At a Glance

Industry: E-Commerce + Swimwear
The Challenge: A newer brand looking to increase visibility + connect with more of its target audience on Instagram
My Role: Instagram Engagement + Community Management
The Project: Hashtag research, community management + strategic engagement
The Goal: Increase organic reach, grow the brand’s audience + create stronger connections with potential customers
The Result: 124.8% overall follower growth + an average monthly growth rate of 5%

Sometimes You Don’t Need to Completely Overhaul Your Marketing

When I started working with this swimwear brand, they were still in the earlier stages of growing their online presence. They knew Instagram could be an important channel for getting their products in front of more people, but like a lot of growing businesses, they didn’t necessarily have the internal capacity to give the platform the attention it needed.

They wanted to grow their audience, increase engagement, and create more of a community around the brand. But they didn’t need someone to come in and completely rebuild their marketing strategy from scratch. They needed support with a few specific pieces that could help more of the right people actually discover and connect with the brand. So that’s exactly what we focused on!

Getting the Brand in Front of the Right People

This project happened during a very different era of Instagram, when hashtags played a much bigger role in organic discoverability than they do today. So one of the first things I worked on was in-depth hashtag research.

Rather than simply finding the hashtags with the highest number of posts and assuming bigger meant better, I looked for a combination of broader and more niche hashtags that aligned with the brand, its products, its values, and (most importantly) the people we were trying to reach. Because more visibility isn’t automatically better visibility.

Getting a swimwear post in front of thousands of random people isn’t particularly useful if none of them are potential customers. We wanted to increase the likelihood that the people discovering the content were actually the kinds of people who might connect with the brand, follow along, and eventually purchase.

Treating Social Media Like a Two-Way Conversation

Discoverability was only one part of the strategy. Because growing a community on social media requires…well, being social.

Alongside hashtag research, I took on community management and engagement for the account. That included responding to comments and DMs from existing followers while also proactively connecting with potential customers, complementary brands, and relevant creators.

We weren’t simply publishing a post and waiting for people to find us, we were participating in the community the brand wanted to become part of. That meant there were really two sides to the engagement strategy.

Inbound engagement focused on the people who were already interacting with the brand. Comments and messages weren’t merely engagement metrics to collect, they were opportunities to strengthen the relationship with someone who had already shown interest.

Outbound engagement helped us introduce the brand to new people through intentional interactions with relevant accounts, potential customers, creators, and other brands.

I also identified potential partnerships and outreach opportunities that could help extend the brand’s visibility beyond its existing audience.

None of these things individually were particularly complicated, but done consistently, they added up.

What Happened When We Focused on Consistent Organic Engagement?

Over the course of our work together, the brand experienced 124.8% growth in its overall Instagram following (more than doubling the audience it had when we started).

On average, the account also maintained approximately 5% follower growth per month.

We weren’t trying to grow the account simply so the follower count looked more impressive. The strategy was centered around helping more relevant people discover the brand and then giving them a reason to stay connected once they did. That’s the difference between simply chasing audience growth and intentionally building an audience around a business.

Does Instagram Engagement Still Work for Brands Today?

This case study comes from an earlier era of both Instagram and Magnolia Creative Co, so I think it’s important to put these results in context.

I wouldn’t hand a brand this exact strategy today and promise them 124% follower growth.

Social platforms evolve. Algorithms change. Consumer behavior changes. And the role hashtags play in Instagram discoverability today isn’t the same as it was when I worked with this client. But the larger principle behind the strategy still matters: You can’t build a community without participating in it.

Social media isn’t only a publishing platform. If your entire strategy is creating a post, scheduling it, and disappearing until it’s time to publish the next one, you’re missing part of what makes these platforms valuable in the first place. People want to interact with people — and brands that create genuine opportunities for interaction can build stronger relationships with the audiences they’re trying to reach.

The tactics might change, but the principle doesn’t have to.

Do You Always Need a Bigger Strategy to Create Meaningful Change?

This is another reason I like looking back at this project. The scope was pretty straightforward: hashtag research, community management, and engagement.

We weren’t redesigning the brand, rebuilding their website, or creating some massive 47-page marketing strategy.

We identified a specific opportunity and focused our energy there…and the account more than doubled its following.

I think there’s a lesson in that that goes well beyond Instagram: When something in your business isn’t working as well as you’d like, it’s really easy to assume you need to overhaul everything. A new strategy. A new tool. A new platform. Another course. Another person.

Sometimes you do need a larger change. But sometimes, one well-chosen change can create a much bigger ripple effect than you’d expect.

That’s something I still look for in the businesses I work with today.

The Client That Helped Start Magnolia Creative Co

This case study is also a little special to me for another reason — this swimwear brand was one of my very first freelance clients (long before Magnolia Creative Co was even a figment of my imagination) 🥹

At the time, I certainly wasn’t looking at the project and thinking about all of the ways it would eventually shape the business I’m running today. I was focused on doing good work, figuring things out, and helping this brand grow.

But the experience showed me how much I loved stepping inside someone else’s business, figuring out where I could make an impact, and then helping make that change happen.

One client turned into another, the projects got bigger, my skillset expanded, and the work evolved from social media and creative support into strategy, project management, systems, and operations….and eventually, that little freelance business became Magnolia Creative Co.

My services today look veryyy different from the work I was doing for this swimwear brand. But there’s a common denominator that I can see pretty clearly looking back: Find the thing that could work better, figure out what needs to change, and then actually help make it happen.

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