116: The Fastest Way to Grow on Instagram: Get in Front of New Audiences (Part 3)
We made it to part three of our three-part mini series on underrated Instagram growth strategies for 2026 and I saved two of my absolute favorites for last. In Part 1 we talked about growing without posting more.
In Part 2 we covered how to create content that spreads. Today we're talking about how to get your brand in front of an entirely new audience — one strategy happening on Instagram and one happening completely off the app. These are two of the most overlooked growth moves I know, and I cannot wait for you to run with them.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
01:48 Strategy 7: Instagram Collab Posts — the most underutilized feature for getting in front of new audiences fast
02:46 The biggest mistakes businesses make with collabs (and how to avoid them)
04:35 How to find the right collaboration partner — audience alignment, account size, and niche fit
05:04 Real-world collab examples: Pilates studio + local coffee shop, real estate agent + mortgage broker
07:49 Strategy 8: Speaking, workshops, and in-person networking — why real-life visibility drives the highest quality Instagram growth
09:17 How my speaking career directly correlated with spikes in my Instagram following
10:37 How to invite people to follow you in real life (and why you must always ask)
11:06 Why DM automation is the perfect backend system for in-person networking
11:35 Your homework: one action to take this month
Key Takeaways:
Collab posts are one of the fastest ways to grow without paid ads. When you collaborate with another account on a reel or carousel, that content lives on both profiles and gets seen by both audiences simultaneously.
Alignment matters more than audience size. The best collab partners share your target audience — not just your industry. A misaligned collab can actually hurt your reach.
You don't have to be in the same room. I've done collabs with Instagram marketing strategists in completely different countries. You pitch the idea, agree on the concept, and one person edits it together.
Real-life visibility drives the highest quality Instagram growth. When people hear you speak or meet you in person, they're far more likely to follow you, engage with your content, and convert into clients.
Always ask for the follow. Don't assume people will find you. When you're speaking or networking, give a clear call to action — your handle, a keyword to DM, a freebie to grab — and make it easy for them to connect with you on Instagram.
Customers come from conversations. The more conversations you can start in the Instagram DMs — whether from collab content, speaking events, or networking — the faster your business grows.
Links Mentioned:
- Free DM Automation Guide + 1 Month of ManyChat Free:DM me the word LEADS on Instagram @elizabethmarberry
- Hot Reels (my 12-month Instagram content lab)
- Monster Music SC on Instagram: — great real-world POV content example!
SERIES WRAP-UP: All 8 Strategies
Here's a full recap of every strategy covered across this three-part mini series:
Part 1 (Ep114): Grow Without Posting More
Strategic commenting
Inviting your warm audience
Repurposing your own content
Part 2 (Ep115): Create Content That Spreads
POV-driven content
Creating shareable and repostable content
DM automation as a visibility tool
Part 3 (Ep116): Get in Front of New Audiences
Instagram Collab Posts
Speaking, workshops & in-person networking
A Truth You Need to Hear:
The more places people see you, the faster your brand grows.
S3 Ep116 Transcript - The Fastest Way to Grow on Instagram: Get in Front of New Audiences (Part 3)
00:00
Today I'm sharing two underrated Instagram growth strategies for 2026. One that's happening on the platform and one that's happening off. Both are super powerful, super overlooked and I can't wait to see which one clicks for you. Let's go. Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies.
00:26
I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
00:57
Welcome back to the show. You've landed on part three of this three part mini series on underrated Instagram growth strategies that are working right now in 2026. In part one, we talked about how to grow on Instagram without posting more. In part two, we talked about how to create content that actually spreads it, right? Gets seen, gets shared, gets sent, gets reposted. Super powerful.
01:23
And today we're talking about how to get your content and your brand in front of an entirely new audience. So if you missed part one and two, definitely go back and check those out. There was a lots of gold in there. And I'm so excited for today's episode because these are definitely some underrated Instagram growth moves that are gonna be a huge impact for you when you go and run with them.
01:48
I have two different approaches to share with you today in terms of getting in front of more of your ideal clients or customers. One of them happens on Instagram and then one of them happens off. So super pumped. I hope you're excited. Let's start with one of Instagram's most underutilized features and that is collab posts. When you do a collaboration with another page, another account. Now this is not new, but most people are not.
02:16
really using it strategically. So when you use the collab feature on a reel or a carousel, for example, that piece of content lives on both accounts, which means it gets seen by both audiences. So this is really one of the fastest ways to get in front of new people, a new audience without running paid ads, without going massively viral.
02:46
without doing anything complicated, you're already creating the content, you're essentially just inviting someone to be a collaborator on that post. But here's where a lot of businesses get collabs wrong. They either collaborate with another account whose audience is not aligned. So for example, if someone said, hey Elizabeth, can you collaborate with us?
03:11
On this post, our audience is moms of preschoolers who are wanting to create more time and space in their calendars as working moms. That's not necessarily my target audience, right? Those moms don't necessarily want to use Instagram to grow their business. They might not even have a business, right? So it wouldn't make sense for me to collaborate with them because it's not a shared target audience.
03:37
Another mistake businesses make is they collaborate with someone whose account is just not active or the engagement on that account is really, really low. And when you accept a collaboration like that, sometimes it just negatively impacts your reach because that piece of content isn't gonna do well. For me, sometimes I get invited to be a collaborator on certain posts and I don't accept them because as I mentioned, when you accept a collaboration post, it shows up on your feed.
04:06
If that piece of content doesn't align to my standards of how I want to position my business and my brand on Instagram, I'm not gonna accept that collaboration. So you wanna be mindful about how you're approaching this. Now, what works best is when you're doing a collaboration, I want you to find another creator business niche with a similar audience size. So I wouldn't...
04:35
pitch someone who has 300,000 followers that doesn't know me already to try to collab with me because it's probably not gonna happen. So if you're new to collaborations and you're wanting to pitch people in terms of collaborating with you, try to find accounts with a similar size. It's okay if they're a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, but just from a starting point, if you're pitching this, you wanna make it attractive to that person, right? You also, and this is absolutely the most important thing,
05:04
you want to make sure that it's a complimentary niche, right? So you have a shared audience, a shared audience interest. So an example might be if you're a local business, a local service-based business. So for example, let's imagine that you're a Pilates studio owner. I have several Pilates studio owners in Hot Reels. Your goal is to drive locals that live in your area to come take Pilates at your studio.
05:33
It might make sense. Let's say there's this like hot to truck coffee shop on your block and they are also active on Instagram. You too could do a collaboration post where you're essentially maybe highlighting some of like the key activities in your area and you could get really creative with how you would tell that story and maybe you're highlighting multiple different businesses.
06:00
on this collab post. But the idea why that could work for you is let's say this coffee shop has already built up a local audience. When you post with them, now those locals are going to see your Pilati studio. So this is how you want to think about it is like shared audience interests, shared niches. Or let's say you're a real estate agent and there's a specific mortgage broker that you work with.
06:25
and you wanna do a collaboration with them because you both have a similar audience. So think about a shared audience and the whole point of this is you getting your brand in front of their audience and vice versa. So you're not competing, you're expanding. And the beauty of this is that you don't even have to record together. I've done collaborations with other Instagram marketing strategists who lived in completely different countries than me and.
06:52
I pitched them the idea. said, okay, I have this sound and I was thinking you could do this and I would do this and I'll edit it together. It's so fun to do this. You don't even have to be in the same place, but it can work well with podcast guests, collaborators. I actually have on my bucket list, I haven't done this yet, but I was thinking when I have a podcast guest on the show, it would be fun to do a collaboration with them in this way.
07:20
So it's just such a smart way to get the content out there. And every time you do this, you're building that trust because you're being seen next to someone else that is adjacent to your industry or also in your niche that has also built an audience and has already built that know like in TrustFactor. So it kind of amps up that trust in you. All right, so to close out this series where I shared eight
07:49
underrated Instagram growth strategies. This is strategy number eight, okay? I hope you were so excited. This is one of my favorites because it's not really talked about enough or at all. Like I don't really hear other Instagram marketing coaches talking about this. And that is speaking. Workshops, networking events, in-person opportunities, these are some of the highest quality ways
08:18
to grow your Instagram following. Because when you meet someone in real life and they hear you speak or they learn from you or they connect with your energy, they are so much more likely to follow you, right? And not just follow you, but maybe actually engage with your content, right? Like how many people will follow us but never engage? And I know for me, I like to engage with people who I've met in real life.
08:48
I think that's just psychology, like human psychology. We want to connect with other people we've already met in real life. And not that I don't ever engage with people I've never met in real life, but it's that built-in engagement boost in a way because it's like, oh my gosh, I just met Mashonda at this event. Like I saw her video pop up on my feed and oh my gosh, hey girl, how are you doing? Like it's just this immediate bridge to connection. And what I love about this strategy is it's not random growth. You're not like posting and praying. This is
09:17
Aligned growth. You know, I've experienced this firsthand. You know, my speaking career has really blown up in the last 18 months, but speaking at different events, being on different stages, even, you know, before I was doing these big stages, I was hosting a lot of virtual workshops. I've seen direct spikes in my visibility and my speaking in correlation with my Instagram following, right? And
09:43
What's really neat is when you are speaking on, let's say a podcast or even a conference or a networking event for your industry, whatever it is, a lot of times these followers convert in terms of they might become clients, they might become future collaborators, they may become fantastic vendor referral partners, right? If you've been sitting there thinking, I wanna grow on Instagram, I want you to also ask yourself, okay,
10:10
In addition to creating content for Instagram, which of course that's important, I want you to ask yourself, where can I get in front of people in real life? Could you host a workshop? Can you speak locally? Can you attend a networking event or a conference and connect with those referral partners or potential clients? And this is key.
10:37
You must invite them to follow you. Don't assume that they will. So when I'm speaking on stage, I have a very clear call to action. Please give me a follow and connect with me over on Instagram. And I usually do one even further and I tell them why. You know, I have them DM me a keyword to get a free resource. I really give them a lot of incentive to do that. Sometimes when people give me their business card, I say, okay, this is great, but are you on Instagram? Can we connect there?
11:06
because that's where I hang out. So it's really asking for the follow and remembering to, when you do this, have a backend system set up, whether that's DM automation, like we talked about last week, or you have a way to follow up with these connections. So that way you can continue to build those relationships because remember, customers come from conversations and the more conversations you can get into with people in the Instagram DMs, the better.
11:35
So to wrap up this episode, I wanna share that at the end of the day, Instagram growth is not just about content, it's about your visibility, right? And the more places that people see you, your brand, your business, the faster your brand grows. So your next steps, remember, I always love giving you a little bit of homework, is I want you to identify one opportunity this month.
12:04
where you can get in front of a new audience. So this could be reaching out for a collaboration, pitching a collaboration to another creator or business who has a shared audience. This could be pitching yourself for a podcast or hosting a virtual workshop or a workshop in your neighborhood, right? If you have potential customers or clients that live in your neighborhood or attending an event.
12:32
or a conference and actually making connections and ensuring that you've thought about how you're gonna follow up in the Instagram DMs. I want you to pick one and make it happen. Take action on it this week. And I'm so excited for you to get seen so you can get paid for your soul led work. All right, my beloved listener, if you've been listening to this three-part mini series and you're realizing, okay, I have all these ideas, but I need some support actually.
13:01
implementing this, like I keep listening, but life gets too crazy and I have no idea where to even begin, or I'm doing some things, but it's not really working effectively. I need some coaching and support. That's exactly what we do inside of Hot Reels. Hot Reels is my 12 month Instagram content lab where I help you create content that actually drives visibility, engagement, and sales for your business. Really the focus of our year together is teaching you how to create that scroll stopping content.
13:29
that is going to attract your ideal clients or customers. You're gonna learn what to post, how to say it, how to get seen, and absolutely how this connects into your marketing and sales funnel for your business. So if that's something you're craving support with, you can head on over to Elizabethmarberry.com slash hot. That's Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y.com slash hot.
13:53
for full program details, or you can send me a direct message on Instagram. Make sure you're already following me over there at Elizabeth Marberry. And you can DM me the word hot H-O-T and my robot assistant will get you all the details. If you love this series, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with a friend or left us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Whenever you rate and review the podcast, it helps us so much in the podcast algorithms reach more.
14:21
Brilliant business owners like yourselves, I so appreciate your support and I cannot wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at ElizabethMarberry.com
14:51
That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.
