How to grow your Instagram following as an independent jewellery brand

Growing your followers on social media is one of the most taxing problems faced by independent jewellery designers in 2023. However here’s the good news: jewellery designers have a huge advantage over so many other businesses, down to the visually appealing nature of the raw materials they use, to the romantic and meaningful connotations that jewellery inspires.

The Instagram algorithm favours bold, colourful images over less impactful ones, which immediately puts the jeweller at an advantage. Here are some ideas of how you can grow your following with more likes, engagement and interaction through the type of image you post…

Be bold

Graphic layouts and bold colour are catnip to jewellery lovers. They want to see close-ups of gemstones, geometrically arranged diamonds, impactful, styled rings and necklace flat-lays, and design details that are unique and original.

There are lots of ways to present your jewellery visually, and mastering it is a key-tool for promoting your work. My top tips are to use a high quality camera phone or digital SLR, go in close, and keep the quality high.

Inspire your customer

Jewellery is aspirational, which means that people will often have a saved Wishlist, an idea of their ‘dream’ engagement ring, or a Pinterest board of wedding inspiration long before they’ve even got an occasion to buy for (or the budget). Create an aspirational feed that inspires your audience, including not just images of the gemstones and diamonds you use and designs that you make, but also showing related inspiration associated with your brand values that might resonate with your ideal customer.

For example, if you’re hoping to attract jet-setting travel-lovers, find some beautiful images showing a tropical beach wedding, or a cool barefoot bride. Keep it relevant, on-brand, and connected to your brand values (this is something we cover in the GoldDust Masterclass if you’re not sure).

Keep it on brand

If you’re trying to grow your jewellery brand using Instagram, you need a targeted and well thought-out plan.

This must relate to your core brand values, from which you can create content pillars - around 4-5 topics or themes that are central to your business and your values, that you create posts around.

For example if sustainability, originality and expertise are central to your brand, you can create 3 different types of posts concentrating on each of these elements.

Customers like to know what to expect from a jewellery brand, and they want to instantly know what you’re about through one quick scroll of your Feed.

If there is a mish-mash of personal, unrelated jewellery shots and poorly thought-out images it doesn’t give a clear enough impression of how your operate as a business or what your values are as a brand.

In the GoldDust Masterclass we go into this in more depth, but as a rule of thumb once you’ve worked out your content pillars, you should post consistently to the grid, and keep anything personal to Stories. Not everyone wants to see your cat photos.