I watched a competitor’s account.It was his 700 followers account, but without following unfollowing, the number of followers increases by 200 a day and then more than 500.
How do we get that increase without any issues? He even posts the same topics and pictures as I do.
They have to be using extra promotion that you don’t know about, like slave accounts that shoutout the account or, as @monzo said, some kind of external promotion outside of Instagram.
If you do Regular shoutouts for shoutouts with average likes of 2k to 3k a post then it’s easy to gain such a number daily. I used to have same numbers since last 2-3 weeks. I have stopped gaining from last 3 days due to shadow ban. But, to gain such a number, your content really matters as well.
Engagement goes hand in hand with followers. Or better said: Good engagement causes growth in followers, especially nowadays. I know, we all like the numbers and are allways watching them, but the social media is for beeing, like its name “social” and the IG algorythm pushes that.