Gaining 1k real followers on instagram for £0 in 14 days. STEP BY STEP.

0–1k. Full step by step guide

Instagram is an amazing platform, with 1 billion users worldwide. The average post on instagram contains 10.7 hashtags. 71% of the billion monthly active users on the Instagram app are under the age of 35. It’s no wonder that 70% of U.S businesses use instagram in some way shape or form. You’re here because you want to gain 1k followers fast! I’ve personally grown 3 instagrams to 1000 followers, 2 of which reached 1000 in 10 days.

Profile

So let's start with the profile. Whether its your personal brand, a theme page or a business page, your profile has to be captivating. It is the equivalent of a first impression. Start with a short name, try to not use punctuation in your username but if you have to, use one full stop or one underscore between phrases. Such as ‘Pups.withpassports’ or ‘Johnsmith_boutique’. The username is what you’re about, its your identity so make it easy to remember and it is related to your page. Your bio has to sum up your feed, have a call to action and a contact link. Use emojis in this section to, if your focus is on travel, be sure to add a plane emoji or a backpack emoji. This allows your viewer to know what you’re about instantly. Your call to action is what you want your view to do. ‘Follow us for more travel content’ or ‘Check out our store for the latest trend’ are good example of call to actions. Be sure to paste your website link, contact number or email address below the call to action.

First posts

Before you start gaining followers, you want to post your first 9 posts. Your first post should be your profile picture, this related to your brand /personal image. If it’s a personal page, it’s going to be your best picture. If it’s a travel page, it might be a beautiful scenery photo. You also need consistency with your posts, this will help you gain followers in the long term. Therefore, pick a photo style - landscape/portrait/square, pick a filter that you’re going to commit to, and pick a style of photo. The best pages use a consistent colour pallet, for example neutral colours or pastel colours. You want 9 posts to start of with because this allows visitors to see yours page and they won’t confuse you with a bot or a complete new account.

Hashtags

You must consistently use hashtags. You’re allowed a maximum of 20, but don't feel that you have to use 20 in each and every post. In fact, research shows that a low number of carefully selected hashtags will have better results than 20 generic, overused ones. Don’t worry, there are ways to do this easily. Best-hashtags.com and focalmark are perfect examples. These sources will help you find hashtags in your niche/ focus. You can place your hashtags in the caption at he end or in a separate comment. The preference is yours. Once you switch to a business/themed page (In settings), you will be able to see your insights. This gives information on followers, their location, your reach and which posts are doing well. It also tells you how many people your hashtags are using, so you can mix and match and find out which ones are performing well.

Followers

The best way to gain followers initially is engagement, engagement and engagement. This means likes and comments. So who do you go and like? Find recent posts in your niche/focus, by recent I mean last few hours. Ensure that they have a good amount of likes and comments. These likes and comments are active users. If they commented or liked a photo in the last 30 minutes, and you follow them; they are far more likely to follow back. The average instagram user spends 50 minutes on instagram a day. If you follow someone in their 50 minutes, they are likely to follow back. My 2 recent pages had a follow back ratio of 55% and 30%. These were in the Cat and Dog niche respectively. Head to the explore page and find a recent post, go on comments and likes, and go ahead and like all the users. You’ll be surprised on how quick you’ll gain followers. Don’t follow too many people to start of with, as you may receive a temporary ban from instagram. My rule of thumb is to follow 20–30 active users every time I go on the app. Waiting for the dinner to cook — 30 Follows, in a waiting room — 20 follows, on the loo … okay well that’s your choice, but you get my point.

Engagement

This is crucial. Scroll through your feed and popular pages, like a few posts, perhaps drop a comment too. 100 forms of engagement a day should be your target. This sounds like a lot but in truth, 10 likes/comments, 10 times a day sounds more reasonable and achievable. You’ll get to 1000 followers in no time.

Content

Post relevant and captivating content. For a pet page, post fun facts, grooming tips, pet memes and funny pet videos. If you're struggling, head over to Canva and get creating or Etsy/Fiverr for content creators. Videos perform really well for some pages, photos perform better for others. IGTV is very popular. Instagram will prioritise anything that makes a user stay on the platform for a longer period of time, bare that in mind when creating content and you’ll soon be on the explore page.

GOOD LUCK

You got this! If I can do this on 3 accounts whilst running an ecommerce brand and having a 9–5 job, anyone can.

Very best of luck to you and I hope you enjoyed reading.