How I Gained 1k Followers in 5 Days, All of My Secrets Revealed for Free
- Alexander Stemplewski
- Oct 6, 2019
- 15 min read
I gained over 1,000 followers on Instagram in 5 days. In this write up I will explain exactly how I did that.
As the chart shows below, during the 5 day period of September 23rd – September 27th I amassed 1,112 followers. This was a planned and strategic growth initiative that I took and I would like to share with you the tactics I employed to get these results.
This article will explain the following 4 growth tactics that I used in combination to get me over 1k followers in just several days: Paid Instagram Promotions, Features on Feature Pages, Shoutout Trains and Viral Posts.
But first! Read this!
I am not guaranteeing these results for anyone. If you replicated exactly what I did you could easily get double the followers I got or less than half, who knows! What is for certain is that you must have the following basics dialed in before attempting this strategy if it is to be at all effective.
First, make sure you are posting HIGH QUALITY content. Your results are directly tied to the work that you produce and show on your feed. Do you want 10k followers? Well, be honest with the answer to the following question: Does your feed look like that of a 10k page? There are certain standards in the work quality that photographers who have hit the 10k milestone have. Make sure you meet those and make sure you are always improving your content if you want your page to grow and keep your followers engaged. For tips on rapidly improving your editing skills, check out the IGTV video I made on the topic on @alexanderthegreat.
Second, you MUST POST DAILY. I did extensive research on Instagram pages that were able to hit the 10k mark very fast. Across the board they had two things in common: 1) High quality content, as mentioned above and 2) they all posted DAILY until they hit the 10k mark. Ask any photographer who made it to 10k in less than a year and they will tell you they were posting quality work every single day. Remember that Instagram is an app that survives on content. Without content and people posting, the app dies. The app rewards accounts that post high quality content every day, because those users that take the time to do so make the app enjoyable for users and keeps users on the app. Post every single day if you want to grow fast.
Third, have a positive and healthy mentality towards growth as well as patience. If you get 100 instead of 1,000 followers from trying the following techniques, be happy about it. If you get 0 followers, be happy about it. If you LOSE followers, be happy about it! Don’t let what happens to your Instagram account impact your well-being and life. It’s just an app and stressing about it is not only unhealthy but it literally serves no beneficial purpose and makes things not fun. Free yourself from the pressure and need to grow and good things will happen eventually. Enjoy the PROCESS, not the outcome. Every page will grow at different rates, so don’t compare your results with others.
Now onto the fun stuff!! The exact 4 methods I used to grow 1000+ followers in 5 days!
Just kidding… one more thought before we begin!
It’s insightful to understand the following concept when designing a plan to help your Instagram page grow. The two concepts required for growth are: Content and Distribution. We covered content above. Your content needs to be of high quality and it needs to be frequent via daily posts. The second and equally important concept to grow your Instagram page is Distribution, which is simply getting your Instagram page in front of the eyes of as many Instagram users as possible.
You cannot grow without Distribution. Plain and simple. You could have the greatest content in the world, be the best photographer with the greatest edits. BUT, if no one new is finding your work, if your IG page is not being shown to new users, your page won’t grow. Your Instagram feed and that glorious blue FOLLOW button must get in front of the eyes of as many new people as possible if you are to rapidly get new followers. As the most extreme example of effective distribution, imagine if you hacked the entire Instagram app such that whenever ANYONE opened their IG app, YOUR IG feed would be the first thing that popped up with the beautiful blue follow button right there within finger distance. Well, you can very well bet that you will get follows. Why? Because people are seeing your page. Distribution is just that, getting people to see your page so that they can hit the follow button. Try and see if you can tell how the following growth tactics are all different ways of distribution which is why they are effective at getting followers.
Paid Instagram Promotion
Estimated Followers Gained: 122
Cost: $60
I experimented with doing an Instagram Paid Promotion and it gained me 122 new followers. This was a sizable chunk of the 1k that I gained, but it came at a high cost of $60. Here is how I promoted my ad, as well as the pros and cons of this growth method.
What is an IG Paid Post Promotion:
You can pay Instagram to promote one of your posts, meaning it will show your post on the feeds of people who don’t follow you (yet). The more you pay for the promotion, the people (feeds) it will show your post to. Obviously, the more people that see your work, the more followers you can get. You can select the following parameters for your ad 1) which post of yours to promote 2) which geographic regions you wish to target and 3) what type of users to show the promotion to based on their interests (portrait photography in my case).
Tips in creating an effective promotion:
It’s important to promote a post that did well for you in the past. If you have a business or creator Instagram account, then you are likely familiar with Post Insights. A great post to choose for your paid promotion would be the post that has gotten you the most organic follows. Go to your Feed Posts Insights and set the filter to “Follows”. This will show you exactly which post has gotten you the most follows before. Something about that post was able to convert people who saw it into new followers, so that post is a good bet to be effective for your paid promotion. As for the geographic regions to target, there is a trade off between quality of cost.
You can target your ad to be shown to cheaper countries for advertising. This allows your dollars to go a longer way. A $5 ad in San Francisco, California would only get your promotion to reach maybe 1,000 users (not very many). A $5 ad in say, Buenos Aires, Argentina, may get your promotion to reach maybe 10,000 users (that’s 10 times more people seeing your post for the same cost). Be aware of the trade off in targeting cheaper countries though, which is that these users will not be able to engage with your work in the same way since they may not speak your language. Consider this potential sacrifice in engagement when you are targeting less expensive regions.
The following regions have a good combination of low cost and high interest in portrait photography according to Facebook Ad Insights:
- Distrito Especial, Colombia
- Distrito Federal, Mexico
- Montreal, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
A final tip in creating your post promotion is to remove the original caption and replace it with something that is “click-bait” like, in other words, something that will trigger the person who reads it to become curious and intrigued so that they tap on your profile and follow your page. I used the following line as my caption: “Follow @alexanderthegreat for daily edits like these”. Also, be sure to tag yourself in the actual image because some users may look at who is tagged in the post and you want to leave them as many avenues as possible leading to your page.
Pros:
- This method is easy to use. You don’t need anything extra to promote your posts. If you have tons of cash, it’s a great way to grow your page without hardly any effort.
- You can target “cheap follows” by promoting your post in geographic regions that cost much less than places like America.
- It guarantees that your post will reach a certain number of people’s feeds.
- It’s a great way to boost your account to get to 3k followers which is when growth really amplifies
Cons:
- It is costly! I spent $60 for 122 followers. That’s about 50 cents per follower.
- The engagement from those followers are questionable. Will the followers actually engage in your work in the future?
A similar option is to promote your posts through feature pages, which I will discuss next:
Paid Features on Large Feature Pages
Estimated Followers: 250
Cost: $30 for 4 features (this was a discounted rate though)
Paying for features on large feature pages is similar to paying for IG paid promotions. The main difference is that your work will be posted on a feature page and will stay there permanently, rather than your post being shown to the feeds of non-followers for some period of time. One advantage to using feature pages is that if you have a viral post that ends up on a feature page, it is possible that many people will take notice and that post will get featured on more pages creating a snowball effect of features. This is rare, but it happens.
A couple of pointers on selecting feature pages to choose from. Engagement is the most important metric to look at on a feature page before paying for a feature. How many likes are the posts getting on average on the feature page you are looking to be on? Anything above 3,000 on average is pretty good. Next you’ll want to weigh in on the costs. Different pages charge different amounts. Find a less expensive page that has good engagement. Lastly, it’s hugely important to make sure your post fits nicely with the content of the feature page. Each feature page has its own flavor, and people follow that page to get their dose of that flavor. If your post doesn’t align with that, it simply won’t be as effective at gaining followers.
Here are the four features that I paid for. You will notice a few things I did correctly: I chose feature pages with very good engagement (Average around 4.5k likes), and I also made sure the post I chose for each page matched well with the flavor of that feature page. The first shot below was featured on another feature page shortly after (organically, I did not pay for it), which is an example of the snowball effect I mentioned earlier.
I personally prefer paying for posts on feature pages over IG paid promotions, simply due to the additional recognition you get from your work being shown on a large recognized feature page. It is a great way to get noticed in this community as many many photographers follow those pages and will see your work. It is also possible that the followers gained from finding your work on feature pages will be more authentic and engaged since they are usually true fans of the genre you are in.
Shoutout Trains!
Estimated Followers Gained: 300
Cost: Varies
This strategy can be VERY effective if done correctly and with the right accounts. The downside is that it can be very difficult to organize and execute effectively. Let’s start with what a shoutout train is, why they are effective and then some tips on how to organize them.
What a shoutout train is:
A shoutout train works as follows. A group of artists in the same genre form a group under the premise of giving each other shoutouts with the goal of bringing massive attention (distribution) and awareness to each individual member to help them grow. Each member of the group is assigned a “shoutout day”. Most groups are groups of 7, since there are 7 days in a week which makes things simple. When it is your “shoutout day” each of the other members will give you a story shoutout that may include some call to action to check out your page. The followers of those members in your group that gave you the shoutout will likely check out your page out of curiosity and intrigue which leads to many potential new followers. The fact that all of the members are sharing your account on the same exact day can lead to massive awareness and attention in the community to your account creating a powerful effect that gets you a substantial amount of followers on your shoutout day. The larger your group is (either by having more members in the group, or members with a lot of followers) the more effective this strategy is.
I was lucky enough to be in a group of large account photographers, all of which had over 100k followers giving me shoutouts. Thus, this was HUGELY effective for me. On my shoutout day, as shown in the growth chart above I gained over 400 followers that day making this the most powerful tactic that I employed in this growth strategy. You can only imagine how having very respected and established accounts all giving me shoutouts on the same day brought a lot of attention to my small page and got me tons of followers.
Here are some tips in organizing your own shoutout trains:
In order to create a shoutout train with large accounts, you will need to be able to match the value that the large accounts bring to the table. The reason I was able to do this was because I own my own large feature page @portraitstream with 170k followers. Thus, I gave my shoutouts to the group using the large feature page, while receiving the shoutouts from the other members on my personal page. I realize you likely do not have your own large feature page and don’t worry I didn’t either until a few months ago when I bought one! That’s right you can actually buy a feature page. Many people grow these pages with the intention of selling them. For a few hundred dollars you can invest in a feature page which you can use to feature yourself, shoutout yourself, and be able to leverage your page by providing value to other large accounts which will join you in a shoutout train.
If you don’t wish to purchase your own feature page, there are other options. You can offer to pay the large accounts directly to give you the shoutouts. Or, you can see what else you can offer them in return for shoutouts. If the pages are twice as big as yours, you can offer them two shoutouts in return for one. Or perhaps you’ve made some other product that you could exchange for shoutouts. If these are not options for you, then you can simply create shoutout trains with pages that are of equal size to you. They will still be effective, just at a smaller scale. But, if you do many of them, they can compound and still have a great effect.
Let’s talk about two more things. The first will be how to reach out to photographers to set up these shoutouts trains. I used the following DMs to reach out to photographers that I did the shoutout trains with. Modify this message according to your situation (i.e. are you paying them, trading them, offering them twice the shoutouts?) Below are two different DMs that have worked for me.
Lastly, let’s talk about how to create an effective story shoutout. The goal of the actual shoutout should be to get the people who view that story to become intrigued and click on your page. Once they are there, the good things happen. A simple and effective way to do this is called the one-two punch (credit to @mattdotgarcia for helping me with this). The one-two punch consists of two story shoutouts, one right after the other. The first shoutout will share one of your posts and include a short phrase above it. The phrase is usually a compliment about your post, or anything generally positive about it. For example, “Wow, the colors grading on this is perfection!” or “The latest post from @name is INSANE”. The second shoutout will then show an entire snapshot of your grid along with another positive phrase about your work. The phrase should be a genuine compliment about why the person who gave you the shoutout likes your page. “The color grading done by @alexanderthegreat will light up your day” or “Need some inspo? Definitely check out my talented friend @alexanderthegreat.” Here is an example of the 1-2 Punch:
Viral posts:
Estimated followers: 300
Cost: Free
Viral posts is the single best way to grow your Instagram page. Why? Because it is free and it requires no effort other than creating the post. The biggest downside is that it is difficult to create posts that grow viral. What is my definition of a viral post? Viral posts are relative. I measure the virality of a post by how many followers it gained you versus how big your page is. A smaller page like mine currently 4.8k can consider a post that gained 100 followers to be a viral post. It is a large amount of new followers relative to how many I have. A viral post for my feature page @portraistream on the other hand would get me 1,000 new followers. Both are sizable amounts of new followers based on the size of each of those respective pages.
Now that we know what qualifies a post as viral (it’s ability to gain new followers) we can backwards engineer how to create them. I refer to the following technique as the post, research, repeat method. If you are posting daily as I suggested you are gathering a TON of data that is useful in figuring out how to make viral posts. Again referring to Post Insights, the post and research method involves constantly monitoring your post insights filtered under the “follows” criteria to see which posts have gotten you the most followers organically. This data is extremely valuable. It tells you exactly what type of content is giving you the best results. The research part of this strategy involves studying those top performing posts based on their ability to get new followers and understanding what characteristics they have in common giving you a roadmap and blueprint to creating more well-performing posts. Do more of what’s working and less of what’s not.
My current style evolved from using this method. After posting daily for a couple months and researching which posts did best, I had developed a great understanding of what made my best work my best work. For me it was colors. I took note that the more colors I had used the more people were liking my content. I took that even further and began to notice which specific colors were doing the best. I also experimented and found other things that made my posts do very well. Post often, do your research on which posts perform well, make more of those posts and continually repeat this process until you have refined your techniques and are consistently editing posts that go viral.
In the 5 day period that I grew 1,000+ followers, I had three of my posts go viral with each one giving me 100+ followers. Imagine gaining 300 followers that came just because you posted three edits. That is pretty huge if you are a small page like mine, and the results only amplify as your page gets bigger (my first viral post got me 25 or so, now they get me over 100 and that number will continue to grow as my page grows). I was not surprised that these posts got those results because I deliberately applied my editing techniques that I know have gotten me results on the past.
Another tip that I use to help me create content that is viral-worthy is through another method I use which involves studying viral content that already exists. I have a big advantage in being able to find viral content because I run my own feature page where every single day my goal is to find a viral post that I can feature on my page. Through doing so I have developed a great understanding of the qualities that make a post go viral. This technique is similar to the concept of post, research, repeat except it can be done at a larger scale because you can use not only your own posts but virtually all of Instagram.
So, how do you find viral content in the first place? The best place to start is to look at feature pages. Some feature pages are better than others, I will list a few here that I think post the best viral content: @portraits_mf, @portraitstream, @theportraitpr0ject, @creative_portraits. Those have a good variety and will provide plenty of viral content to analyze as these pages typically only post viral content. When you visit these pages look for common themes or elements in the pages that you can find. For each post ask the question: Why did this post go viral? Why did so many people like it? What are some ideas I can borrow in creating my own work from this post? By doing this research and understanding what makes content viral, you will be so much better equipped to be able to create it yourself using your own style.
As a final note on viral posts, I will explain how this entire guide with all of its techniques tie together to help in making your posts go viral. The main tie between this all is the following: the more followers you have, the greater chance you have for your post to hit the explore page, or rank high in hashtag searches and therefore go viral. I have heard that getting to 5k followers is really when you start to get your posts to hit that explore page and bring in tons of followers. In order to reach that 5k benchmark you can use the earlier outlined techniques to help boost your page there. After that, just post viral content daily and your page will grow on autopilot for free. That is what has begun to happen with my page.
After my 5 day growth plan, my average followers gained per day has stayed pretty high at about 100-140 new followers per day and those are all coming from doing nothing else but posting daily. I am not paying for ads or features or doing shoutouts anymore. Just plain ol’ reliable and consistent posting. Before the 5 day growth plan I was only growing about 30-50 per day. As you can see, the more followers you have the faster you grow so it’s useful to invest some money if needed to help get your page to a point where it gets great momentum in growth. I hope this tips were helpful. Be well, be great! - @alexanderthegreat
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