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9 Steps to Building a Massive Real Instagram Following Ultra-Fast

9 Steps to Building a Massive Real Instagram Following Ultra-Fast

Instagram has 800 million active monthly users.

Let that number sink in for a minute.

That is almost a BILLION active users on its platform every single month.

What does this mean for you? It means that Instagram is a goldmine right now for marketers! In order to take advantage of this opportunity, you need to build a large following. The key is to do it in a way that helps you attract followers that have value.

I see too many people using bots and software to follow and unfollow and use fake followers to make it appear like their account is popular. This is the wrong approach.

Fake followers create the illusion that your account is popular until someone looks at your engagement. Those fake accounts are everywhere. You will see an account with 50K followers and they have 5 likes and no comments on their posts. The follow/unfollow game is bad also, because the followers you attract have no interest in your account. They just want you to follow them. It’s a never ending circle jerk that results in no engagement and no sales.

Want to build a solid Instagram account without spamming and one that you can leverage in your business?

Use these nine steps I have outlined and explained below to build your Instagram following..

1. Post at Least Three Times Daily

Instagram is such an active platform that you need to post several times a day in order to connect with a large audience. When you are just starting out you can do a couple posts a day and then once you are at 5,000 followers you can go to 3X a day. This is the magic number that allows you to post at different times and be spread out enough that you don’t annoy your followers.

If you were posting on the hour, every hour people would get sick of seeing your posts, no matter how great they were. You don’t want to suffocate your followers, but you also want to make sure your name stays on their mind. This is Branding 101. Spread them out, one early morning, another mid-day and then another in the evening. Since Instagram isn’t a chronological order, you are going to get more exposure as you grow and your account is more active. This is why it’s important to do it the right way and not use software.

Instagram will shadow ban accounts they think are using software and your engagement can disappear overnight. Do it the right way and it will pay off.

2. Create DM Groups

This is one of the best ways to attract new followers by getting your content exposure. By creating DM groups, every member (14 others and yourself, for 15 in the group) posts in the group DM when he or she has a new post. Then everyone in the group likes the post and then comments.

Instagram’s algorithm rewards posts that receive large amounts of engagement shortly after being posted. This makes them think it’s popular and it’s something that more users would like to see. This is how large accounts are getting all of their posts on the explore page. When you accomplish this, it can make a post go viral within minutes. This is how you can pick up hundreds if not thousands of new followers in a single day.

When you are just starting out you will only be able to convince accounts with a similar following to participate in your DM groups. But that is ok. You will just need to create multiple DM groups. I know of several people who participated in a dozen DM groups when just starting, and they were able to make groups with larger accounts as their own account grew.

3. Respond to Comments

When you respond to comments it helps to show your followers that you are actually interested in what they post and you read them. This will encourage them to continue to comment on your posts in the future as well.

It also helps to increase the engagement of your posts, which the algorithm rewards. I would suggest visiting your post comments a few times a day and like every comment and then reply to each as well. As more people start to participate in commenting, more of their friends are going to see their activity on your account on their “Following” tab under activity. IF someone sees their friend constantly commenting on an account, it’s going to cause them to check your account out and it may lead to a new follower.

Everything when done right will lead to growth. It’s just understanding that you need to take baby steps in the beginning that is the difficult part for many. Everyone wants to get 100K followers and 10K likes per post without putting the effort in, but they fail to realize those popular accounts all started at zero as well.

4. Find the Best Posting Times and Stick with Them

Ok, so let’s assume you stick with the three posts per day schedule that we suggested above. It’s important that you find the best times for your audience and then stick to that schedule. If you are using Instagram to promote your business or even a personal brand, you need to convert to a business profile. The biggest advantage is the access to insights. This will play a major role in helping to identify your ideal posting times.

In the beginning, try every hour of the day and night, and look at your analytics to determine what posts performed the best. Once you identify several solid times, start split testing more, posting several per time. Within a few months you are going to have a clear picture regarding your prime time posting times. Once you have them sorted out, stick to the schedule and post religiously at those times every day.

This consistent behavior is what helps your account grow authority and attract engagement and new followers. When you start to create loyal followers, they will become accustomed to your post times and begin to wait for them. This is how you also increase your engagement during the first few minutes of posting, which helps you hit the explore page.

5. Comment on Relevant Accounts with High Follower Counts

Do not use automated commenting. It is the spammiest strategy and I cringe when I see it. Not only does it make your account look like shit, but it can also lead to comments appearing on content that you don’t want your brand associated with. Imagine if someone posted a picture of hate speech and used the hashtag #business and your bot was programmed to drop a “I love this!” comment on everything using that hashtag.. it would ruin you.

Find relevant accounts that have huge followings of 500K or more and make it a point to comment on their posts. There are plenty of users that read the comments and they will often click over to look at the accounts that comment. If you are doing this on large relevant pages it’s going to expose you to a lot of people and since your account is similar it will cause a lot of them to also follow you.

It takes just a few minutes each time, and if you get in the habit of going it you will be able to do it while multi-tasking.

6. Use 20 to 25 Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are the easiest way to get your content featured on the explore page and seen by millions. It’s important that you use relevant hashtags, and the right ones. Many people will add up to 30, which is the maximum number, but after a lot of testing I have found that numbers between 20 and 25 tend to perform better.

Why is this?

Well, I would assume that Instagram automatically assumes that is an account is constantly using 30 hashtags per post there is a good chance it’s a spam type account, rather than a genuine user. Think about it for a minute. A real user isn’t jamming 30 hashtags in every single post.

Also, don’t always go for the biggest hashtags. There are tools like GetHashtags.com that can help you identify potential ones based on a seed hashtag. Use 3 to 5 large hashtags with millions of uses, but then look for smaller ones. When your account is smaller, you will have a much better chance going after exposure for smaller hashtags.

7. Follow Three to Four New Accounts Daily

There is nothing wrong with following new accounts on a regular basis. It’s what real users do all the time. That is the point of Instagram. Discover new content and then follow the accounts that create it.

You just don’t want to auto-follow thousands of accounts a day. I would suggest following 3 to 4 new accounts every day. Look for relevant accounts with large followings, because there is a good chance that their followers will look at the followers when they have the itch to seek out new accounts to follow.

It takes a couple seconds, makes your account look genuine and it helps showcase you in front of people that are already following accounts similar to yours. Don’t follow and then unfollow. Pick accounts to follow that you are interested in, and also ones that you are planning on commenting on, as discussed in point #5 above. This way you can just scroll through your feed a few times a day and knock out your commenting duties with little effort. Most people want a low following number in relation to their followers, and if you just follow a few accounts a day your ratio will look fine, especially when you start growing at a rapid pace.

8. Use Power Likes

This is the number one way to get your posts on the explore page. There are engagement groups of 100 – 200 people that will all like your posts as soon as you post them. Most of them can be found on Telegram, and they are all automated. You pay, give them your handle and every time you post you will see likes hit within the first 5 to 15 minutes.

This is the type of instant rapid engagement that the algorithm rewards with explore page exposure. Now, it’s very important to use the right hashtags when you are using power likes, because these are what help you get found. You aren’t going to get the exposure without the hashtags. I see many people buying power likes and firing them at a post with no hashtags, and then they wonder why they didn’t receive a lot of impressions, comments and new followers.

Instagram has endless potential, but only for those that are willing to do everything outlined here. You can’t cut corners and expect to perform well. Every step I am outlining works hand in hand to help get your posts max exposure.

9. Write Creative Captions

When you do everything right, and hit the explore page you are going to get a lot of people looking at your post. They will either leave and look at something else or they will like it, comment and follow you. In order to get the most engagement per person that sees your posts you need to use creative captions.

A post with no caption will never perform well. You need to tell the person exactly what you want them to do. Why do you think so many of the large accounts say things like “tag 3 friends” and “comment below” in the caption? Because it works. People need to be told what to do, so use a creative caption to spark engagement.

Asking questions is a great way to trigger comments. Things like “Do you like this? Yes or No?” will cause people to automatically participate. It will snowball as more people comment, as everyone else will want to chime in. The accounts that do it right create discussion between people in the comments and it’s the type of engagement the algorithm loves.

Final Thoughts

Instagram is the most lucrative social media network right now, and while there will be new platforms in the future, this one isn’t going away any time soon. With Facebook backing it, they have the financial capacity to introduce new features at any time to keep the user base engaged.

Just look at what they are doing to Snapchat. They are essentially copying every popular feature and making it available on their platform. There are so many opportunities to build a strong following, and the sooner you start, the sooner you can experience the rewards.

Using the tips above you can build a strong following quickly, full of people that are into what you are offering, not ghost and bot followers that provide $0 value.

If you have any questions about Instagram marketing specifically, drop them in the comments below and I will do my best to get back to you as quickly as possible. If you have any tips to add or if you want to elaborate on anything mentioned above, drop them below as well.

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Leveraging The POWER Of Instagram’s Story Feature to MARKET Your Business

Instagram is the number one social media network right now, in terms of user popularity, and potential, as a business owner. I recently wrote a blog post about how you can build a large Instagram following fairly quickly, and now I want to talk about one of the most under used, yet most effective Instagram features: Stories.

You know you have to be active on Instagram, and if you weren’t, hopefully my previous blog post changed you mind and you started to put some effort in. Well, now I am here to tell you that simply uploading and posting picture isn’t enough. If you want to leverage Instagram to its fullest potential, you need to use the Stories feature.

For those that aren’t familiar with Stories, it’s a feature that allows you to post images and video that disappear after 24 hours. It’s basically Snapchat. Yes, Instagram copied it. But I’m not here to discuss that…

I’m here to tell you that Instagram Stories is a goldmine.

Tips to Get the Best Engagement on Stories

You can’t just post regular images via the Stories feature and expect miracles to happen. A certain type of content performs well, so use the following tips:

Geo-tag every post: Doing this helps you get discovered on local Stories. For example, if you are located in Los Angeles, make sure to tag LA. With such a large population, many people are sure to see your Story, and if the content is interesting, you could potentially attract a new follower or even customer.

Post at peak times: Nobody is going to see your Story if you are posting at dead times. To see what your location and audience responds best to, start testing. Typically, early morning and late in the evening will do the best, but it’s always best to test Instagram’s analytics, it gives you a lot of data in regards to post times and engagement to use it fully.

Use 20-28 hashtags: Some people will say this is spammy, but hashtags is how people search for content on Instagram. If you don’t use any or just a few, you are greatly limiting your exposure. The goal is to attract people to your Instagram profile and then drive website traffic, so pick the best hashtags to help your content be found.

Be personal: Nobody wants to see Story images and videos that are just about products. To make it feel less like a commercial and more like a personal experience, use Stories as a platform to allow your audience to get to know you. Consumers want to feel connected to a brand, and if they know the person behind it they will be more likely to do business.

How to Post Instagram Stories

Here are step-by-step instructions for those who have never used the Story feature on Instagram:

Click your photo icon in the left corner (next to all the other Stories)

Tap the camera icon

You can now either:

Take a photo

Record a new video

Upload an old photo from your phone

Select an old video from your phone

Tapping the circle on the bottom of the screen will take a new picture. Holding the button down will record a new video, which must be 15 seconds or less.

There are several effects you can select from:

Normal: a regular picture or video

Boomerang: a forward and back motion video is created that has an infinite loop

Rewind: records a video and then plays it in reverse

Hands-free: if you want to place your phone down and record yourself

Click on the “sticker” icon if you want to add a geo-location tag or other features, like the time, temperature or other images and or emojis. You can also click the text icon to write a message on your picture or video, and even draw on it. Customizing your Story images and video is a great way to make it more personal and creative.

Use Instant Discounts as Your Call-to-Action

When you post something on Stories, it only stays visible for 24 hours. So, if you are simply extending a regular offer to your Instagram following, that is fine, but the real opportunity here is the ability to present special offers exclusive to Instagram.

Since posts are only live for 24 hours, you can easily determine how effective they are. For example, if one offer rives little to no sales, it’s clearly not right for your following. But, if an offer sees a huge response and you are able to generate a lot of revenue within a 24 hour window of time, then you will want to deploy that offer o a regular basis and cater additional offers around it.

Always use an Instagram specific promo code when tracking this, that way you know without a doubt that the sale came from someone engaging with your Story.

Show Behind the Scenes and Provide Exclusive Information and Offers

Creating a story that constantly shows the behind the scenes of your business gives your followers the impression that they have special access to content that others’ simply aren’t able to see. It doesn’t matter if you are a mom and pop shop or a large corporation. The opportunity exists to provide an interesting look inside.

You can show manufacturing processes, introduce your audience to key employees and team members, and even let them sit in on meetings. This shows that your company is human, and not just some faceless corporation that exists to make money.

When consumers see that a company is made up of real people, who love what they do, it gives them more confidence in the brand and a reason to give them their business. People want to support fun companies. It’s why so many startups make their company culture known. It attracts positive attention, which then leads to new customers.

You can also use this as a way to create fun contents, which then opens the door for engagement and interaction. The more involved you can make your followers the better response you will receive. Also, your followers will look forward to your Story, knowing it’s providing entertainment as well as value.

Pay Influencers to Promote via Their Story

Influencer marketing is one of the most popular ways to drive brand awareness and sales. Everyone is doing it these days, and demand for top talent is at an all time high. Now, even micro-influencers are cashing in, leveraging their niche following to promote offers and brands that align with their account.

Right now, Instagram’s Story feature is hot, and a Story post is receiving much more attention than just a regular profile post. So, consider identifying the right influencers and having them promote your product or offers directly in their Story feeds.

If you hire large accounts that feature verified influencers, you can also have them include a “swipe up” call-to-action, which will take the viewer to any URL you desire, simply by swiping up on the story. This is great for special offers and to generate immediate conversions.

Don’t think you need influencers with millions of followers to experience results. If an influencer has just 50,000 followers, but they are very niche focused and active, a Story can drive tens of thousands of website visitors over a 24 hour period.

Repurpose Customer Generated Content

This is a brilliant strategy for two reasons. First, you don’t have to do anything to create the content nor pay for it. When your users are generating your content they are providing you with plenty of free options to select from. There will be some gems in the bunch, allowing you to be active with little effort and cost.

Second, when your users see themselves featured on your Instagram story, they feel connected with your brand and the relationship is strengthened. You create raving fans that are out there promoting your brand.

This is what you need to do…

Create a contest, which requires your followers to post a video on their own Story, tag your Instagram account in the Story and use a designated hashtag. So, everyone that participates will essentially be marketing your business to their entire Instagram following for you at no cost. Pick some that you like, and then re-purpose them in your own Story, being sure to tag the people you select.

You should also DM them letting them know they were featured on your Story. The prizes don’t have to have huge monetary value. Most just want to feel cool, and being featured on a brand’s Story is enough to crave that want to be popular.

Create Micro-Content and Drive Traffic to It’s Website Counterpart

This is very easy to do and takes little to no effort. You can use this strategy to drive traffic to specific blog posts or even specific products on your website. It’s very simple to use the selfie camera mode and film a quick intro video. Something like, “You need to be using Instagram to grow your business. Swipe up to read our newest blog post!” is all it takes to get people interested and taking action.

You can do this with any blog post on your website. You can also re-purpose older content, depending on what topics are popular at the moment. Constantly push traffic back to your website using this strategy. The more traffic you are able to push over on a consistent basis, the higher the chance of converting more sales.

You can also do the same with specific products. “Hey, check out this new blue widget. It’s currently on SALE and if you use the code ‘FREESHIPPING’ we will waive the shipping cost!” You see, the opportunities are endless. You create interest and excitement, and then push that traffic directly to the offer.

Broadcast Live

One of the benefits of building a large following on Instagram is the ability to market to this audience at any time, with no additional costs. The Story feature allows you to broadcast live at any time, giving your followers the ability to watch your stream.

You can use this in several ways. You can have weekly Q&A sessions, which is a great way to build up trust and position your company as a leader within your industry, or you can broadcast live to announce special offers.

Either way, it’s important that you remain consistent. If your following knows that every time you broadcast live you are going to release a special offer or discount code, they are going to tune in when they receive the notification that you have started a live broadcast. The last thing you want to do is switch it up on them and start talking about industry news when they are expecting to see a special offer and make a purchase.

Test a bunch of different live concepts and see what ones lead to sales and making money. That is the entire point of this. Nobody is taking time out of their day to broadcast live just to be seen. It all comes down to what generates sales and money.

Pay to Boost Your Story (Sponsored)

Remember when Facebook organic reach went down the toilet and fan pages that had massive amounts of followers were experiencing poor results? Nobody was seeing posts, and it required paying to promote the post if you wanted to receive any exposure and engagement.

Well, guess what? Instagram is owned by Facebook, and there is no doubt that organic reach will soon be all but gone, requiring a pay to play approach. So, it’s best to get familiar with the paid options now, including sponsored Stories.

You create a video or image Story post, just like you normally would, and simply promote it. There is nothing out of the ordinary, and you are able to target specific accounts, and show your Story to the followers of those accounts.

Your sponsored Story will be shown after the Story of the accounts you use for targeting purpose. This ensures that the right type of people see your Story and have the opportunity to engage with it. You want to keep your message straight to the point and trigger the person to swipe up by using a strong call-to-action.

Final Thoughts

You need to use Instagram to promote your business on social media. That is no secret, but many business owners are missing out, failing to use all of the features that Instagram provides, namely Stories.

There is a lot of talk about Facebook being where all of the users are, but Instagram has more than 700 million active users on their platform every month. It’s a huge opportunity that simply cannot be passed up.

As you can see, the Stories feature alone gives you several ways to promote your business to Instagram’s large user base. The only way to find out what works specifically for your niche and business is to test. You will never know unless you try for yourself. Invest the time into trying all of the strategies outlined in this blog post, and clip the under-performers and scale the efforts that work well.

If you have any questions related to Instagram marketing or Stories in general, drop them in the comments section. If you have any real world input and experience to share, I’d also like to hear from you.