Top 5 Ways How to Grow Your Instagram Followers

I have to declare here that I am a latecomer to Instagram. I have been focusing on my Facebook account, and only very recently Instagram has captured my attention.

I think the main reason I do not like to change or try new social media platform is that your account will be a ghost town when you first started. I know that some people are like that as well. You can hear crickets dancing as you post your first status or updates. However, as an avid digital marketer, I have to try this Instagram out and make the best of it.

So, on 8th April 2017, I have taken the plunge on my first Instagram post. Here is my first post. The results…. It got 15 likes and one comment. Cool… Not so “crickety” that much as I fear before. Now, I am hooked.

So, I am now going to document my journey here on how can I increase my Instagram followers. At the end of this article, I will post my Lessons Learnt and what are the possible tips that you can take from this little experiment for yourself.

THE GROUND RULES

I have set some rules here as well…

1. I am not going to post on personal things
2. I am going to concentrate on one theme, and that is “Self Motivation and Self Development.”
3. I am going to post on Quotes and Videos only

The reason I do this is that I want to eliminate some variables. By focusing on specific factors only, I would know what can make your Instagram followers grow.

THE EXPERIMENT

My first post on Instagram on 8th April 2017
I put on my first post on Instagram, and it is a quoted content.
For my Profile Strategy, I put up an avatar image just for experiment. I also put only a brief description of myself.
Regarding content strategy, I will try to post once a day and rotating between Quote content and Video content. I have also set my privacy settings to Public.

28 April 2017 – So far 12 posts – My followers are now 104
I also found out that the number of people you follow does not affect much on the rate of people following you. – Brings me to experiment 1 – Comment and like on the people you follow
I have not started using the Instagram Stories yet.

5th May 2017 – Just got back a five day holiday with limited internet. So, nothing has been done to increase my Instagram followers. However, I am now targeting to double the amount of the followers from the current 108 to 200 by the end of this month. However, this also shows that without any activity was done, my followers only increased by four only. So, today I am going to post a video so let’s see how many increases regarding followers that I will have. I am also going to some experiment of putting a cover image to my video and see the conversion rate would be like compared to my previous video.

I am also going to start hashtagging sniping. What is a hashtagging sniping? It is what I called targeted hashtag,
First I search for a hashtag… Look at all the recent post related to it. Comment and like all the post.. and monitor the increment of followers you have after doing this.

7th May 2017 – So, finally I am using the Instagram Stories. Here I use Canva as my tool. Create a quick quote post. And also post a quote today. My follower now grew to 115.

I also did some experiment in changing my profile here. I use my picture plus I use emojis in my bio data.
I also did some hashtag sniping. The hashtag chosen is #seizetheday. Like and comment on a post that used that hashtag. Let’s see if they are some reply or feedback.One thing I noticed, the “like” have been slow.. maybe due to the weekend.

8th May 2017 – So hashtagging #seizetheday did not result as what I am expecting. Let’s try another hashtag sniping. This time let’s choose #millionairemindset . It kinda works..in one hour I increased three followers to 119 and increased to 125 within several hours. The lessons learned here is that not all hashtag works well. You need to constantly try to snipe different type of hashtag. Probably the closer the hashtag relates to your content, the better.

10th May 2017 – I uploaded another biteable video.. my followers jumped from 123 to 128 within an hour. See at my YouTube channel here for all my biteable video that I have shared on my Instagram account.
So… hashtagging sniping seems to work better.

I am now going to experiment posting on a different time to see which time will get the most reaction and likes.
11th May 2017 – Posted a quote at 10.30 pm. First few minutes my followers jumped from 128 to 130. Within an hour my follower counts to 132.

The hashtag used are:-

#entrepreneurlife #millionairemindset #seizetheday #digitalmarketing #positivity #positivemind #productiveday #positivequotes #liveyourlife #livinlife #mymediasocial #motivationalquotes #motivation #dailymotivation #dailyquote

Now, I am trying another experiment. It is called “Let it Go”. After 16 posts, I am going to just let it idle for a week and see whether the followers of my account increases or not over time.

16th May 2017 – So, I have left my IG idle for one week without adding any content. My followers have now increased to 136.

It is now 23rd May 2017 – I have added two more posts. My followers have since now grown to 150. So, in 7 days I got 14 followers. So, I am averaging two followers increase a day.
Another experiment. I posted a video at 8.30 am U.S time. Instantly got almost 60 likes and two followers. This shows that timing of your post does matter.

It is now 8th June 2017 – So, it has been two months since I started this experiment. I have posted about 22 posts, and now my followers have increased to 174 people. So, if you do the math, with each post, I gain eight followers. Each month I average about 87 people that follow me.

It is now 20th June 2017 – My followers have been fluctuating a bit. I think this is normal once you reached a certain number. My followers are now at 188. Still, a long way to go to reach 1000.

I went on a one month break due to the festive season and school holidays. Due to the limited internet there, I only managed to post one update only.. and it is a quote post. The update, my followers, have reached 210 on 14th July 2017.

So, without an active update, my followers only grew to about 22 only. There are also some unfollow me as well. Probably due to my inactive status update. However, I will be ramping up again with my content. Hopefully, I can post one or two content a day and let’s see if the graph can increase.

LESSONS LEARNED

One thing that I noticed is that I start procrastinating when it comes to creating content. So, I need to overcome this and figure how I can churn out that content every day. The reason is sometimes I have no idea on what are the content would be. Therefore it was subconsciously giving me a reason to delay creating that content.

So, therefore I create a content schedule for a straight 30 days. I sat down for one day, creating a full content for 30 days. So, each day I would only allocate 5 minutes to upload it to my Instagram account. So, allocate 3 hours to create the 30 days content so that I can allocate only 5 minutes a day only for the rest of the month.

So, the conclusion from my little experiment is that Instagram is not like Facebook in which you can just add friends by pushing the plus button. It needs you to create content on a consistent basis, and only then your followers will grow.

So, what are the tips that you can benefit from my little experiment here?

1. The key to gain followers in Instagram is consistently publishing content. After I stop posting content for a while, my followers dropped.

2. The timing of your post is very important. From the little experiment that I did, the post in the morning weekdays – 7 am to 10 am received the most likes. The post that I shared at night received the less.

3. Videos post vs image post. I have been purposely rotating posting videos and images to see which type gets the most reaction and likes. The verdict seems that currently image post remains popular and have high engagement and interaction.

Maybe Instagrammers prefers to scroll fast their newsfeed and do not have time to see videos. From the conclusion I can also make on this matter, images also tend to get more followers. Maybe this trend will change in the future, but as of the date I am experimenting, images and pictures still rule the Instagram world.

4. Colours of your background for your post plays a key factor as well. Choose red and other shiny colours to stand out.

5. Engagement with your followers and people who you follow. I found that the more you engage with them, the more they would likely to like your post back. I think this is more to human nature. You interact more is like you contributing to their post.. and therefore they would be most likely to interact back.

However, the way you comment plays an important factor as well. Do not just put a very general comment just a “thumbs up” or “Great” as a comment. Savvy Instagrammer would immediately notice the flakiness of that comment. Do take the time to read what they are posting and give specific comment to the content that they have posted.

So, there you have it. My little experiment on increasing my followers in Instagram. Be sure to check my other articles on Instagram as well such as top 5 Instagram tips and tricks. Do you have any other tips that can increase the followers Instagram that I did not cover? Please comment and share at the comment section below.