I started my Social Media journey in September of 2019 but did not take it seriously nor did I know how to grow. I probably grew about 150 followers in the first 6 months. However, once I started taking it seriously, posting almost every weekdays, studying social media marketing, and experimenting, I managed to gain over 5000 followers in the next 6 months.
As you can tell, the results in those two 6 months are very different. So I figured I can share some of the tips I learned and what you can do to gain authentic followers to boost your business!
1. Pick a niche
Whether you have the knowledge to share or are passionate about something, pick a topic that you are going to help people with.
The more specific your niche is, the easier it is to reach your target audience. For example, rather than “parenting”, “How to raise a bilingual child” will get more attraction from people who actually want to raise their kids to be bilingual.
Do not create content on anything and everything because people will get confused about what your account is about. So make sure you only have 1~2 niches.
2. Optimize your profile
This is the first thing everyone should do when making a social media account.
It needs to be easy for people to know what you do and how you can help them.
in general, you should put…
- What you are expert in
- your accomplishments that’s related to the niche(if you have one).
- call to action: If you have a website or coaching session people can sign up for, make sure to tell people where they get access to those.
3. Give value
It’s not a secret that the more valuable your content is, the more people are going to want to see from you, so make sure your content is valuable.
So what’s content that’s not valuable? ー Information that you can easily get by looking it up online.
If it’s some common knowledge or facts that are well known, people will not care, but if you make content based on your personal experience, people can relate to that a lot more and find it interesting because it is something that is unique to you.
For the first couple of months, you need to be selfless and focus on serving people. So give as much valuable information as you can.
4. Use Reels
If you want to grow on Instagram, but are not using Reels…..what are you doing?! Haha just kidding…well…not really cause that’s how much Reels can help you.
Reels is the best way to get your content pushed to tones of people right now on Instagram. Even if you have less than 1000 followers, there are plenty of chances for your Reels to get thousands of views.
Before I challenged myself to make Reels, I only had 1000~2000 reach a day which at that time I still thought was a lot for my account that had 350 followers. However, after making several Reels, I got one Reels that took off and started getting more than 100k views. As you can see from the screenshot above, my reach spiked up getting 10k~20k reach a day after that.
My follower count also went from gaining 1~5 people a day to 50 people a day at some point.
So I naturally started creating more and uploading 2~3 Reels a week. You can see the growth that gave me. The most reach I got so far was over 100k accounts a day.
BUT, just because you start creating Reels doesn’t mean you’re going to immediately gain followers and recognition. The key is you need to be GOOD at Reels.
So what does it mean to be good at Reels? − There’s are so many things I can say about this, so I will make a whole blog article about Reels.
I think it’s safe to say that “I found my style” because for my last 50 Reels, all of them have over 10k views and one of them has over 750k views. Anyone can do this.
One more thing that’s awesome about Reels is that because Reels views grow over time, you gain followers even when you’re not posting. I haven’t posted in a couple of days, but I still gain about 20~50 followers per day thanks to Reels.
Is it possible to grow without Reels? – The answer is yes, but if you want to maximize your growth, Reels is your best friend.
Stop overthinking and just start creating! Learn on the go and I promise you’ll get a hit someday soon.
5. Use more words than pictures
For people to know what your post is about, of course, words are easier to get recognized than pictures.
To get more in dept, when you get on the explore page, you want to make it easier for your target audience to find it and click on your post. So rather than posting aesthetic photos, readable words are way more effective unless you’re a photographer or an influencer that only shares photos.
Also, having an aesthetic feed is not the focus on Instagram these days. What you need to do is pick a few brand colors, come up with a design for you to use for every post so that you can make your content creation easier and faster. I don’t recommend changing designs for every post like I do because it is so time-consuming and unnecessary. I just do it because I like it haha.
6. Engage with your followers
Having a genuine relationship with your followers is very important. Your goal is to answer questions and give solutions to the people that follow you to have a strong community rather than posting and ghosting.
You lose more followers than you might think even if you’re a smaller account. I have almost 6000 followers which for me is a big number, but overall considered a small account. However, I lose an average of 10 followers a day and that adds up pretty quickly. So rather than trying to appeal to accounts that don’t follow you, focus on the people that already do.
What I do:
- I do a 「ask me anything」question box on my stories every week and try to answer all the questions. I love doing this because I feel closer to my followers and I can also get content ideas through my followers’ questions.
- Check my engagement rate daily. If you have ~1000 followers, having an engagement rate of 10~% is not hard, but once you hit around 5000 it is going to be pretty hard to keep the number. I usually try to stay around a 4~5% engagement rate. I check it at InfluencerMarketingHub.
- Communicating with my followers through DM.
7. Collaboration
Having genuine communication and relationships with accounts that are similar to your niche will boost your followers and get your name out there even more.
Live stream is one of the things that you can do. One time I did an Instagram live with an account that had 30k, and when we did a quick 10 minute live, I gained 200 followers from that live alone. 10 minutes is not long at all, so gaining 200 in that short period of time is pretty awesome.
When I say collab, I don’t mean collab only with the intention of your benefit. It needs to be a win-win situation for both accounts, so be sure to have good intentions and genuine interests on both ends.
I am very bad at this because I am very introverted even on social media. If I was more extraverted and did collaborations more, I’m sure I would surpass that 10k mark pretty quickly.
8. Think what you’d want from other accounts
I am sure you follow accounts that you like, so think of “as a follower, why do you like that account. What is it that made me follow that account?”
That might give you an idea of what you should do with your account to appeal to more people.
9. Be consistent
Being consistent does not mean you need to be posting every day. It means you have to have a schedule and stick to the schedule.
The reasons are because:
- It gives your followers a schedule, too.
- The algorithm is going to recognize your schedule over time once you’ve stuck to it, so when you post, the algorithm will push your content more.
my schedule is to post every weekday and rest on the weekends. It’s not easy, but it is doable, so find a schedule that is doable to you and you can keep committing to it.
It can be 3 days a week or every other day or every day if you can.
10. Follow social media experts’ accounts.
You can get so much free information online these days, and there are so many accounts that educate you about social media marketing.
Follow those accounts, learn what you can do, and experiment.
Some of the accounts that I follow are @_socialsam_, @laurahaleydt, @ginnyfears, @brock11johnson, @nextlevelfaiz.
11. Be patient
Growth is not going to happen overnight. I mean it could, but that is going to happen very rarely.
For the first 2 months after I started being consistent and taking it seriously, I saw no growth. I felt very invisible and the work I put in seemed worthless. But after month 3 is when I really started to visibly see results and I quickly hit the 1000 followers mark.
If you don’t quit, you will get results. It is never going to be easy, but it is very rewarding, so give yourself some time and be patient.
12. Treat it like a business
If you want to expand your business using social media, you need to treat your account as a business.
You will not grow posting once in a while, so educate yourself every day, get out of your comfort zone, experiment a lot, and find your flow.
13. Stop obsessing over numbers
I realize this is a stupid thing to say because this article is all about “How to gain followers”, but if your focus is all on the number of followers you gained, or how many views you got, you will not succeed.
A lot of people get clients and sales even with a small number of followers. That is because they cherish what they already have and give them the best. So, yes maybe more numbers will give you more exposure, but realize what you have instead of what you don’t and give that the attention that it needs.
There are so many aspects to consider when it comes to social media marketing and it cannot be said in a single blog post, but in general, these 13 tips are something that you should do to get your account going.
Good luck, you got this, we got this!
