We may receive commissions for affiliate links included in this article. This is a sponsored post. Future Sharks makes no warranties about the statements, facts and/or claims made on this article. These are the opinions of the author. Read our advertising and contributor disclosure here.
- If you haven’t noticed by now, there are a lot of accounts on Instagram that have fake followers. Many accounts have more than 10k followers, but they only receive a few likes and comments on each post. It’s usually pretty easy to tell the difference between an account with real followers and an account with fake followers, it also tells you a lot about the person who owns the account. When you grow followers naturally you will have a lot more engagement because they are real people.
It is never easy to gain thousands of followers within a short period of time, but it has been done. In 12 months I’ve been able to grow my Instagram followers to more than 75k real followers. I’m here to tell you exactly what I know and how I’ve been able to do it.
Connection While Cliche, is Vital
When I started to grow followers, the first few steps I followed was connecting with people in the same space. Not only would I message other people, but I would also like and comment on their posts. The reason for that was to let them know that I want to connect and I’m willing to engage to be noticed. Not only did the account user see that but the other people commenting saw that too.
When I noticed people would stop replying to my direct messages, I would then send a video to them instead of text. I found that a lot more people would respond because it was actually me talking to them and acknowledging them, not just text that was copy and pasted. People love to see that you are a real person and are interested in connecting with them.
A very good way to grow followers is to put out content people want to see. If you can collaborate with a page that is in the same niche as you and cross post content, you will see the results. That way you can always have new content, but at the same time you will have the content your followers want to see. It is also very good to be connected with people who are in the same niche so you don’t have any competition, but more of a network you work with.
Giveaways While Restricted – Work Wonders
Giveaways, which is a huge trend right now work wonders on Instagram. Now Instagram has some restrictions on giveaways but here is what you can do to get by it. The first thing you need to do is find the largest sponsors with the highest engagement. Now the hard part is really finding the actual influencers because in the landscape, it’s tough to tell who is real and who isn’t. So a must is that you need to do your due diligence or the giveaway can flop.
Once you have secured your sponsors you create a dummy account and you will have the sponsors tag that account and on that account you have one post leading them to your real account, you make them follow the dummy account and the real account to have a shot at winning. This gets you out from under the eyes on instagram and it also grows a dummy account 5-10k which you now have the opportunity to leverage and grow. Feel free to bring other accounts into the giveaway to cover your cost of the actual reward anything under 10 accounts is fine, Brodie suggests trying one yourself first to be sure you can deliver results. Also make sure that you are posting proof on the dummy account that the winner received prizes. Run the giveaway for a few days and make sure the influencers make post and stories.
This is a major hack that hardly anyone talks about because it’s the real hacks that help you grow quickly.
Engagement Groups
Engagement groups are still effective, but it’s going to depend on where you are at in your growth. If you are a fresh page, any group will do. If you are a mid level beginner page 5-20k you want to leverage whatever you can to get into bigger groups than what you actually deserve to be in because this is going to look great for your account. You want people liking and commenting on your account but the quality of likes and comments matters, a lot. This is why buying fake likes and views from some random website is a bad idea because it flags your account as spam but likes and comments from real, active accounts that are bigger than yours is going to help your page rank.
With this you need to be looking at what type of content you are posting, Instagram is photos and videos, you may not want to hear this but they dont give a damn about your caption, your followers will but if you want to get seen by people who don’t follow you, you really have to produce quality stuff. Visually pleasing content. If you are posting a video run it through an app that will make it 4k, make that shit sharp. If you are reposting a picture or a quote or something, get in and mess with the colors and contrast, make it pop.
Why Instagram?
It seems as the years go by Instagram seems to grow more in popularity. It is said that the reason it is so popular and continues to grow is because of the engagement. I’m a firm believer in this, the reason I chose Instagram over all other social media was because it is “addicting, simple, cool, and had influencers”. When it comes to Instagram you hardly have to read anything because it is either a picture or a video, so it is very simple and easy to use while being visually pleasing.
You don’t see any Linkedin stars, they are all Instagram stars. People are blowing up on that social media platform and making impact on it, so why reinvent the wheel?
➡ Looking to get featured on Future Sharks?
