How I Grew 50,000 Followers on Instagram Organically – Step by Step

Introduction

I want to tell you how I started a brand new Instagram account one year ago, and in one year, I went from zero to over 30,000 followers and have leveraged it to directly make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and indirectly make even more. Instagram growth has kind of been the wild west over the last few years. Many people want to grow their audience on there, and there have been all kinds of different strategies that used to work in the past but no longer work now, and just all kinds of different things that have changed in the Instagram game.

The Purpose of the Video

That’s why I wanted to do this video to let people know that it is still possible even in 2021 heading into 2022 to build an authentic, organic, real, engaged audience that can actually do business with you down the road. You could use this to build your personal brand, leverage it to do literally anything that you want to do, no matter what business you’re in. Having a strong presence on Instagram can help you get more clients, have more influence, get more referrals, literally anything you want to do. It just makes your life easier. But you have to build it properly, and you have to leverage it correctly in order to get the maximum benefit, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about on this video.

Early Instagram Efforts

So, I had an account on Instagram way back in 2018, and when I was starting to build my online presence, I started getting all these messages asking people, “Hey, how do you grow on Instagram?” And I wanted to go faster because in every other area of business, I’ve always wanted to get the shortcut. I always wanted to go quicker than my competitors because I just want to go faster, right? Everybody wants to do that. The problem is that becomes your vulnerability on social media. Wanting it right now makes you vulnerable to all these growth tactics that are not going to work long term.

Engagement Groups and Giveaways

So, I ended up doing all these different engagement groups to try and bring traffic to my post and get more engagement because I thought that would help me reach more people. I also started to do giveaways on my accounts and also participate in other giveaways where people would be encouraged to follow my account to participate in somebody else’s giveaway. Now what happened was, I ended up with a lot of followers that didn’t engage with my content. So, you have to think about Instagram like this: when you post something on your Instagram, it shows it to a small sample of your audience. Depending on how those people engage with it, it shows it to more people, and then it shows it to more people. If it doesn’t get any engagement from that initial group, the post basically dies. Now, you could drive traffic to your Instagram page, but you’re not going to get organic engagement if the people in your audience aren’t really interested in your content, or in many cases, sometimes these people in your audience don’t even exist. I know people who have bought followers or did all kinds of crazy stuff to grow their account in the beginning, and this really just kills your account from an engagement perspective.

Realization and Starting Over

So, once I figured out that this was not the right way to grow my account on Instagram, I started to do things the right way. I really improved my content, and I started to do things and I grew that account just through organic posting and just by doing different events and shaking so many hands across the country. I grew my account to almost 20,000 followers, but what I found was most of my posts were not getting proper engagement. So, I couldn’t get it going. It was like super hard to get to that level, and I just was stuck. Meanwhile, I’m seeing people on Instagram growing their accounts, getting more engagement, getting more followers, and I’m like, “Look, what is wrong with my account? Why can’t I grow like all these other guys who are doing good content?”

Low Trust Score and Account Issues

So, I found out that basically my account had a low trust score or maybe was in Instagram jail. Basically, when I posted content, the platform or the algorithm knew that I didn’t put out good content because nobody was engaging with it. Now, even if I did make a really good piece of content, it was just basically handicapping me. It wasn’t showing it to enough of my audience. The reason why was because I had all these dead accounts in my audience or I had people that had followed me for some giveaway but weren’t really interested in my content. So, as a result, I wasn’t even showing up in their feed. Eventually, I realized that my reach is being limited, and I have to start all over. I can’t use this account anymore because my reach is stuck. I’m not even reaching the people in my own audience, and I’m never going to be able to grow and have a real engaged following.

The Decision to Start Over

There are so many ways to leverage your account, but when people come to your page and they see that you have a fake audience or they see that you have an audience that doesn’t engage with you, they look at your posts and they don’t have the right type of engagement. It basically works against you. So, while you think you’re showing up the right way, people actually trust you less because they’re like, “Oh, this guy has a fake account on Instagram. He has either fake followers or he has fake engagement or he has no engagement,” and all these things work against you. So, this was almost keeping me up at night because I’m like, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve spent so much time and money and effort growing this account, and I just realized it’s basically all for nothing. It’s dead.” Finally, I was like, “Look, just forget it. Just start over and let’s see how it goes. What’s the worst that’s going to happen?”

Starting Over

So, what I did was I created a new account with a variation of my same username from the first account, and I encouraged people to follow me on my new account. I just told people like this. I said, “Look, my account has basically been banned or is having its reach limited, and I’m not even reaching people with my post. So, I’m starting all over. Please follow me on my new account here.” And I kept posting like that for about a month. I did it every few days. I did it in the stories. I even ran an ad on the first account telling people in my audience who had engaged with my account over the last year to go ahead and follow the new account. So, this got me a little bit of a jumpstart, but it was only like 500 to 1,000 followers on the new account. So, once I got the new account going, it was basically now time to shut off the old account. So, what I did was I changed the username on the first account, which freed up my original username. You have to wait a couple of days, and it’s a little bit risky because in the meantime, somebody could grab your username, but in this case, nobody did. And

then, I was able to change my username on the new account to what I originally had on the first account. Now, the process of transition to the new account was complete, and I went ahead and turned the old account off again. It was a little bit sad, and I was wrestling with this decision for months because I didn’t want to start from zero again, but in retrospect, it was the best decision I could have made to grow my following on Instagram.

Progress on the New Account

So, now I had the new account, had about a thousand followers. I’ve been putting out great content, noticed that my engagement was way better because the people in the audience chose to be there and they were actually engaging with the content. So, now I just had to make better content and continue this process. The best way to grow your account on Instagram is to create shareable content because what happens is people share those posts in their story. They share it with other people, and what happens there is you’re introducing yourself to new networks. The other way that I was able to grow my account was once reels came out, I started posting more short-form content. Now, the great opportunity with reels is Instagram is actually showing your account to people who don’t follow you. So, they’re actually taking a video that you created and they show it to brand new people, people that aren’t in your audience, they don’t follow you. And if those people engage with it, it continues to be shown to more and more non-followers. If you look at the account analytics once you start posting reels, it is crazy how many non-followers you’re reaching with your reels. It doesn’t even compare to regular posts or other type of video posts. So, before reels came out, I was basically just trying to create more shareable content. So, I was really putting out what my expertise was, taking a list of questions that I would get from consumers and from other people in my industry, taking a list of topics that people were interested in, and really focusing on making content that people would be interested in reading or watching. That way they would share it and I would reach more people.

Profile Optimization

So, the other thing that you must do is make sure that your profile is optimized. So, meaning those first lines of your Instagram profile need to show some credibility and they…

Importance of Profile Optimization

…need to show people why they would want to follow you. So, you want to tell them what you’re going to teach them about, or you want to let them know what the content is going to be about so that way they can hit the follow button easier. And in the beginning, you definitely want to go narrow. I think many of us have a tendency to want to cast a wide net, but that works against you in the beginning because you don’t have the proven audience yet. So, when people come on your page, they need to be given a specific reason for why they should follow your account. As you get bigger, you can definitely broaden out to more topics, but it’s really important to go narrow in the beginning.

Driving Traffic Organically

So, if you think of your profile page as a landing page for Instagram, you want to drive traffic to there so that more people will hit the follow button. So, in the beginning, I would go into my followers, find friends of them that I’m not yet connected with, engage with their content, and do it in a real organic way. Meaning I would go there and actually engage. Like, if I liked the post, I would leave a comment. That’s genuine. You want to leave a comment because then people are going to see that comment. Everybody just hits the heart button, but very few people leave a genuine comment. So, if you do, they’ll come check out your page, and they’ll be like, “Oh, so-and-so is connected with that person who’s my friend.” And if they see your content, they see that there’s a good reason to follow you, and you have a mutual connection, you’ve increased the chances of them hitting the follow button. So, that’s how I got a lot of traction in the beginning, was simply driving traffic organically to my page.

Encouraging Content Sharing

Another way you can do this is try to encourage people to share your content. The first way to do that is to make good content. Don’t be the guy that DMs people every single time you post and tries to get them to share your posts because you’ll quickly become annoying to everybody in your network. So, the ideal way to do this is just make them want to do it on their own, or you can ask once in a while, “Hey, would you share this post? I’m trying to get more reach,” or, “Hey, this is a really special post. Would you mind sharing it?” But don’t do that very often because then you’ll tune people out. You can actually pay for this as well. If there are accounts that have a big following and have an engaged following, they’ll charge you to do a shout-out. So, in the beginning, you can definitely pay $50, $100, maybe even a little bit more, and they will post in their feed or in their story to go ahead and check out your account. Now, this doesn’t work as well as it did years ago, but it is a way to kind of drive a little bit of traffic to your page in the beginning. Now, this isn’t a bad thing because they still come to your page and they still decide whether or not they want to hit the follow button. So, hopefully, they’re doing it for the right reasons, and they’re going to continue to engage with your content. The best way is always going to be to introduce yourself to people organically. Again, stay away from all the growth hacks because that’s going to ruin your account.

Using Instagram Stories

Be sure to put a call to action in every single email that you send out to people, actually driving people to connect with you on Instagram. You’ll be surprised at how many people click those links if you actually make it a specific call to action. The icons in your signature just showing up at the bottom are not really clicked on anymore. People just kind of gloss over this; they don’t really pay attention to clicking on it. So, you want to have a specific call to action where it says, like, “Connect with me on Instagram,” or “Check out my videos,” or “Check out my content on Instagram.” And so many people are active on the platform these days that you’ll find that many of your clients will actually click that link, connect with you on Instagram. I’m always shocked by the amount of content that’s consumed by these people before they even get on the call with you. And the credibility that you gain by people just checking out a few of your images and watching maybe a couple of minutes of video, it makes the conversion process a lot easier. You already have credibility; you already have trust at a certain level with those clients. Makes the process a lot easier from there on.

The Importance of Reels

So, the next opportunity that is upon us now is reels, that is short-form content, similar to TikTok, which is basically taking over all of the internet. And the reason why is Instagram is really pushing reels because they realize that it is addicting, right? They realize that people stay in the app longer if you create reels. There’s different types of reels: there are entertainment reels, and there are informational reels. The entertainment reels can go viral, informational is a little bit more difficult to go viral, but you’ll find that they are still a great way to reach new people.

Creating Effective Reels

Now, I can’t do all these trending dances and pointing things and songs. I do every once in a while, but it just really wasn’t my niche. The thing that I found more sustainable was to do informational reels, which are videos that start with a good hook and a good title. And you have to think about this: people are in the app scrolling with their thumb, you want the thumb to stop. The way you can do that is to have a good hook, meaning the first words that come out of your mouth on the video, and a good title, which is the text that appears on the screen. The other thing you can do to optimize your short-form reels is to have good music on them. You want to use trending songs or, if you’re talking, you would want to have an instrumental version of that song. Sometimes if you’re playing the song in the background and you’re trying to talk, the two conflict, and it’s hard to understand what you’re saying. So, I always find instrumental versions, or if you do have a video like a house tour or a different type of video where you’re not talking in the video, you can always use the regular standard version with the lyrics or singing, rapping, whatever it is, and that works just as well. I recently did a test where I posted an informational reel with no music; it did okay, it was a good hook, a good title, and it did okay. I waited a month and then I posted that same one with some trending music in the background, and it did over 200,000 more views. So, it does make a difference.

Trending Reels and Sustainable Content

You can definitely do the funny trending reels, as far as like the different jokes that are trending. If you’re a TikTok user, you’ll find this happens a lot where there’s a trend going on and everybody jumps

on that trend. The problem with that is unless you’re going to continue to do that type of content, it’s not going to be sustainable for you. And if you do get a bunch of followers or you do get a bunch of traffic from one of these trending reels going viral for you, it’s not going to be the same as the other content. So then people won’t engage with the other content. So, you want to do something that’s going to be sustainable for you. I’ve had many informational videos go semi-viral, and this has led to a lot of organic growth for me.

Utilizing Instagram Stories

The last thing I’ll touch on is stories because Instagram stories are an amazing way to stay in contact with your audience. Now, you don’t really reach new people with stories; you just reach a certain segment of your existing followers. But it’s a great way to show behind the scenes, your personal life, anything that you’re interested in: hobbies, food, travel, faith, any of that stuff. Fitness, I know, is a big thing on there. But anything that you’re into personally, you want to show there because it’s going to connect with the audience and show that you’re a real human. So, they may follow you for your informational content, but then they might stick around and become even more engaged because they like the things about you personally.

Sharing Personal Life

Now, I would encourage you to share more of your personal life. I know some people want to keep that separate from their Instagram profile; they don’t want to really put their family out there. But the more stuff you show personally, the better off you’re going to be as far as that connection with the audience. Then what you’ll find is as people are more connected to you, they’re gonna want to share your content even more. So, my followers, there’s a certain group of them that become almost like super fans. And what that means is like they share a lot of your posts, they promote you, and then you have this kind of army of people that are really on your side helping you grow your account. It’s actually pretty cool to have all these fans and to really grow your account even as a micro-influencer. You can really start to see the effect of having these type of fans in your audience.

Continual Innovation and Adaptation

So, I’m always staying on top of these things, and I’ll be sure to share with you guys what I’m learning as far as different trends that are coming up, different types of content that’s working for me, or reaching new people. And the best thing to do is just to continue to innovate, continue to improve, because that’s the way that you continue to grow your audience. Many things that worked like two, three years ago do not work today. Reels weren’t even a thing two years ago; they were just starting about a year ago. And now I’ve gotten a lot better at it by simply doing more of them. So, really try to do the things that they’re promoting because that’s going to give you an advantage over people that aren’t doing those things.

Current Follower Count and Future Growth

I’m really shocked today that there are certain people who aren’t using short-form content even though that’s the number one way to grow your account on Instagram. They’re just sticking with the old tried and true method. So, it’s not in your best interest to be stubborn and not try these new things. And you can always find your own way to do them. Right now, I’m at about 34,000 followers, and I’m really excited to see how this growth is going to continue. As it gets bigger, it gets easier to grow. So, I’m hoping that that momentum continues. You’ll find yourself eventually in a lane where the platform actually promotes you as an account to follow, and that’s where you can really pick up a lot of traffic. I’ll be sure to share with you my progress in the next six to 12 months and anything that’s new that comes up. So, until then, I will see you guys on the next video.