1000 Instagram followers. That’s your target.
I’ve been paying attention to Instagram for a while now and even written a post on tools you need to build your Instagram followers. So let’s get practical, shall we? Let’s get you your first 1000 Instagram followers.
Instagram now has 1 billion followers as of June 2018. If you take your brand seriously, you HAVE to be on the platform. And get followers. Whether you’re new to Instagram marketing or just starting a new account, getting your first 1000 followers can be a big challenge.
I’m NOT going to bore you with tips on Instagram etiquette and how to grow your following using hashtags and blah blah. You can read about that one here. What I’m going to do is give you a bulldozer approach to aggressively growing your profile in a legitimate way without buying.
So here we go.
1. Follow/Unfollow Method.
You should only follow people that follow you back, unfollow inactive users, and don’t follow more accounts than follows you.
OK, this sounds pretty basic, but ideally, you want to follow people who are in the same niche to increase the odds that they will follow you back.
So, how do you find people to follow who are interested in your niche?
Start following the people who are already following popular influencers in your niche.
For instance, if you want to have an Instagram account dedicated to all of the yummy things you cook and you’re looking for followers, maybe you’d start following the people who follow Smitten Kitchen. Just go through her list of followers and follow people. Of course, you can’t follow too many people at a time or you risk getting your account shut down by Instagram. Set up a schedule and stick to it.
Currently, Instagram only lets you follow 7,500 other users at a time.
After a few days, start going back through the list of people you follow and unfollow them. You might choose to unfollow everyone except the accounts you really love, or you might choose to just unfollow the people who never followed you back.
Check out indepth study of this method
2. Hashtag Aggressively
Use them frequently, abundantly and creatively. When using hashtags, the aim is to appear on the ‘top posts’ section of the hashtag’s search. You don’t want to just use something like #love because there are literally 1.1billion posts using that hashtag.
See more tips on hashtags here
You can use up to 30 hashtags per post, but choose them wisely – and remember you don’t need to fill the quota. Do not use the same hashtags on each post as if you have copied and pasted them – Instagram will see through your shady game – and use hashtags that are relevant. If you don’t, not only will the posts not engage the right people but your hashtag use can end up looking desperate and irrelevant, switching off the audience.
3. Join a Pod/Engagement Group
I wrote extensively about pods here.
Once you join a pod, the chances of you getting 1000 Instagram followers in a short while is real. So real it’s almost immediate. In plain English, a pod is a group of Instagrammers (that could be anything from 15 to 100 people) who tell each other when they post and promise to like and comment on everyone else’s to promote their visibility. It’s basically an engagement group. Sometimes there are rounds, and everybody is told to follow everybody in the pod. You could easily hit more than 1000 Instagram followers depending on the membership strength.
4. Use a Bot
“There’s a huge bot problem on Instagram.”
These bots work in several ways. They can Like photos on your behalf; they can follow people on your behalf; they can even comment on your behalf. These actions can be targeted based on specific hashtags or even specific users. All of this engagement is intended to boost your following with real people, as opposed to the spam accounts you’re likely to get when you buy Instagram followers. It’s an appealing pitch: save time and avoid buying fake followers.
You should check this article out though.
5. Run Paid Adverts
This is one of the most legit ways to a huge Instagram following. With paid ads, you get your target – or even surpass it on the spot, depending on your budget.
Setting up ads to get followers is pretty simple. You’ll get a much stronger conversion getting followers for dollars spent, which in turn can end up being clients that will actually hire you. Before you set up our recommended ad, be sure your page is set-up correctly. If you don’t have a page with any content, or content that has no consistency, not many people are going to be interested in following you.
The best ad to run on Instagram to get more followers is going to be something that is going to be the focus of your Instagram theme and your niche market. You want a photo that is going to capture a lot of attention, and get a lot of engagement. Because it’s in that engagement that the followers will come. Before you choose the photo for your ad, make sure you have the following:
- Make sure you have a focus on a niche that you’re going to be working on.
- Make sure you have a consistent Instagram theme. (Photo style)
- Make sure your Instagram page tells a story, and your photo of choice is a big part of that.
- Your photo must be high quality and bright.
- Make sure your photo is a square, not a rectangle, or it will get cropped.
6. Connect your Profile to Facebook
I tried this and the response was immediate. How this works is that you’ll go to your Instagram profile and click on connect to Facebook. Then click on follow all friends.. then you follow all your Facebook friends on Instagram. The odds are that since they are your friends on Facebook, they will automatically follow you on IG. My personal account hit over 1000 followers via this method. For the ones who don’t follow you back, you can use the unfollow app on the PLAY store.
Finally,
Almost every guide to growing an Instagram following contains the same generic advice. Share user-generated content. They tell you to ask people to tag their friends directly—put a call-to-action in there! They tell you to host contests and give freebies away. These techniques only really work if you already have a ton of followers.
Growing a new Instagram account is kind of like getting seed funding for your startup.
With 0 dollars in the bank (or 0 followers), there’s not much you can do. You don’t have a real audience. You don’t know if your product is solving any real problems. But with a little cash infusion, you can start testing out different hypotheses, talking to your users, and learning about what you should be doing.
Your first 1,000 followers are like that first bit of capital you use to get started, and they’re the most critical followers you will ever get.
Cheers.
Zee
Recommended Posts
- 8 Instagram Tips to Attract Followers
- Grow your engagement with Instagram Pods
- 7 Proven Ways to Get Instagram Followers in 2019
- A Quick Guide to Instagram Hashtags
- 8 Ways to Become an Instagram Influencer
- Top 10 Instagram tools to help you grow your profile.
