How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement.

How do you get more engagement on Instagram? By creating a consistent gallery and interacting with other users on projects and Instameets according to Supergramer Kim Leuenberger. Trips100 Commissioning Editor Kirstie Pelling caught up with Kim, known on Instagram as @kim.ou, on a Wiltshire Instawalk.

You can easily recognise Kim Leuenberger at an Instagram meet. She cheerfully wears a yellow coat and a pocketful of cars; the kind of plastic miniature car you can pick up cheaply in gift and souvenir shops. These little cars, placed carefully in a natural setting, are Kim’s signature images. And lots of people like these images. Including Instagram itself which has made Kim the feature of the day on two occasions; resulting in her followers spiralling to over 74k.

Of course, it’s not easy to get the attention of Instagram- the majority of their 73.2 million followers would no doubt like a shout out. So as Kim and I snap and walk in Salisbury, I ask for her tips in engaging both the platform and its followers. “I think you need to have a theme that you like and get really good at it,” she says. “A theme and an overall style. Not doing the same thing all the time, but being consistent in what you produce. People will be more likely to follow you because you’re going to inspire them.”

Being consistent

For Kim consistency is everything. “I’m a bit OCD but every picture kind of fits with the picture before. I’m a master deleter. The colours flow and the patterns go with each other and I drop the car pictures in. I usually do one landscape, one portrait, one landscape, one portrait. I think of it as a whole gallery not a series of individual pictures. If people come to your page and see it flow together and goes together then they will be more likely to follow you.”

Kim is studying for a BA in photography at UAL. As we speak she pulls out a reflector not much bigger than her hand and flips it open in preparation to take a photograph. She occasionally uses it on the cars. “They are so small. If I get them against the sun, I won’t always get the details. It will just be a silhouette. Using a flash can be just awful, so having a reflector to use the natural light is a great way to do it.”

Camera or smartphone?

I ask her where she stands on the purist debate of camera versus phone. “I think people are shifting a bit,” she replies after a little thought. “It used to be only an i-phone app for so long. And when they opened it up to other phones you could start using a zoom and everything. And now many cameras have got wi-fi. My feeling is if you like photography it doesn’t matter what you take the picture with. It’s what you show that matters and what you want to share. And if you prefer doing it with a good camera and if the image is what you want to get then just do it.”

Sometimes just doing it can require quite a bit of set up. At Stonehenge I watch Kim work. Placing her little car on the wet grass she gets down low and spends a while lighting and fiddling. From this angle the tiny car becomes the same size as the monoliths and she has to insure it doesn’t get lost within the framing. When Kim is finished and we walk towards the gift shop I ask her if she posts more than once a day. “I might do up to three a day but I wouldn’t put them in a row,” she replies. “People don’t like to come on your feed and see five pictures of the same thing. The optimum time? I usually leave at least five hours between pictures but it is up to you.”

Composition, composition, composition

She says composition is key. “Try to leave some space in a picture; like a big sky or that kind of thing. An Instagram post is so small that you don’t need to overload it with detail. The detail can all become too much and the viewer can’t see it.” She shows me an image of one of her cars outside a country cottage, posted earlier in the week. “I had to post it but I’m not quite happy with that one. I need more sky, more looking space with it. I love white space.”

She’s not bothered about blue sky then? “I hate blue sky. It’s impossible. Impossible to find the right shade of blue that I like. But I do like getting the sea the right colour and the sky the right shade of white. The right contrast.”

Building a community

Kim lives in St Albans but spends much of her time at @igerslondon meets. She also sets up art shoots with other like-minded instagramers. “One of the best parts about Instagram for me is meeting new people and getting to do new things every so often! It has opened up so many doors for me.”  She says tagging people and getting them to tag you is another way to get noticed by Instagram. It may have a huge following and be a big global platform but at the end of the day Instagram is still all about building community. And she believes the platform rewards people who are also nurturers of community.

I post a picture of Kim taking a picture of her cars. It goes out to significantly less people than Kim’s images do. Before I leave I ask her what the best thing is about having all those followers. “Well you get a lot of free stuff,” she laughs. “But then it can spoil Christmas!”

Kim’s tips in a nutshell:

1  Think of yourself as a gallery curator. Make the pictures flow in style and tone

2  Leave looking space within the frame- and don’t crowd it out with too much detail

3  Spend time developing and engaging with your community

4  Don’t worry about whether it’s a smartphone or camera pic-just take it and post it. You can always delete it later

5  Get out and meet other Instagramers. In real life!

You can find Kim at www.kimleuenberger.com or on Instagram @kim.ou