I severely underestimated how easy it is to grow on Instagram.
And if I did, then many others likely underestimated this, too.
So, in this article, I will share examples and a step-by-step method to grow organically on Instagram fast.
If you have a new Instagram, you can get to 10,000+ followers within two months using this method.
If you have an existing Instagram, this method will catapult your growth, getting you millions of views and tens of thousands of followers (or more).
TL;DR
- Post daily.
- Produce daily.
- Upload manually through the Instagram mobile app, not with a 3rd party tool. No automations for posting.
Jump Ahead
How somebody who didn’t know anything about Formula 1 three weeks ago now has 7,000 followers on Instagram with a new F1-dedicated account.
The account: https://www.instagram.com/coop_formula
On February 3, I made a podcast about becoming a Formula 1 influencer from scratch. I explained:
- The curious learner bias. If you learn something and consistently talk about what you’re learning, people will come to see you as an expert, even though you’re merely a curious learner. This is because consistency creates top-of-mind awareness for your niche.
- I believe Formula 1 is both:
- Hot and trendy. Events have become a billionaire meeting spot.
- Penetrable. Its rising popularity times well with the popularity of short-form mobile video like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
I said on the podcast, not expecting anybody to do this, if you make daily videos about what you’re learning in Formula 1 and you don’t miss a day, I will mentor you.
To my surprise, 3 people started doing this, and @coop_formula has taken off.
Quick breakdown:
- Coop didn’t know anything about Formula 1 three weeks ago when the account was started.
- He manually posted at least one Instagram Reel daily to this new account. These videos come out everywhere: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, etc. Instagram growth has been the fastest.
- He has a lot of content experience and deserves credit for that.
- A quote from him: “I’ve been in marketing and have built a number of accounts to 20k+, but this is the fastest it’s gone viral.”
How a friend with a new dating Instagram got to 18,000 followers in five weeks.
The account: https://www.instagram.com/junyuanofficial/reels/
Junyuan’s content:
- He’s a male model who dresses well, usually in a suit.
- He playfully interviews attractive women about their dating lives.
- Before posting to Instagram, he was putting his videos on TikTok, where they were doing well. Most videos got in the tens of thousands of views. Many got hundreds of thousands. A solid handful got millions.
- Junyuan only began posting Reels 5 weeks ago.
Junyuan makes many videos from London and Sweden. Here’s a fun quote from him: “I was out in Central London yesterday. I kept getting recognized. I’m also recognized nonstop in Stockholm.” In fact, he was even recording at one point when somebody came up to him asking for a picture.
What these accounts have in common.
It would be easy to discount these accounts’ success by saying, “They make good videos, duh.” And, absolutely, it takes patience and practice to get good at making content.
However, there are still critical posting and content patterns that both accounts share.
These patterns are often overlooked because they are so simple. In fact, I had been overlooking these up until just this week. Here are the patterns:
- Both accounts stick rigidly to their niches.
- Both accounts post their Instagram Reels manually (without 3rd party automation tools or scheduling tools).
- Both accounts post daily.
- Both accounts produce videos daily (not batch record).
Simple, right? The important thing is if you do this and you have some content-making experience, you can get similar results.
Why not batch record?
Every day that you post, you’re offered valuable lessons and insights into what works and what doesn’t.
By batch recording (for example, recording 30 videos at the beginning of each month and uploading one per day), you don’t take advantage of these lessons and insights.
You may still iterate (improve) off some lessons, but you won’t iterate off all of them. Then you’ll have to wait until the next batch recording date to try again.
Improvement will be slow. Views will decrease because your audience will get bored. You’ll get demoralized. You’ll give up.
By shooting and editing each day, it’s much easier to improve your videos and grow fast.
How often some of the biggest accounts are posting and what they’re posting.
I wanted to see if there was a best practice for posting frequency on Instagram. I looked at several content-based accounts. Here’s what I saw:
@Hormozi (Alex Hormozi):
- 2.3 million followers.
- Posts 2 Reels daily in addition to pictures.
@Garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk):
- 10.1 million followers.
- Posts 1 Reel daily in addition to pictures.
@Dailystoic (Ryan Holiday):
- 3 million followers.
- Posts 4-5 Reels weekly, but posts 1-2 pictures a day.
How exactly I’ll be using this knowledge on my own Instagram (feel free to copy me).
There are so many nuances when it comes to posting Instagram Reels.
So, I will start with the high-level things I’ll be doing.
Then, I’m going to have a breakout section for nuances.
If you’re not active growing a brand on Instagram, the nuances will not be meaningful. If you are active, these nuances will be very valuable.
Overview of what I’m doing:
- Shooting and editing daily.
- Manually posting 1-3 Reels daily in my niche.
- These can be brand-new Reels or viral Reels, which I have not posted in months.
- Using a 3rd party tool to repost 1-3 previous Reels daily.
- Shoutout to my friend Avni for the above strategy. She’s growing by 300-500 followers a day through this.
- Also, here’s a quote from Avni that I love about what content to make: “I do think storytelling content about yourself is hard to make go viral, but it converts to followers at a far higher conversion rate.”
Nuances (skip over this if you’re not yet consistent on Instagram):
- Manually posting through the Instagram app shows Reels to existing followers. Previously, Instagram had an option to toggle this off. This option has been removed.
- With a 3rd party tool (I use this one) you can still have Reels go only to people who are not following you.
- My workflow is my videos come out on TikTok first. Then, they come out to every other platform automatically through the above 3rd party tool.
- Manual posting on a 3rd party tool vs. automatic posting on a 3rd party tool.
- I’ve tested several tools, and the results are always the same.
- For Instagram only, if the tool is set to publish automatically, performance on Instagram is near to nonexistent.
- However, if published manually through the tool, the results seem to be dramatically better. I’m still testing this.
- High-level consequences of these nuances:
- My brand is pushed out to new people who can then follow me.
- Existing followers are given daily Reels that increase top-of-mind awareness. These Reels also show to more non-followers.
- I wrote that Instagram recently removed the option to manually post through the app and only show to new followers. This old feature had the added benefit of always – without exception – pushing my videos out to hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers. It was dramatic. If manual posting through a 3rd party tool replaces this lost functionality, it will be wildly beneficial.
How you can use this knowledge.
If you have a non-content-based brand (an app, a cafe, a services company, etc.) and you want to get customers through Instagram, the simplest thing to do is manually, through the Instagram app, post 1 Reel a day within your niche to the grid.
The Empire State Building Instagram is a good example of a non-content-based brand doing organic Instagram marketing well. The account posts at least 4 Reels a week.
If you have or want to start a content-based brand on Instagram with which to monetize, simply produce and post 1 Reel a day within your niche. Quality will improve with practice; it always does. You can use these things I learned to jump-start your quality.
Once you develop a content library, you can incorporate the nuances and repost previous videos through a 3rd party tool or without.
For me and many others, Instagram is one of the best acquisition channels.
If it’s not already, by doing what’s shared in this article, it will become one for you, too.
