Unfortunately not all bloggers play fair, but those who do get more benefits and organic growth for their account
It’s a well known fact that Instagram’s algorithm constantly changes. It is almost impossible to predict and even more difficult to cheat. It is better to follow its rules, which are quite simple and allow your account to grow easily.
Your content has to be interesting to other real people who Instagram is interested in too. It is a kind of ‘win-win game’ for both of you but on the condition that you don’t cheat or use non-legit tools to grow.
HOW TO ATTRACT PEOPLE TO YOUR CONTENT
First of all, you should start interacting with similar bloggers. For example if you are a fashion/style blogger with 2k followers, start searching for fashion bloggers with fewer than 1k or 3k or even 10k and interact with them.
What does interaction mean and how do you understand which bloggers are happy to support you in exchange for your support?
If you are a FASHION or BEAUTY blogger what you need to do first is to start searching for the same types of account: similar content, numbers of followers (within 2-5k of your number of followers, it’s even better when you are bigger than them) and then follow these steps:
- Like a minimum of one post or as many as you want on a blogger’s feed
- Leave a comment on a last post or two last posts. Answering the question on their post is the best way to show you are in. Or express your opinion about her/his outfit or style.
- And then follow this account
These actions will signal to them that you are waiting for the same or at least to follow you back. Yes some bloggers don’t interact or cheat, but you can easily understand this by checking how many followers and comments that blogger has .
For example a blogger has 10k followers but fewer than 500 followings, this means he/she is not interested in doing that. Another red flag is fewer than 10 comments on each post, or just emojis.
When you find a blogger who posts about things something similar to your content, head to the comments section and check if that blogger comments in other people’s accounts too. You hit the jackpot when a blogger leaves comments and likes for all of the bloggers who like her/him too. This means you’ve found them.
Don’t expect thousands or even hundreds of new followers in a month. This is a totally different way to grow compared to #f4f (follow for follow). I get about 10 – 15 active real followers per month but these followers boost my statistics. Of course I have ‘dead’ accounts which follow me and don’t engage but even these ‘dead’ numbers will not badly influence my statistics when I constantly have 100+ likes and 30-50 comments per post from real people.
Another sad fact is not all bloggers play fair, they can follow you and even leave comments but next day or a week later unfollow you to keep their following number small. For that reason I have created a folder and save their first or second post and check them after a while if they still follow me. And if a blogger unfollowed me I unfollow him/her too.
If you are a fashion blogger you can find a lot of bloggers from my page in my following. Another useful way to find bloggers with similar content is by hashtags: for example #discoverunder10k, #discoverunder20k or #discoverunder5k have bloggers from the UK.
The hashtags #ltkfashion and #ltkunder50 has lots of bloggers from the USA, Australia and Europe there from the LTK platform and they are very friendly and support each other (but be smart, check).
Do they unfollow you if you can’t constantly interact with them?
It depends on the blogger, most of them understand that you can’t like and leave comments on their each post constantly and they can’t do that too.
How they do it: before uploading a new post they go through all the bloggers who left comments on the last two or three posts and leave comments on their last posts too and then upload a new post. This will signal to them you are active today and are waiting for the same from them (next time they are active).
When your post gets comments and likes, that post starts getting comments from new people who don’t follow you yet. This happens when your post appears on the Explore Page of new people.To be more precise Instagram shows your post to the followers of bloggers who left you comments. The algorithm takes it as a way to share interesting content with other people.
So use this chance; like, comment and follow these new people but keep an eye on them to check that they do the same. The game has to be fair; if you follow them, like and comment they have to follow you too. Otherwise you can unfollow and search for others.
Myths about small numbers in your following
At the beginning of the Instagram era it was so popular to not follow anyone to show how popular you were. Thankfully this weird trend is gone, but some bloggers are still trying to keep their following number small (below 500 even when they have 10-15k followers).
It is completely different now and having lots of followings can bring you more benefits then before. For Instagram it is a way to understand your interests which the algorithm can use. What you see on your Explore Page is what the algorithm understands you may like based on your followings and likes with comments.
And when you follow those who support you this can give the algorithm information about what kind of accounts to find for you and show on the Explore Page. And there will be lots of accounts who are ready to interact.
Interactions in Stories
This is another important part that you should know about. Fashion bloggers like to recommend each other in their stories. They either share your post and tag you, or link your account name in a story with 5-10 other bloggers.
What you need to do if they reshare your post and tag you or include your account name on the list in their story:
- Firstly repost this story to your story with the word THANKS. (This is very important)
- Secondly share that blogger’s post and tag her
- If a blogger includes you to the list you should create a list too and add her there.
This gesture is really important, it gives you more views and is a way to get new followers from that blogger. Don’t miss that and do the same.
I hope this information was useful for you, and you can follow me on Instagram too.
