Does reaching your first 1000 followers seem like a mammoth task that you may not be able to achieve any time soon?
Are you tempted to take the easiest shortcut and ‘buy’ followers once and for all?
Well…DON’T DO THAT YET!!
We know a way for you to get to your first 1000 REAL followers—genuine people who will like, comment, share, and follow your external links. That’s what you want, isn’t it?
You don’t want to be followed by bots and inactive users who don’t engage with your posts leading to:
- A suspiciously low engagement rate (paints a sketchy image of you amongst followers and collaborators)
- A decrease in the visibility of your content (because Instagram algorithms prioritize high-engagement content)
- Limited targeting: When you buy followers, you have little control over their demographics and interests.
- Potential account risks: Buying followers may violate Instagram’s terms of service, resulting in account suspension or removal of fake followers.
In short, purchasing followers is a financial investment that doesn’t provide real value. Instead, you might want to focus on organic growth strategies that build a genuine and engaged audience over time. Using Instagram Insights is one such strategy.
How to Analyze Your Instagram Insights
If you want to hit your first 1K followers sooner, make full use of Instagram Insights. It’s FREE and easy to use.
First of all, you wanna make sure that your Instagram account is a business account. You cannot view and analyze your insights on a personal account.
Locate Insights from your Profile
To access your account’s insights, first head over to your profile. Click the three lines on the top right corner of the screen. And then go to ‘Insights’
Once you get into your insights, go wild. Explore ALL of them. Leave no stone unturned. We aren’t going to take you through the process because we want you to practically learn about the insights available to you on your Instagram account. It’s the best way to learn—exploring for yourself and uncovering the treasures within your reach.
But we are going to give you what we promised—tips on how to use your Insights to gain more followers.
Study Your Best Performing Posts
The best thing about Instagram Insights is that it organizes your data and gives it back to you in a way that’s easy to analyze. It grades your posts from highest to lowest reach and when you get into each post, you’re able to see
- The number of accounts it reached
- The number of accounts engaged
- Number of followers coming from that post
- Post interactions (likes, saves, comments, shares)
Click your best-performing posts and take note of them. Did you use highly engaging language in them? Any captivating colors on the post like green or yellow? What time did you post these?
Note anything that could have led to the post gaining popularity amongst your audience.
Separate Your Emotions From the Analysis Process
After analyzing your best-performing posts, it’s time to scrutinize your least-performing posts.
This process will teach you to separate your emotions from the content creation process. Here’s how:
When creating content for your Instagram, you most likely give it your BEST SHOT. You even step out of your comfort zone to learn some new skills like graphic design, video editing, talking in front of the camera, and basically putting yourself out there.
It’s not always easy to discover that you did all that and still people didn’t like what you created. But that’s something you need to face and overcome as a person looking to grow a following of more than 1000 people on Instagram.
The more you analyze your worst-performing posts, the more thick skin you grow (something you need in this Instagram Growth quest)
So yes, check your best and your worst posts and ask yourself these questions:
- What did people like about this?
- What made this post more shareable than others?
- How come this one didn’t get much recognition?
- What is it about this post that made more people ignore it?
- This post has more comments, why?
- No one was moved to comment on this one; what’s the reason?
Carefully answer these questions and if you can, ask someone to give you an unbiased analysis.
Use Your Findings to Create Better Posts
The whole idea of analyzing your Instagram insights is to make PROGRESS. You want to uncover what doesn’t resonate with your already-existing audience so that you stop doing that (or you do less and less of it in your posts).
This is why we urge you to look into your insights objectively, from different angles (especially the angle of your target follower), and with a mindset to make necessary adjustments.
Don’t be so attached to your original strategy or style of posting that you resist change. As a content creator on Instagram, you have to be flexible to meet your followers’s needs because It’s not about your creativity, smartness, brand, business vision, etc.
It’s about providing value or entertainment to Instagram users. Do that well and they follow you and eventually buy your products and services.
Common Findings from Instagram Insights | How to Use Them to Create Better Posts |
Your reels aren’t getting much views | Introduce subtitles, hooks, and colorful covers. Get straight to the point in your reels. |
Certain posts have more comments | Did you place CTAs on those posts? You may need to include more CTAs to get people to comment. |
Your carousels aren’t getting much engagement | Consider reducing the information on each slide, increasing visual appeal, and giving new/interesting information on your carousels. |
People don’t respond to the CTAs on your captions. | They probably don’t read all your captions. Put CTAs on the main posts as well. |
Your picture posts have more likes. | Create more picture posts! |
Other Tips for Growing Your Instagram
Thoroughly analyzing your Insights regularly and making positive adjustments to your posts will certainly give your Instagram more traction.
But you can’t use this as an isolated strategy.
Mix it up with the following practices and you’ll be sure to reach your 1K milestone sooner!
- Analyze Your Competitors’ Content
There’s nothing wrong with modeling after other accounts that have successfully built a sizeable following. You’re free to study any content that’s publicly available on social media. Just don’t copy their content word for word. - Boost Some of Your Posts
Gaining reach on Instagram is not easy, especially for a new account. It helps to pay Instagram to boost your posts i.e. show them to more people. We advise you to choose your best-performing posts for boosting. The idea is, that if they’re already liked by your audience, they stand a better chance of getting more likes from non-followers and getting you the recognition you seek. - Bring your audience from other platforms
You may be new to Instagram but not necessarily new as a brand, influencer, or business. If you already have an audience on another platform be it X, Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, or your blog, announce your new Instagram presence there. Most of your audience may not follow you immediately but rest assured, some will. - Ask Yourself Critical Questions
Don’t stop being curious about people, psychology, behavioral patterns on social media, trends, evergreen content, etc. A curious mind always gives birth to new, innovative ideas. Some questions to guide you into making better content include
- What do people really want on Instagram?
- How can I give them what they want?
- What makes people like this piece of content over that?
- Whom do I follow and why?
- What’s an overused trend?
- What new angle can I use to approach this type of content?
In conclusion…
As you continue to develop your Instagram strategy, please don’t forget this:
Everyone started with ZERO followers.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Ronaldo who now has a whooping 600 000 000+ followers, Beyonce with 300 000 000+ followers, or an upcoming influencer with 100 000 followers. They all, at some point, had a brand new account with no followers.
Your current following mustn’t discourage you. Instagram Growth requires skills that can be learned, simply focus on building a strong brand by making small improvements every day.
