How To Get Your First 1,000 Followers on Instagram

Instagram is one of my favourite social media platforms. I love the visual aspect of it and the potential is has for extending your reach to millions of people all over the world.

But like a lot of people I was frustrated at how hard it seemed to get followers and engagement on my account. So I decided to focus all my attention on this platform to learn the strategies that actually grow an account.

My Freedom Empire account now has almost 14,000 followers. I’ve grown my personal account to almost 9,000 followers.

Along with multiple other accounts to prove that these strategies work every time:

@bekickasshealthy – almost 8,000 followers
@blue.monsoon – almost 12,000 followers
@helloyellohola – over 2,000 followers
@shopflamingoblue – over 1,300 followers

THE WHY & WHAT OF INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a visual sharing social media place – a place for visual storytelling. It’s great for those of us who are creative types, who like to tell our stories through photos, videos and creative writing.

The human mind sees everything in pictures. If I tell you I live in a blue house, you immediately have an image of a blue house in your head. If I say the words red rose, right away you have an image of a red rose in your head, right?

So, it makes sense that images are an extremely effective way to get your message across to people. There are several reasons why you should want to use Instagram. These include:

• Drive traffic back to your website
• Sell products and services
• Create brand awareness
• Showcase products and services
• Build an engaged community
• Share your passion and message

THE POWER OF INSTAGRAM

Photos create an emotional connection and make you more relatable. Instagram is now the King (or  should I say Queen!) of social engagement delivering 29% more engagement than Facebook and 60% more than Twitter.

Consumers trust the opinions of those in their social media group and social media influence is now 11 times more effective than banner ads.

WANT SOME EXAMPLES?

KAYLA ITSINES – If you haven’t heard of Kayla Itsines or the Bikini Body Guide you may be just living under a rock! I’m proud to say she’s a fellow Aussie and currently has 9.9 million Instagram followers. She created the Bikini Body guide which started out as a fitness e-book and has now become a worldwide health movement. Kayla was the pioneer of “fitness instagrammers”.

BOSSBABE INC. – This is a business started by Alex Wolfe and currently has 578,000 followers. This account posts purely inspirational and motivational quotes and inspired the whole “#bossbabe” movement.

GYPSY LOVIN’ LIGHT – Another Aussie girl representing! This account currently has 833,000 followers and was started to promote her online store and the products available. It’s very heavily “boho” themed which is super popular right now. Gypsy Lovin’ Light now gets paid to travel the world and stay at luxurious resorts with her family.

YOGA GIRL – Currently has 2.1 million followers ad mostly shares her daily life but subtly promotes her yoga business, café, yoga workshops and non-profit businesses through her account.

The amount of followers on these accounts might seem overwhelming and make you feel like you could never achieve an account like this but you have to remember, they all started where you are.

They all started with zero followers. They all started from the bottom and worked their way up. They didn’t just open an account one day and automatically have millions of followers.

WHO ELSE LOVES STATS?

• Instagram has more than 800 million total monthly active users.
• 95 million photos and videos are shared every day.
• As of 2015, 40 BILLION photos have been uploaded to Instagram.
• Photos receive 4.2 billion likes every day.
• Estimated to have more than 1 billion users over the next three years.

So, if you have decided that Instagram is the social platform for you, let’s get down to the nitty gritty of what it takes to get your first 1,000 followers on Instagram!

CREATE A BRAND

I’d suggest creating a generalized brand, workflow and aesthetic but don’t feel you have to be too strict with it. You don’t want your feed to feel forced so it’s okay to stray from a strict brand style now and then to maintain authenticity.

Is isn’t popular to have a flawless account anymore with a perfect business or perfect life. It’s inauthentic and not relatable. You should be thinking “How can I show my followers the real me and make myself more human?”

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at what’s working for others then put your own spin and personality on it. Ask yourself:

• What do I want the vibe of my account to be?
• What am I committed to sharing and posting every single day?
• Does my account feel like my authentic self?
• What do I want to give?
• What do I want to be known for?

CREATE A KILLER BIO

Your bio area is precious real estate so be very particular with what you fill it up with. It’s where you get to very concisely explain what people can expect to get from you and from following your account. Tell them what you do and how you can help them. That’s it.

Don’t fill this space with irrelevant emojis or quotes and phrases that you think are cute, but mean absolutely nothing to someone who is deciding whether to follow you or not.

Don’t repeat your name. If you handle is your name, don’t use it again in your bio.

If your Instagram account is for your business set your profile photo as you, not your company logo. People want to know they are interacting with an actual human.

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST

It’s important to be consistent and post what your followers like. It’s not about you, it’s about how you can help your follower, how you make them feel and how you can make their lives better.

Follow the rule of 3’s. There are three types of content you should be posting:

• Educational
• Behind the scenes
• Storytelling

Then there are three styles of posts you should be sharing:

• 1/3 should be selling/converting/promotional posts
• 1/3 should be information or story from a leader in your industry
• 1/3 should be totally original content

If you are using Instagram for business, try to mix a little personal in too. People love to learn about the person behind the brand and get a glimpse into people’s lives.

Did you know that Instagram posts with a face in them receive 38% more likes than those without? Post a selfie now and then!

TIME YOUR POSTING

It might take some experimenting but determine where you audience is located and when they are most active on Instagram. You can find this within your accounts Insights.

Popularity on Instagram is all related to engagement and how quickly you receive it so you want to post when your people are watching so they like and comment on your posts immediately.

If you catch it at the right time and your followers start interacting with you right away, Instagram can really boost your post and expose you to potential new followers.

Be consistent with posting. Don’t bombard your followers with multiple posts all through the day but also don’t leave days between posting. Aiming to post once per day is enough and don’t leave more than a day (or two at the most) between posts.

I find that if I leave more than a few days between posts, when I do post again I lose a bunch of followers.

HOW TO GAIN FOLLOWERS

The most effective way to gain new followers on Instagram is by interaction. Find people who you want to follow you and interact with them. Follow them, like their posts, comment (genuinely) on their posts.

The idea is that they see you interacting, they go check out your account and hopefully like it and interact back.

CREATE ENGAGEMENT

Instagram is not all about follower count. The platform is becoming more and more about engagement. If people engage with your account, Instagram will expose you to more people.

Stats actually show that accounts with lower follower numbers usually get higher engagement than larger accounts with more followers and we’re now seeing a surge in “micro-influencers”.

These accounts have small follower counts but a making great money because their posts get higher engagement.

HERE ARE MY TOP TIPS FOR GETTING MASSIVE ENGAGEMENT:

1. Use Instagram as a place to give away massive value via free content. Inspire people, educate people, entertain people. And do it expecting nothing in return.
   
2. Post personal posts so that people can see you’re a real human being with a real life and real problems. Just like them!
3. Use Geolocation. Posts that have a specifically tagged location in them receive up to 79% higher engagement than those without.
4. Interact. If people comment on your posts like their comment and actually reply to them! When I do an Instagram Audit on someones account I’m amazed at the amount of posts I see where multiple people have commented and the account owner hasn’t even taken the time to reply, like or even acknowledge the comment.
5. Ask them to engage! Put a call to action in every post. Some call to actions you could use include:

• Double tap this photo if you agree.
• Drop me an emoji below if you want to know more.
• Tag a friend who needs to hear this today.
• Check out the link in my bio to join the challenge.

#HASHTAGS

Posts with at least one hashtag get 12.6% more engagement than those with zero hashtags. And hashtags are even more important now that people can follow hashtags, which gives you the potential for exposure to potential new followers.

You are currently allowed to use up to 30 hashtags per post but you can’t just throw up a bunch of random hashtags – you MUST create a hashtag strategy. Your hashtag strategy should include:

• Create 4-5 groups of 25-28 hashtags. You don’t want to be using the exact same hashtags on every post.
• Avoid using big, popuar or viral hashtags. The more niche the better.
• Aim to find hashtags which have under 200K posts.
• Only post to relevant hashtags.
• DO NOT post to follow for follow or like for like type hashtags. These are very, very bad.
• Use hashtags on every single post.

Being consistent and creating engagement is key to winning at the Instagram game. Start to implement these strategies and you will see your account start to grow.

Once you reach your first 1,000 followers you can continue to consistently grow your follower count to any figure that you have in mind.