The Do’s & Don’ts of Growing Your Instagram Account

Everyone has an Instagram account now, everyone. But look back almost 10 years ago since its inception, and the attitude towards the app was drastically different. Telling someone that you had an Instagram account would be rewarded with a look of confusion “what’s Instagram?“. Fast forward back to present time, and meeting someone new usually includes dialogue along the lines of “oh yeah, I follow you on Instagram!“. Strange isn’t it, what a decade can do.

But with Instagram being such a hot commodity, and Influencer Marketing (I hate the term ‘influencer‘, but that’s a story for another time) taking up the marketing world by storm, everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to be Insta-famous. Let’s be real, it isn’t going to happen. Everyone can’t be Insta-famous, it would defeat the purpose of being famous. If everyone was, wouldn’t that mean that no one is? The exclusivity of becoming famous on Instagram is packed full of stories of getting free product, getting invited to events, meeting even more famous people, and the most sought after – getting paid to post. In the dichotomy of the pay-to-play world, there exists two types of people: the people who never planned for their Instagram accounts to get popular but it magically did, and the ones who want to be popular. FOMO is real, and in order to become part of that world, there’s a common understanding that you too need to have a large account with decent following and engagement.

But here’s the real deal – you don’t. Yet no one seems to want to believe that. I get DMs and emails all the time from people asking me for my secret sauce and if I have any tips and tricks for making it as a blogger and how I grow my following. Surprise, surprise, I’ve barely grown this past month and I’m still booking work. How? In the world of digital marketing, numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all of signing someone onto a campaign. But for the campaigns that do require a significant presence on the app, here are some ways to grow your following without attractive the wrong sort of attention. And how to do it properly so that you can live with yourself. Being exposed is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, so don’t risk the chance of someone finding out that your following is fake!

Do: create beautiful and engaging content.

Instagram is a place to show off your creative side. Selfie-photos in a mirror aren’t always going to cut it. Wonder why some of the biggest bloggers are so big? Take a look at the quality of their content. Most people don’t realize that an average photo can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours to produce from the start to finish.

Create beautiful content that gets people talking and wanting to engage with you. You’ll naturally bring in more followers that way. Others will recognize you for your talent and your account will naturally grow.

Do: engage, engage, engage.

Regardless of what Facebook is now doing to change the Instagram algorithm, the app was always originally intended to create community. In that sense, actions to promote community is rewarded. Commenting and liking others’ photos will do way more for you in the long run than anything ever will.

Consider it like this, each and every single comment and like acts like a bread crumb leading back to your account. Every time you like someone’s photo, they get a notification that they can click and access your account. Every time you comment on someone’s photo, they also get a notification that acts as a gateway to accessing your account. Why wouldn’t you want to leave various access points across the platform for more people to find you?

People also notice when the same accounts keep coming back over and over to leave comments and likes. Soon, they’ll be intrigued by your account and probably check you out to see who you are. You can’t possibly sit there and hope that people will stumble onto your profile. Put in the grunt work, and the people will come. But do so organically.

Don’t: use engagement bots, or growth hacking services.

If your end goal is to be paid by a brand to do sponsored content, don’t ever engage in any sort of bot behaviour. Brands reach out to creators who they deem to be “influencial” because they’re banking on the fact that your engagement is made up of actual consumers. Not fake profiles based out of Russia/India that are being forced to engage with your content. There’s no ROI on paying a creator to post when no one is looking at the advertisement.

And if you’re already knee-deep in the below behaviour, it’s never too late to stop. Brands are getting smarter by the day and many know what to lookout for when vetting for the right creator to partner with.

Comment Bots

There are many services available online where you can pay for a bot to track specific hashtags and leave generic comments on them using your account to simulate ‘engagement‘. Generic comments such as “Love this!“, “Super cute!“, “Lovely!” are easily flagged by marketers and smart PR reps when vetting your content for potential partnerships and can potentially result in you being blacklisted for fraudulent activity. It’s not personal, just business (probably what a lot of people who engage in these negative activities say about their behaviour).

Follow/Unfollow

Another growth hack is to for bots to mass follow and unfollow other profiles in attempts to potentially boost your awareness within the app. I would like the follow/unfollow hack alike to blocking/unblocking someone on MSN Messenger. The purpose of this tactic is purely to get someone’s attention by popping up in their notification column multiple times until they check you out. Both are annoying and extremely easy for marketers to weed out.

Like Bots

Auto-liking photos is also pretty frowned upon as well, and ridiculously easy to weed out. Flip over to you notifications tab and check out the behaviours of others, and if you see someone randomly liking content that includes memes, ads, and inappropriate content, it most likely means that they’re using a bot of some sort to leave behind “engagement“.

Comment Pods

These have been a hot topic as of lately. There are definitely 2 camps on this. To first understand why comment pods exist, lets first breakdown the life cycle of an Instagram photo.

The algorithm was recently changed to only display content that the app considers to be “relevant” to you. Meaning that other peoples’ accounts that you regularly engage with, and engage back with you will have higher ranking when it comes to your newsfeed, and will have their content displayed first. That means someone’s content who you sometimes like, will fall lower down the totem poll, until you never engage with them anymore and disappear into the abyss of what is Instagram.

That being said, many creators who consider Instagram to be their livelihood have crafted a fraudulent method of appearing higher on peoples’ newsfeeds – comment pods.

Loop Giveaways

Everyone loves a good giveaway. We all know that it’s fun to win some goodies, and as a creator, it’s nice to get some followers out of it. But when as a consumer I’m joining a loop giveaway with 20+ creators (who all have different aesthetic and don’t even follow each other) it looks so inauthentic and fake. Mass loop giveaways that are organized by groups of individuals who have zero natural ties to each other are a literal cry of desperation for more followers. Especially when the same creator is doing a loop giveaway every second week, the goal in mind is pretty obvious—to gain more followers by bribing followers with prizes.

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And there you have it, coming from someone on the inside with experience as both a creator and a marketer. Hopefully this answered some of your questions and helped you to define your social media strategy. As always, I’m here to answer any questions you may have so please leave any follow-up questions in the comments, or you can send me your Q’s directly to thelustlistt@gmail.com!

Photography Credits: The Dunk Listt