The most-followed people on Instagram are
Cristiano Ronaldo - 181M Follows
Ariana Grande - 163M Followers
Selena Gomez - 155M Followers
From looking at this list and the number of followers all the above have you might be thinking
‘How the F*** am I ever going to grow my account if I'm up against these A-listers?’
First, I am not a celebrity, don't have friends who are influencers and I don't go on lavish holidays where I can selfie the shit out of myself in the mirror.
So now we have got over this little rant, lets now lower the aspirations a little and let's look at how you can build your own small following to 10K followers on Instagram first.
In this post, we are going to look at the NON-BULLSHIT way to grow your Instagram account to 10K followers. When I say no bullshit I'm referring to no doing any of the following:
- Not buying followers
- Not using follow unfollow strategies
- Not using Like bots
- Not using ads
- and other IG snake oil
BE WARNED this is not going to be easy, I mean growing anything takes time, even growing a plant takes time, it does not happen overnight. Anyone who has to grow anything knows that it takes a lot of hard work.
Tell a story - You make shit content
Storytelling is the most powerful method of communication there is. You might be able to take some nice photos and add good filters, but it's important to add context to your content. Use your description to inform your audience why you are posting content any why they should care. It follows the logic by which "The more you understand something, the more you are likely to appreciate it"
Over time your audience will learn more about you, they will care more and in turn your engagement will go up.
Tips for a good description
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it?
- Why does this matter?
- Provide value from your experience?
How lets look at a pro in action. @jadasezer is a Child Psychologist with 259k followers. She put a lot of effort into writing a long post captions and also asks her audience questions. In-turn she has a really vibrant page with a incredibly active group of following.
Use Instagrams network effect
Instagram is a network with other people just like you. The platform makes it easy to comment, share content. The most powerful way to grow on Instagram is to leverage the platform's virality by getting other followers on Instagram itself to share your content for you. If 20% of your audience tag a friend in you post comments, your account will grow exponentially.
So how do we get your followers to tag others in your post? This relates to the point above, let me explain.
Imagine you just got back from a holiday in Paris, in the post you mention your top tips for traveling. As a follower, I might share this with friends who also want to go to Paris or who are going soon.
And for bonus points, in your description, ask your followers a question like "Where are your favourite places to go on holiday" and make sure you reply to everyone!
Let's now look at an example of this working in practice with one of my favourite meme accounts @poundlandbandit. In 4 images poundlandbandit paints a picture of a young stereotype that we can all relate to. Fans of the account, tag their friends who they think this stereotype relate too. In fact, i never found a comment, everyone just tags friends. It kinda easy to see how this account has grown so fast.
You most likely have seen this technique at work before. Most likely that would be on youtube where YouTubers ask you to like, share, subscribe and leave comments on the video. The reason they do this is that it tells YouTubes algorithm that something is interesting going on here and we need to share it with others. This will take time to perfect, but once the ball is rolling you will see the results in no time at all.
Do what works and keep doing it
Take a look at your current post, what posts have done well? If you have had a few posts that have got a lot of engagement then make more like that. If you have not really found what works for you then keep trying. Keeping an Instagram social media report can be helpful in tracking the performance of your posts, understanding audience preferences, and refining your content strategy for better.
A good friend of mine Ross (TrapLoreRoss) was chipping away at youtube for about 3 years with pretty much no success. One day he made a hip-hop community video and exploded, so he made another, then another and in 6 months he sailed through the 100K follower mark no problem. Good job Ross!
Let us look at an example of this working on Instagram. @nicolemclaughlin is an incredibly creative and talented creator. Scroll way back on her profile and you will see some really nice photos. Now, look how many likes the image has in the bottom right 5000! Loads more than any other.
It turns out @nicolemclaughlin niche is making shoes out of other products. It's a strange niche but has brown to almost 200K Followers! Now she makes new content regularly and her posts get over 50K likes, pretty impressive right?
Moral of the story, keep making good content until you find something that works for you!
Format
The media world loves formats and you should love them too! A format is an idea that you can reproduce again and again that guarantees success.
For example, you could make a travel Instagram page but you only travel 3 times a year! How are you going to make enough content regally? You cannot! Maybe in the future, you can but right now keep it simple. Make-up tutorials, gaming videos, memes are really popular formats that can be produced again and again cheaply. That's why you see so many of them!
Lessons learned: That's the fundamental algorithm of life—REPEAT WHAT WORKS
And finally who am I? I'm Sabba, I am the CEO of VEED.IO a simple online video editing platform used by influencers, marketers and huge companies. Its perfect for cropping videos for instagram, trimming videos and adding subtitles to your videos. On our platform, we see hundreds of thousands of our videos posted on social media. Therefore we are working hard to help our users get better at this.
I know all of this advice sounds pretty daunting I bet and growing your Instagram account can seem hard. But there is a silver lining, the compound effect of growth starts paying off over time. Growing your account from 1K to 2K followers takes much less time than going from 0 to 1K. And going from 100K followers to 200K followers is quicker than 10K to 20K.
Best of luck, I hope this post was helpful, please do share this with others and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions! Thanks, Sabba
