I’ve had a lot of questions about how I’ve been growing my IG so I wanted to share my story on how to get more
Instagram though, I did NOT get. Especially this whole Instagram followers thing? What were people doing? Why did I want to look at a bunch of random people’s pictures? It took me FIVE years before I got an account. February 1, 2015, is my very first Instagram post. Followed by my second in May of 2015 at the Taylor Swift concert. And then it died. Why did I need some other account to post pictures? I did that all the time on Facebook.
My jump into Blogging and Instagram
When I started my blog in May of 2016 (thanks to my appendicitis), I created a profile for my blog. Mostly just pictures of the limited edition
Fast forward to May of 2018. I hadn’t been consistent with my blog at all, I went through a renewed energy and rebranded. Luckily, Instagram let me do that without having to start from scratch like Facebook. But who am I kidding? I had a “measly” 50 Instagram followers to my business account but I figured. It was better than nothing.
I recalled a friend using collage features and thought, “ok, I’ve heard this one post a day thing, I’ll do collages!” and random other things. I knew to put hashtags but not that it mattered what hashtags. I gained a few followers but stagnated at 100 or so. (Collages are so not a thing anymore it seems, see, I was lost and confused!).
Getting there…
Month goes by, its nearing the end of June and I’m finally “there has to be a better way!”. So I start doing research, start adding a few more comments, liking a few more posts. Get super excited when I get to 200 followers, stagnate a week, 300, 400, till I’m finally close to 500 but constantly swinging 50 people one way or the other. It was a veryyyyy slow climb, and I was getting there but still not quite.
Note: This post includes affiliate links. If you decide to take Alex’s course, I get a small commission, at no extra expense to you! It helps me keep doing what I love to do, inspire people through my writing and pictures to go see more of the world!
A light at the end of the tunnel!
On July 26, 2018, I found Alex Tooby’s free week long course “Instagram Authority”. There’s an option to pay out right $10 to get it all at once, but instead I just waited a week and did it all at once that way. Things started to click. I started implementing things and reach 600, almost 650 followers! And then I slowly fell back to 30 plus or minus around 600. For the love of all things holy. The free course was amazing and I was so close! I needed something more though.
Alex sent me an email about her paid course. I wasn’t sure I was willing to pay the price. A few hundred for an online course about Instagram?? After a few days of thinking about it, and being super frustrated with numbers, I bite. And oh, am I so glad I did. I signed up on August 10th, which is poor planning on my part since I immediately couldn’t do anything with the course because I was travelling to Aomori for the weekend. But Monday, I binge watched near all of Infamous to Influential and started implementing the steps the very next day.
Instagram followers: From 600 to 1000 in a matter of days
Tuesday I was back to 650 from 580, yay! Wednesday I broke 720 and by Thursday, I was over 800. 200 followers in the matter of days? What?! Not only that, I was consistently breaking 100 likes on every photo starting the very day I watched the course. There are so many good tools and tips in this training that I hadn’t found anywhere before! Alex really did the research for you so you can get busy creating content instead of trying to figure out this whole social media mess!
The icing was a friend messaging me that following Thursday morning saying, “Girl you are killing it on IG. How did you make the jump to over 100 likes a pic?”. Four days’ time and it seemed like I’d finally cracked IG. It’s not all about the followers after all. Do those followers like your copy and photo? It’s social media, after all, be sociable!
If Infamous to Influential is a little steep for your pockets, I suggest at least getting Hashtag Hero. The more people that see your profile, the more people will love your amazing content and want to engage with you too! This course goes further into depth to what the free course gave you so that you can really start to get into the groove of your niche.
So, what are you waiting for?! If nothing else, the free course will definitely get you moving in the right direction! From August 14 to September 6th, I gained 1000 followers. I still have lofty goals to “go viral” and I’ll get there and you can too.
Wait, you said 5000!
Yes, I did. I honestly started writing this post months ago and its been sitting in my queue. I’d like to actually create my OWN IG course. I learned so much from Alex (and she’s amazingly helpful on her FB groups), but I’m a pattern person, after all this lovely engagement (I love talking with my followers and finding new people to follow!), I’ve started to notice things.
As I work towards making something my own, I still want to help those that have asked me over the past couple of months “how are you doing this?!”.
Implementing Alex’s suggestions, I was able to hit the following milestones:
9/14/18 — 2000 followers
10/30/18 – 3100 followers
11/11/18 – First day I have 100 likes within the first hour.
11/28/18 – 4000 followers
12/13/18 – First time I had a post with 1000+ likes
12/15/18 – 5000+ followers
Quick tips for success in more Instagram followers
- Instagram allows you thirty hashtags, use them! I prefer to put mine in the comments but in the captions is perfectly acceptable! Use no space at the end of your paragraph and then 4-5 “.” to make it look cleaner.
- Not to big and not too small. You don’t want to be in an oversaturated hashtag. Over a million and within seconds, you’ll be way down in the queue! Tiny ones you risk no one searching for them.
- Do some hashtag research. Where is your ultimate follower going to be looking?
- Don’t use random words for a sentence ala #this #is #so #great. I’ve seen this recently. Just no. #thisissogreat
- Don’t compete with yourself. Use stories instead of multiple posts on your feed a day!
- Engage with your followers, search out new ones in your niche. Comment, ask questions! Having a conversation is so meaningful, I love my IG friends.
- Don’t forget to tag where the picture is from in locations!
Future Goals
Honestly, my goal was to hit 10K. Why? Because then I get swipe up features and it’s easier to link to my blog posts :P. I’d love to grow bigger than that, and I believe 100% anyone can. You just need to put the effort in. And most important? Great content and community. I love all the friends I’ve met on IG and can’t wait to meet more!
What are your IG goals? Let me know in the comments! Let’s have a conversation :).
Awesome girl! I am so proud of you! I would love to someday be able to do the same as you! I know I will get there in time through, but I also know there are things that I need to work on first: (Photography, building my blog, etc)
Awww thank you so much, Shauna :). I know you can get there too! And I feel you on things to work on. I’ve been going through and revamping soooo much of the blog. It will all pay dividends in the end. Yours too!!