How to Get Your First 1,000 Instagram Followers

Getting your first 1,000 followers on Instagram can sound like a huge obstacle when you only have 5, and 1 of them is your mother. 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 their followers. Why do I recommend doing this? If 30,000 people like the content of that one guy (who is similar to 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 that claim to provide people with Instagram success. Maybe all these “overnight viral” strategies are true, but I doubt it.
All the big accounts I’ve studied on Instagram took some time to grow, unless they purchased followers, made an impression with a single post, or even had follower ratios.
Because my strategy is tedious, I haven’t tried it on any other platform besides Instagram.

I’m an artist, so I also find this platform to be the best medium for my target audience, since 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 accurately displays what you want to show / see.

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

3. Examine the quality of their posts. What are they doing differently? Maybe they use the same filter on every photo, or post at the same time every day.
Maybe they’re super creative. Are they doing giveaways that ask for emails or likes / comments (ahem, engagement)? Whatever they’re doing, note it down and use it as a reference as 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 a similar following and do the same. For a large-scale account, you may not see any hashtags. Look at the first comment on the post, as 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 paste them into a Google document or your email notes.

5. Use hashtags correctly. By now you should have a collection of quality, relevant hashtags to draw from. When choosing your next post, you’ll pull from these hashtags. The key to avoiding Shadowbanning on Instagram is to avoid using the same hashtags every day (even though larger accounts do it). 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 involve spam. With new Insta updates, it constantly checks for “robotic behavior” and can penalize you for posting the same hashtags every day.
When I say penalize, I mean that you wouldn’t appear in the feed for specific hashtags. This practice is similar to how duplicate content gets dinged on Google, so be careful!

6. Find followers who have a genuine interest in your content. My advice is to look at slightly larger accounts, perhaps 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, interact with each other, and do brand deals. To get there, you need to find people who like the kind of content you produce.

7. Leave thoughtful comments when engaging with posts. Don’t try to game things by automating your responses through a third-party system. I told you this would be a tedious task, and I meant it.
You’ll get out of it what you put into it. If you leave trashy comments, don’t expect genuine 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 an unfortunate story about a deceased family member. Someone using automated comments commented “So cool ??” on a deeply personal post — don’t be that type.

8. Repeat these steps every day for 30 days. On 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 apps for this process and both are free. I use Unfollow and Follower Track to find out who has stopped following me.
   When I’m ready to clean up my following, I tap “Select Non-Followers” and the system provides me with a list of accounts that are no longer following me.
   I can then choose to “allow” accounts I still want to follow, such as Society6 or UrbanOutfitters, and I can “act” and unfollow the rest. Instagram only allows you to follow or unfollow a certain number of people per day. From my understanding, the amount varies for each person.
   This process will take forever, but it will likely help your engagement and establish a decent follower ratio. Technically, the ratio doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. However, having more followers than you follow can prevent people from using the “follow and then unfollow” practice.
   So, there you have it. I’m certainly not a social media or SEO expert, but I’ve noticed that these practices work for me. Social media is strange, and while everyone has their own methods, there’s one thing I know to be true:

Create meaningful dialogues and learn something from the community you are trying to engage with.

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

I’m not selling anything, I promise. I’m simply providing people with the guide I use to create engagement and organic growth on my own Instagram accounts. I truly hope this helps.
If you have other methods you use for social media growth, feel free to share them below.

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