within Instagram itself. We’ve seen more and more that bright photos get noticed. We often bring up the shadows because Adelaide is a darker colour, as well as bringing up the contrast so you can still see her details a bit more clearly after lightening up the image. We are currently brainstorming ideas of how to help others improve their photo game. We’re thinking of launching some IGTV videos with helpful editing tips as well as potential one-on-one coaching. Stay tuned for more information on that in the future.
Made video edits
Much like photography, Adelaide’s higher quality edited videos received more attention both in the beginning and still to this day. We find that Instagram is making a push to entice users to create videos (we think because videos take more time to view so this increases your time on the app). Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that our videos are getting more attention than photos but we will continue to create videos in the mean time. A helpful tool we use is free music on the YouTube Audio Library. So many times amazing videos get taken down due to copyright issues of the music being used. If you use a free music file from YouTube or SoundCloud, you avoid that risk and you find music that you probably haven’t heard before - win win!
We love to make videos that resemble movie trailers, for example, her first outdoor movie screening going to see The Biggest Little Farm at the Open Roof Festival sponsored by Open Farm. We compiled video clips of our journey to the event, encounters with the dogs she met there, and even her falling asleep right at the start of the film. We love capturing moments like this and imagining what her life would be like as a movie.
Created interesting and engaging captions
We’ve realized that sometimes a witty caption can inspire more interaction than your most picture perfect photo. Some of our most popular posts have been iPhone photos with our funniest captions. The struggle to always be funny can be hard, especially if it doesn’t feel organic. In the cases when we can’t be funny... we’ve found that asking an open-ended question can be even better! The best part about open-ended questions is that other accounts will be inspired to write organic comments and they might spark some real conversation. Jess learned the value of this working in retail, where she was voted by her peers as most likely to ask an open-ended question. The quality of relationship you can inspire is much greater when you’re genuinely interested in the other person. So get inquisitive! Be inviting (unless that’s not your dog’s personality). Always being true to yourself is important here and with interesting and engaging captions, your dog can really find their own voice.
Went out into the world and met real dogs
We found that meeting dogs in real life has made for some real and lasting doggy relationships! We’ve met at dog parks, in our building, on the street, at events... you name it! It’s nice to meet the dog owners of your local community when you can and swap stories. We find it helps to make a more engaged audience, at least in your local community. An example of this is when we met the creator of Fetch Co. We met this lovely person just before they launched their product - a seasonal subscription box for dogs. To make organic connections with dogs in the neighbourhood, he went around doing Q&A’s and photos of your dog to feature them on his business account. It was a nice introduction to cute pups in our city and now his business seems to be reaching lots of different doggos all around Canada.
Made business cards
Of course making a business card is not a necessity but we thought it would be a nice touch for Adelaide as well as a useful tool. Having a business card also aligns with Adelaide’s friendly personality and boss lady attitude. By carrying business cards around with us, we’ve been able to gain real followers and make real connections with dogs that we meet at events or in passing. We kept ours simple - her signature colour (yellow), her name and her Instagram handle. Potentially in the future we could update her photo and include more information such as her website. We‘ll reassess when the timing is right!
Engaged followers in creative ways
There are many different ways you can engage with your followers. The most common way is to like and comment on your favorite accounts and posts. We try our very best to be as genuine as possible - there is always something sweet to say when your entire feed is full of your favorite dogs! Another direct way to engage is to tag other dogs in story challenges (we’ve loved doing this long before it was an actual feature on Instagram stories). In our journey to 5000 followers, we participated in challenges like the Iggy Bachelor while also creating our own games including the Iggy Academy Awards and most recently, the #cinnamonbunchallenge . Whether it’s competing for the heart of another dog with post and video challenges or doing fun edits of dogs into movie posters, we met a lot of new dogs this way and formed some really great friendships along the way. We genuinely enjoy watching these dogs when they’re at their best, and worry about them when they’re sick or injured. We hope to keep up with the creative tags and challenges to strengthen our existing friendships while meeting new dogs as well. A new creative task we’ve taken on is the world of templates. We started brainstorming one day about all our favorite quizzes to take and why they were our favorites. This gave birth to our first batch of templates (My Quarantine Daily Routine, Iggy Bingo, Disney Dog Movies, and more). The coolest thing about these templates are that dogs we’ve never interacted with before are being tagged and sharing their answers with us! Another great way to make connections. Lastly we’ll discuss a very engaging and fun aspect to Instagram stories - polls! We have asked so many questions on our polls from the silly topics to serious and helpful inquiries.
We used one of our most recent polls to help us decide which design we would use for our first piece of merchandise - the “I’m All Ears” Tote Bag. We had 4 contenders and after a face off, we determined that “I’m All Ears” was the clear winner.
Launched our first merchandise to sell on our site (Available now!!!)
We have always wanted to create a product featuring our Adelaide and while it was a long time coming, we put it into action pretty quickly. A week before her first birthday we decided to make it happen, and on her birthday, we made the announcement that her very first merchandise was available for sale on our website. Fortunately, we had made this site for the blog from the beginning because once we made the decision to sell a product, all we had to do was flip a few switches on Squarespace (the website builder we used) and we were ready to start taking orders. We did product research by checking out the competition. What prices are people charging for merchandise? What is the quality of the merch? What kinds of products are people really interested in right now? We debated between a t-shirt and a tote bag but eventually settled on a tote bag for two reasons: a tote bag is useful for any dog owner who has things to carry, whether that’s on a walk to the park or going to the vet AND tote bags come in one size. The idea of selling products in many different sizes seemed a bit daunting for our first venture. We are dipping our toes into this little business and taking it just one day at a time. Our first orders are already on their way across the world and we can’t wait to see pictures of them walking the streets of the UK, Australia and the United States.
Took SkillShare Classes
This is a new development in our journey on social media. We’ve been looking for more tools to enhance our experience using social media and SkillShare does not disappoint. If you haven’t heard about SkillShare, it is an online learning community with courses on many different subjects. We’ve taken Instagram classes/tutorials, learned about how to create a business plan, taken classes on how to create merchandise and more. If you’re looking for a next step, we’d highly recommend checking out SkillShare for a variety of different courses. It is subscription-based so a bit of an investment to consider, but we’re still within the free 2 month trial period and have learned lots even before starting to pay.
Whether or not these things we did directly related to more followers or likes, we’ve enjoyed the ride and can’t wait to see where it all takes us. Maybe we’ll look back in years to come and realize some of these tactics were much more effective than others. That’s the beauty of it though. We want to document our journey where we are right now. We are grateful for every follower and every interaction. We love to laugh with you and cry with you. We hope Adelaide brings as much joy to you as your little pups do to us.
So what does this all mean for the future?
We are so inspired by the online dog community and want to keep exploring all opportunities. In the near future we’re looking towards the following things:
Opening an Etsy shop and adding more merchandise to our store.
Exploring more social platforms like TikTok, Twitter, GIPHY and YouTube (is a Vlog on the horizon?).
Achieve our goal of being featured in a round up on a big blog or social media account.
We would love to someday participate in a sponsorship for companies that align with our values.
Creating dog photography tutorials as well as photo editing services.
If there’s anything you’d love to see from us, let us know. We are big dreamers and want to make those dreams our reality.
After sharing with you all the things we’ve done and what we hope to do...let’s chat a bit about what we did NOT do.
What we did not do:
Take a discount code from companies that approached in an aggressive or spammy way
Hold any contests/giveaways
Buy followers
While building up our following, we were approached by many accounts offering seemingly “free” products in exchange for posting. Looking further into this we realized that the shipping fees or fees involved outweighed the free product and that we weren’t really interested in the product anyway. The big tip off with these companies is the “spam”-like nature of their communication. They would immediately comment on photos and ask for a DM or direct message you themselves asking for participation. While some of these companies are not scams, we feared that participating would end up burning us in the end. We’re thankful that we did not engage with these types of companies. Every product we’ve posted about is something we believe in. We plan to keep this as a standard for any of our posts with products or services.
We have seen many of our fellow dogs host contests and giveaways on their accounts for major milestones (ex: 10K follower giveaway, Birthday giveaway, etc). It seems that this is a good technique to increase engagement on your posts (or at least that specific post) because participants are asked to follow and tag their friends (and sometimes even share your post in their stories). This in turn can increase your followers. We’ve heard that it is sometimes not as effective as it seems because people will unfollow as soon as the contest or giveaway is over. Whether or not this is true, we are not opposed to doing this someday in partnership with a company that we love.
Lastly, we have never and will never buy followers. We’ve been approached by many accounts offering followers and growth but we’ve learned that the accounts they offer are not the kinds of accounts you want following you. By doing this, your numbers may climb but you don’t actually gain a dedicated or interactive audience.
What have we learned?
Be authentic - in your captions, your comments on other accounts and your interactions with all pups whether you’re in person or online.
Find ways to be creative- you will look back and be glad for the memories (everyone loves a throwback). To be honest we regret we didn’t take more videos in the beginning. It truly goes by so quickly!
Enjoy the journey- whether you’re waiting for your 100th follower or your 10,000th... enjoy your unique journey and know that your account can be whatever you want it to be. You are the voice for your dog and that in itself is as unique as your little pup.
Thank you for joining us on this journey telling the story of Adelaide’s life. We are not social media experts but we wanted to share with you this part of our journey in an effort to open the conversation about social media and the voice of your dog online. We hope to keep inspiring and being inspired to create fun and engaging content that brings joy to all iggies, dogs, and owners across the globe.