The Easiest & Most Effective Way to Grow Your Instagram
Many small businesses, and even large corporations, struggle to garner the social following they want and need. Despite grueling content creation and consistent postings, the engagement and audience just isn’t there. What is the secret? Well, my friends, the answer does not lie in purchasing followers and fake ‘likes.’ Instead, Instagram and Facebook reward authentic engagement. Remember, social media should be social after all. ;)
If you are posting consistent quality content, utilizing researched hashtags, and engaging with the right accounts, you will see growth. If you feel your results are lackluster, try my simple fool-proof strategy to organically grow followers, engagement, and reach.
How to Gain More Followers on Instagram
Social media is, you guessed it, social! You cannot simply hop on, share a post and then get back to your day, ignoring comments and feedback, and avoiding any engagement. Instead, unfortunately, you have to work for it. I’ve discovered one method that works, every time. It’s simple, effective, and takes up just ten minutes of your day. I challenge you to try my method for just ten minutes, for ten days in a row. Write down the number of people that follow you before you begin, and then check back at the end of the ten days. Before you get started, be sure to set your Instagram profile to public.
The 10-10-10 Instagram Challenge
First thing’s first, the self-proclaimed 10-10-10 Challenge will yield you at least 10 new followers per day. Follow these steps to grow your followers, guaranteed. I advise that before you get started, you post some aesthetic content to your Instagram feed, and optimize your bio with keywords. Be sure to include your website in your bio too if you’d like to funnel traffic to your site.
Begin by making a list of your competitors or similar publications. For example, if I were a foodie blogger, I would include publications like Bon Appetit and Williams Sonoma, along with other celebrity chefs and influencers.
Every day, visit one of the profiles on your list.
Click on their followers.
Follow as many followers as you can (Instagram will normally stop you at 50 actions).
The next day, do the same thing.
Evening Out Your Ratio
Once your followers are gaining momentum, you’ll want to even out your Followers to Following ratio. In other words - you don’t want to be following more people than those that are following you. There’s a simple way to counteract this ratio, and Instagram makes it especially easy for you. Here’s a simple guide to do this.
Go to your Instagram page.
Click on Following at the top right-hand corner of your page.
Click on “Least Interacted With.”
Click “Following” next to the people on your list. This will unfollow those people that do not interact with your account.
Repeat this step intermittently throughout the ten days to even out your ratio.
Monitoring Your Growth
Be sure to monitor your growth throughout the course of the 10-10-10 challenge. You should have gained at least 100 followers over the ten days using this strategy. Check your growth by visiting your Instagram page, and clicking on “Insights.” The third item listed will be Total Followers with a small percentage sign underneath. This will show you how many followers you gained and the rate of growth over the past 7 days. You can change the date range by clicking the small dropdown menu in the upper left-hand corner and selecting more specific dates.
Let me know how you did and if the 10-10-10 challenge worked for you. Share your analytics by tagging me in a story or post using @YasminParsloe. I can’t wait to hear about your success!