SarahUpdate January 2019: My growth has slowed down a bit as I have been focusing on audience quality and deleted quite a lot of followers in autumn 2018. However, after one year on Instagram, my account has grown to 26,000 followers – and my engagement is still around 5% (which IS really good for an account that size)
It's simply too late to start grow Instagram followers now...
Okay stop! Never think no one is going to talk to you because you were late to the party! Yes, if the others are already partying for hours, it will be more difficult to catch up on the conversations. But that doesn’t mean that no one is gonna talk to you! It just means that it might be more work to catch their attention!
I started with Instagram 28th of January this year and six months later, my account is now over 15k Instagram followers. And I will tell you HONESTLY about how I grew so many Instagram followers within that time – no bots, no buying followers.
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Why I decided to start with Instagram in 2018
But let’s first zoom back to January 2018: I was late to the party. Terribly late to be honest. Two days after my 29th birthday, sitting at the hotel pool at Le Meridien in Panama I read an article about how an Instagram and Youtube influencer was mocked by a hotel manager for asking for a free stay.
The interesting thing was, that while the English media coverage was differentiated, the German one was not: they only pictured her as being a brat, asking for free stuff. Which is actually a pretty normal thing for an Influencer to do!
So while I personally wasn’t a big fan of her account, I felt that something is wrong about how Germany understands Instagram Influencer Marketing (or does NOT understand it!). Or in other words: Germany is terribly late to the party as well.
Somehow, sitting there, I realized that I feel like this is something I want to change. Some of you know that I worked as a management consultant at a very renowned company before my trip. So I felt like it was my personal duty to understand Instagram better and then help those poor bad german companies get on track.
The decision was quickly made – my pretty much abandoned personal account would be my playground and I wanted to grow my Instagram followers count to understand the platform. At this moment I didn’t even think of becoming an Influencer myself. Not even a micro-influencer. I wanted to do BUSINESS.
The first mistakes I did on my journey
As most of my friends are late to the party as well, I only had 82 followers (mostly inactive) at the moment I set my account from private to public. And I posted this selfie:
Yes. A badly lighted pool selfie. I am slightly embarrased to show it to you and I already archived the post on Instagram. I don’t think my Instagram followers value it very much anymore – however I think, you can learn from this ;-). I hadn’t done the research yet and simply jumped into it because I thought, it couldn’t be so difficult.
Well, it turned out – it is more difficult. In 2018 a badly lit selfie isn’t gonna get you to the party anymore.
I actually even got a few likes, comments and Instagram followers during those first days. But in no way that would have gotten me to 15k anytime soon.
So I started doing research. A LOT of research. And then I started with the basics.
THE 7 HOLY BASICS OF GETTING INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS (STILL VALID IN 2019)
As there is a lot of information on the basics already on the web, let me just quickly recap what is still up to date. I don’t want to go too deep into those topics, because you will find this information elsewhere already.
Skip this section if you already feel familiar with the basics. After this section, I will dive into the few strategies to grow Instagram followers that I tried along the way and that others might not admit or tell you about.
GET A TOPIC AND EXECUTE IT CONSISTENTLY
Think about what you want your account to be about. Are you a fashionista? A traveler like me? A foodie and gourmet? A beauty queen? A landscape photographer? A cat lover? Think about what you want your account to be about. Choose a name according to that and post your first picture. If you already had an account before, archive most of the post that don’t fit the topic.
For me, consistency e.g. means that it will always be me on the pictures, traveling somewhere. It can be a hotel or an outdoor location. Sometimes it shows me from behind, far away and sometimes it’s a portrait. But it is always me on the pictures – never just a landscape or another person (without me as well).
Your concept might be completely different – but at least, have a concept! Your tribe (aka your Instagram followers) want to know what they will get!
If you are a(n aspiring) Travel Influencer you might want to look for the most instagrammed spots when traveling, e.g.
POST CONSISTENTLY, PROBABLY ONCE A DAY
That’s written everywhere – and still I want to emphazise how important that is. When I started posting (with proper hashtags etc., see below) I quickly grew 1k Instagram followers without a lot of work.
And then I was offline for four days because I was on a cruise and internet is expensive there. When I came back, I had lost over 150 followers again and it took over two weeks to get my growth rate back to normal.
Instagram expects you to be online. Everyday. In fact, multiple times every day. Don’t try to grow your Instagram followers if this is not for you.
CHOOSE A FEED STYLE AND EDIT YOUR PICTURES ACCORDINGLY
That is something I adopted a little later after discussing it with a friend. Until April I didn’t really plan what to post the next day and I didn’t care about how the picture would look like next to my other pictures.
And then I tried and edited them so they look more consistently. I was surprised to see how big the effect was! I didn’t image it, but suddendly I got more and more Instagram followers and I also got comments like “I love those turquoise colours all over your feed”. Someone even gave me a story shoutout just because she liked my feed style!
Do you need Lightroom? Yes, you do. I first tried different other apps too (Snapseed, VSCO) – but none of them are as powerful as Lightroom. Instagram IS Lightroom nowadays. The App is for free, so try and see for yourself. In the meantime I switched to the desktop version (which means I actually pay for it) – but first go with the App and then see if this is for you.
I also wrote a tutorial on presets – what they are and what they are NOT. In short: simply applying a preset won’t fix your feed. You need to adapt pictures and you need to plan your feed to see which pics work next to each other. I use the free version of an app called “Preview” for it.
I you really want to up your Instagram game quickly, you will need to get a good preset pack for Lightroom CC that works with mobile.
I now sell my very own Lightroom presets on my store – and they are optimized to work with the free mobile app of Lightroom! So you don’t need to get the desktop version anymore if you don’t want to. If you use desktop, I also included the desktop presets too!
Shop my own Lightroom Presets (Mobile + Desktop)
Write engaging captions
If you only post pretty pictures without a comment, you will only get comments like “Pretty picture!”, “Love the colours!” or “You are so hot!”. If you actually want to have a conversation (and believe me, you do!), you need to give your followers something to start! Ask them a question. Tell them about your day and what is happening in your life. Talk about the location the picture was shot at. Give them a secret tip. Or try to learn more about your tribe!
If you want to read a good article about captions, you can find it here
Tag your pictures properly
First, there is three type of tags: Geotags, “person” tags and hashtags. Use all of them. On every picture.
Geotags: The location you shot the picture at. Play around with more generic ones (“Sri Lanka”) to very specific (“Hotel xyz in Colombo”) – depending on if the location actually matters. But even if it doesn’t – include one!
“Person” tags: You can tag accounts directly in your picture. The powerful thing about this is, that they are likely gonna notice your tag. If you are staying at a beautiful hotel and are posting a pic of them – tag them. I already had hotels connecting with me after the post and even sharing it themselves!
Hashtags: You can use up to 30 hashtags on your posts and I still recommend doing this. There is studies that say to 10 hashtags is best – but for me, using all 30 hashtags works best at the moment. Try to change the hashtags and not use the same every day as this might be considered spammy by Instagram. Have a list and play around with them. And especially as long as you don’t have millions of followers, try to use “smaller” hashtags along with the popular ones. Your picture will only be visible for minutes (if not seconds) under “#Instatravel” – but people will see it maybe for hours and days under “#UnawatunaBeach”.
Interact with other Instagrammers
ou want comments on your pictures. So comment on other people’s pictures as well! How should they notice that you are around if you never said hi on the party? This can get really time consuming and to be honest, there are also days where I am not in the mood to comment. It’s okay if that happens – just don’t let it get a habit.
So let’s talk about Engagement Groups: do they work? Yes. Have I used them? Yes. Can they be incredibly exhausting? Hell yes. I really don’t want to give you an advice on whether you should use engagement groups to boost your likes and comments as this depends on your personal preferences.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with connecting with other Instagrammers with the same goal (aka grow Instagram followers). But choose wisely which groups to participate. I am still in one pod because it is all awesome traveling females and I genuinely enjoy seeing their pictures every day. On the other hand I left a lot of pods because I was bored to comment on pictures I didn’t really like. So, maybe try for yourself!
And if you choose completely against pods – fine! But don’t forget to engage on the content of your tribe as well! 🙂 Go through your home feed and see what they posted. Give something back! :-*
Post Instagram stories
I am not sure on how much Instagram stories contributed to my Instagram followers growth – all I can say is that I frequently get a lot of engagement on my stories. And according to some “Instagram gurus” this also helps your feed post to be seen by your followers. Cause Instagram doesn’t show your precious new photo to all your followers – only to a fraction of it (and then decideds how “valuable” your content today is!)
And it’s a good place to regularly say thank you to the people you became part of your Tribe!
Have you seen my awesome Instagram Story templates already? You can simply download them and use them for your IG Stories as well!
And what if that is not enough?
After doing all those basic things properly, I realized that my Instagram followers growth is still too slow to getting those big numbers that companies are looking for.
And while it is true that the total follower counts is now less important than a year ago – it is still an important “KPI”. KPI is business english (I used that word a LOT when I was a management consultant) and means “Key performance indicator”. Businesses use KPIs to measure their success and also in 2018 they look at that number. The more followers I get, the more brands contact me.
So how do you catch up with people who showed up to the party way earlier than you?
You could buy fake followers. But this isn’t gonna get you anywhere. Nowadays the algorithms are becoming better and better and it is far too obvious if you bought followers. I never ever did that and I strongly advise you to refrain from it as well. In the long terms you WILL hurt your credibility with it. Those fake followers will never ever engage with your content and engagement is actually becoming more and more important as a KPI!
So, what else?
The secret tips that no one talks about...
So, here is what I really did, how and why: I think a lot of people use those strategies but most of them aren’t honest with it because they want it to look like “it just happened to them”. Believe me, Instagram followers growth does not “simply happen” – it is the result of a well executed strategy.
The alternative Follow-Unfollow Game
It happened to all of you: An awesome account followed you and you were super excited about it. Of course you followed back. But when you check the account three days later, you notice they don’t follow you anymore (in fact, you will only see that if you use an App like “Follow Cop” for that…)
This always made me angry and it still does. Those people are playing with your feelings and this simply shouldn’t happen on Instagram. It is however, because it works. You noticed that account, didn’t you?
So, here’s what I propose to get noticed with a similar approach that does actually not hurt anyone’s feelings: The Unfollow-Follow Game of big accounts.
When you follow big accounts in your niche, other people will notice you because you appear as a recent follower of this big account. If they like the content of the big account and yours is similar – they might follow you as well! So start following big accounts in your niche (you can learn from them as well!). And then, go through who they follow and follow them as well. The next day, you unfollow and directly follow them AGAIN. This way you will never be one of their unfollowers (and thus not hurt anyone) – BUT you will again and again show up as a new follower and so other people can notice you. And if your content is good (thus the basics) – they might follow you as well!
This strategy has worked for me and especially helped me to get my first 2-3k Instagram followers. I am not doing it regularly anymore (‘cos I am too lazy) – but it definitely works. Just don’t overdo it (try not to do that with more than 30 accounts at once) – or you will get banned by Instagram!
Loop Giveaways
Yes, Giveaways. You might like them or not – but they work. In fact, they are one of the few things that can help you grow Instagram followers quickly nowadays.
Update January 2019: I haven’t used any giveaways since October 2018 anymore. But since this definitely helped me grow in the beginning, I still want to explain this strategy here!
Usually they work like this: You collaborate together with 30-40 others accounts and buy a prize for the competition. Then you all post a picture of the competition at the same time. Normally there is a dedicated giveaway account (let’s call it ABC giveaway) that only follows those 30-40 accounts. And then in the caption of the giveaway picture there are the rules. Normally, they include that every participant has to follow all accounts that ABC Giveaway is following and that they have to tag a friend as a comment. ABC Giveaways collects the money from all participating accounts and pays some money to big accounts (500k+) to post the giveaway as well. This way the post is seen by a lot of people and thus a lot of people get exposed to your content.
Be wary though, there are a few catches with this strategy:
Shady operators: There is a lot of shady giveaway organisators right now that make a lot of money by organizing overpriced giveaways and not organizing good sponsors. You can always DM me on Instagram as I know a lot of them and can maybe save you from loosing money! Also, you want to be sure that the prize will actually reach a winner!
Wrong niche: If you are doing beauty and the giveaway is a travel giveaway, you will get exposure to people who only follow you in order to participate. They are not interest in your content and will unfollow you later. They will also not engage later if your content isn’t good – so first master the basics and then start with giveaways.
I did my very first giveaway when I was at 5k and that was a good idea. But once you are through with the basics this really helps to get that exposure you need. If your content isn’t what’s stopping you from growing – then exposure might be the only thing you need!
Yes, Pinterest! Pinterest can actually help you grow your Instagram followers as well! Pinterest is a visual search engine – so why not leveraging your great content to get exposure there? If you haven’t set up your account yet, do it. You can even set a rule with IFTTT so that your Instagram post always goes on Pinterest as well as soon as you publish it!
Oh, and if you read that far – be sure to follow me on Pinterest as well! 😉
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTING MY INSTAGRAM STRATEGY...
Hopefully, those tips will help you to grow your Instagram followers as well! Because one things has completely changed in this half your since I started with Instagram: The reason WHY I post on Instagram.
I don’t care about teaching those German companies how to grow on Instagram.
I am on Instagram because I love Instagram.
I met amazing people through Instagram and I got so many travel tips and inspirations since being part of this community.
I developed a tribe that I care about – you as my blog reader are part of it. And I want to give something back to you.
I want to inspire you and show you the world. Go out there, travel – and tell the world about what you saw and experienced!
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