How to Get Your First 1,000 Instagram Followers

Getting your first 1,000 Instagram followers might seem like a huge obstacle when you only have 5, and 1 of them is your mom. There’s also the problem of not knowing where to start. If you’re talented enough to go viral, congratulations, but this isn’t for you.

Organic growth happens when you start engaging with accounts that have similar content, as well as with their followers. Why do I recommend doing this? If 30,000 people like this one guy’s content (which is the same as yours), they’ll probably like your content too!

WARNING: This is a long, tedious, and time-consuming process.

There are so many videos, articles, and expensive online webinars on YouTube claiming to provide people with Instagram success. Maybe all these “go viral overnight” strategies are true, but I doubt it.
All the big accounts I’ve studied on Instagram took some time to grow, unless they bought followers, impressed with a single post, or even didn’t have follower ratios.
Because my strategy is tedious, I haven’t tested it on any platform other than Instagram.

I’m an artist, so I also consider this platform to be the best medium for my target audience because it’s visual.
However, I’ve repeated this process three times with different types of Instagram accounts. I’ve witnessed continued success.

How to Generate 1,000 Instagram Followers (Organically) in Approximately 2 Months:

1. For 3 or 4 days, search for content that looks similar to what you want to post, and engage with it through likes and comments. You should do this so that your explorer page displays exactly what you want to display / see.

2. After a few days, go to your explorer page and find someone who has similar content and a larger following. Finding similar content should now be easy once you’ve told Instagram’s algorithm what interests you.

3. Check the quality of their posts. What are they doing differently? Maybe they’re using the same filter on every photo or posting at the same time every day.
Maybe they’re super creative. Are they doing giveaways that ask for emails or likes / comments (um, engagement)? Whatever they’re doing, take note and use it as a reference once your account grows.

4. Find relevant hashtags. Look at their hashtags and write down the ones they use. Then find another account like theirs with similar followers and do the same. If it’s a large account, you might not see any hashtags. Look at the first comment on their post, because some people put them there.
If you still don’t see any hashtags, scroll until you reach the beginning of their feed. If they grew organically, they probably used them regularly at some point. Copy all the hashtags and put them in a Google document or in your email notes.

5. Use hashtags correctly. You should now have a file of quality relevant hashtags to draw from. When selecting your next post, you’ll draw from these hashtags. The key to avoiding shadowbanning on Instagram is to avoid using the same hashtags every day (even though larger accounts do this). Larger accounts generally don’t need to use hashtags for engagement. For them, it’s mainly about promotion.
Instagram works on an algorithm that prioritizes quality content, engagement, and practices that don’t require spam. With Instagram’s recent updates, it constantly checks for “robotic behavior” and can shadowban you for posting the same hashtags daily.
When I say shadowban, I mean you wouldn’t show up in the feed for specific hashtags. This practice is similar to how Google dings duplicate content, so beware!

6. Find followers who have a genuine interest in your content. My advice is to look at slightly larger accounts, maybe with 1,400–5,000 followers. Follow all the people they follow, not their followers.
We want your ratios to be in a reasonable place, but not until you’re growing. You’ve probably noticed that accounts with more followers than they follow are highly praised, influence each other mutually, and trade with brands. To get there, you need to find people who like the kind of content you produce.

7. When working with posts, leave thoughtful comments. Don’t try to cheat automation by automating your responses through a third-party system. I told you this would be a tedious task, and I meant it.
You get out of it what you put into it. If you leave trash comments, don’t expect real engagement / interest in your content. Why should anyone care about your posts if you don’t care about theirs?
I once had a mutual friend who posted a sad story about a deceased family member. Someone used automated comments and commented “So cool ??” on a deeply personal post – don’t be that type.

8. Repeat these steps every day for 30 days. By day 30, your engagement should be fantastic, but your follower ratios will look crazy. Your account will probably look something like this:

9. Now it’s time to unfollow spam accounts and people who are no longer following you. This is the only place where I cut corners. I use two applications for this process and both are free. I use Unfollow and Follower Track to find out who stops following me.
   When I’m ready to clean up my followers, I click on “Select non-followers” and the system provides me with a list of accounts that are no longer following me.
   Then I can choose to “allow” accounts that I want to continue following, such as Society6 or UrbanOutfitters, and I can “act” and unfollow the rest. Instagram allows you to follow or unfollow only a certain number of people per day. From what I understand, the amount varies for each person.
   This process will take forever, but it will probably help your engagement and establish a decent follower ratio. Technically, the ratio doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. However, having more followers than you follow can prevent people from using the “follow and then unfollow” tactic in practice.
   So, there you have it. I’m certainly not an expert in social media or SEO, but I’ve noticed that these practices work for me. Social media is weird, and while everyone has their own methods, I know one thing that’s true:

Create meaningful dialogue and learn something from the community you’re trying to engage with.

I did this on my Instagram account and I was invited to join 3 different art exhibitions and because of that I made sales. Be original and things will slowly start to pay off for you!

I’m not selling anything, I promise. I’m just providing people with a guide that I use to create engagement and organic growth on my own Instagram accounts. I really hope it helps.
If you have other methods you use for social media growth, you can list them below.

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