To start: I grew a personal instagram account from 0 followers to 1000 followers completely organically in 60 days.
Here's how to do the same:
There's a free bonus tip at the end that cost me $299 to learn
- Pick a niche
I was plant based at the time and centred my account around plant based nutrition.
- Post content in the niche
Naturally, if you want people to follow you, you need to have content on your account.
So, I started off posting photos of foods I ate and also some videos as to why I became plant based.
This allowed for potential followers to come onto my page and see that I am an actual human being and what they would expect to see if they hit the follow button on my account.
- Search for hashtags in your niche and leave comments on people's posts
Once you have content, start to engage with other people in your niche.
Make sure it is a personal comment and not something generic you blast out to loads of people.
It does not need to be super thoughtful either.
For example, if you see a nice photo of a salad, drop a comment saying the salad looks insane. Enjoy!
I reccomend engaging with accounts that are relatively small (500 followers or less) as these folks will check every comment etc they receive.
- Once they respond to your comment, direct message them
Open up a conversation and as you are in the same niche, this will not be weird.
"How long have you been plant based for?"
Get chatting and this will get you a good starting base of followers that will actually engage with you when you put out content.
- Rinse and repeat until you hit 1000 followers
It is literally that simple. It definitely is better to post videos of yourself as people relate to people.
Show that you are human and chat about topics that interest you.
- Crossing the 1000 follower mark
The best way to do this is to start leveraging other people's audiences.
Start to reach out to other personal instagram accounts and ask if you they want to do a livestream with you.
You can do a live yoga class or just discuss a certain topic.
The key here is tapping into other instagram accounts' audeinces and that is when your following will start to compound.
A lot of accounts blatantly buy followers which not only does not reflect in their post engagement but it also serves them no real purpose. I have learnt that people want authenticity and the more I have provided this, the more support I have received.
The growth achieved did come from pure hard work. Hard work in making valuable content. Hard work in regularly engaging with my audience. Regularly reaching out and connecting with new people. It really is a long process, a lot longer than I had imagined.
It is no doubt that social media is a constant grind. If you are not consistent, you will loose. People will unfollow you and think you have gone to sleep. You have to always be active and consistent and telling everyone you are not going anywhere.
It has been a very rewarding journey so far. The videos I have put out have received a lot of love and many have reached out to tell me how inspiring I am.
I think the next step is to start editing these videos and making them more ‘professional’. That being said, I have started using an app where I add background music and also do a title so viewers can see on my profile a clear label of each video.
*Free bonus tip*
The quickest way to grow is by leveraging existing instagram account audiences.
How do you do this?
Get reposted on accounts with big followings.
How do I do that?
Release stories where you talk positively about a person or product and then tag the person / company in the story.
Most often they will repost it and then your face + account is shown to hundreds of thousands of people.
Those who promote a product or service, will usually love to repost something that reaffirms what they provide.
I literally did this and managed to get re posted on a page with 2.8 million followers and received 150 followers in 24 hours from it.
I am excited to progress further and further and continue to grow. It all comes down to sharing your message and doing so consistently. So with all the effort, I have organically grown my follower base to over 1000. But I am not done just yet...
🙏🙏🙏
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