# Instagram Growth Guide (Semi-Organic)

**URL:** <https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414>\
**Category:** Instagram Marketing\
**Created:** [December 24, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414 "2017-12-24T17:00:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dobeedo](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/dobeedo/32/55005_2.png) [@Dobeedo](https://mpsocial.com/u/Dobeedo)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 6:05am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/22 "2017-12-26T06:05:33Z")

</div>

Because they’ll follow, and maybe like a couple of your post while they’re on your page.

Then if Instagram lowers your exposure because of all the actions you’re doing (who know’s if they do, just my opinion) then they won’t see your post anymore unless they go directly to your page.

This is why I say, if you stop your F/U and keep posting you’ll see your engagement go way down because you don’t have that constant stream of likes coming in from the follows, and your content may not be getting into newsfeeds if Instgram lowers your exposure.

Once again it’s all speculative. But from what i’ve seen it definitely seems this way.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/alexnvo/32/31498_2.png) [@Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/u/Alexnvo)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 6:11am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/23 "2017-12-26T06:11:30Z")

</div>

> [@Dobeedo](#):
>
> Then if Instagram lowers your exposure because of all the actions you’re doing (who know’s if they do, just my opinion) then they won’t see your post anymore unless they go directly to your page.

if you don’t know, why you say they do? TEST, TEST and test to find out for yourself the truth before you hurt your own accounts, or others, please. I am telling you, you can go high in actions or low… it depends on what you do, besides just post. Becuase if all you do is post, ya going to ruin a account. you must engage and be active not passive.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/alexnvo/32/31498_2.png) [@Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/u/Alexnvo)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 6:17am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/24 "2017-12-26T06:17:46Z")

</div>

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> More posts, more reach, more likes, more followers. The circle closes.

It does not work that in the real world. MORE posts a day decreases likes becuase only so many see it. If that was true…we could post 10-100-1000 a day and grow until we are the biggest. I rather have 1 exellent post a day than 3-4 average ones. It also depends on your niche… some do better with more, others with less.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dobeedo](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/dobeedo/32/55005_2.png) [@Dobeedo](https://mpsocial.com/u/Dobeedo)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 6:21am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/25 "2017-12-26T06:21:24Z")

</div>

I don’t know because I don’t work at Instagram or have straight facts from an employee. The reason I say it is because of the testing that I HAVE done. The only reason I even mention that it’s my own opinion is because nobody but Instagram knows for sure.

> [@Alexnvo](#):
>
> if you don’t know, why you say they do?

Back at you.

Who cares how many post you have on your account. What matters more is your follower to engagement ratio.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/alexnvo/32/31498_2.png) [@Alexnvo](https://mpsocial.com/u/Alexnvo)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 6:23am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/26 "2017-12-26T06:23:27Z")

</div>

> [@Dobeedo](#):
>
> follower to engagement ratio.

it will decrease as you get bigger - built into the algo already. no way to bypass it – unless in a EG/DM group.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/davenl/32/19258_2.png) [@DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/u/DaveNL)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:19am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/27 "2017-12-26T10:19:02Z")

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> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> 1. Follow/Unfollow is dead

I stopped reading after that lol 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dma0245](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/dma0245/32/28521_2.png) [@dma0245](https://mpsocial.com/u/dma0245)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:30am UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/28 "2017-12-26T10:30:35Z")

</div>

> [@Dobeedo](#):
>
> I keep hearing that F/U is not dead… But everything I’ve seem points to it being dead.

I only use f/u to grow accounts and sell them. My paypal transaction list of last 30/60 or 90 days says it’s not dead. Not at all:slight\_smile:

> [@Dobeedo](#):
>
> Come on, it definitely lowers engagement. How hard is it for Instagram to say anyone that’s following 300 and unfollowing 300 at a time gets lower exposure.

Most of my accounts have 10% engagement and growing 100-200 a day from 0. Try that without f/u…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ddizzle](https://mpsocial.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@ddizzle](https://mpsocial.com/u/ddizzle)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:40pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/30 "2017-12-26T21:40:05Z")

</div>

F/UF works really well for small accounts (\<10k). Think about it, you will have a general follow return rate of 5-30%. If you manage to follow up to 800, that’s around 40-240 followers/day. That’s a massive %, so yes, it works well for growing smaller accounts. However, the problem I have with F/UF is that it attracts weaker users. People follow you back partly for reciprocal reasons, it’s basic psychology. I’ve found that on average, a person who follows you back after following them is LESS likely to engage with your content than someone who follows you back after liking their content only (weaker link, so must have a higher reason to follow you back, hence more likely to really like your content and continuously engage with it).

Once you get an account to 25-50k, F/UF becomes less appealing and also less effective. I haven’t found the golden number but I’ve mostly stopped at around 20k and only focussed on liking. But yes, generally, the growth isn’t the same as it used to be 1 year ago.

Also, posting more doesn’t always correlate in higher growth. There is a balance (it’s different for everyone), after which posting more often actually hurts your growth due to lower engagement, so sometimes posting less can result in higher engagement and higher growth.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Anon](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/anon/32/19426_2.png) [@Anon](https://mpsocial.com/u/Anon)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 4:44pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/31 "2017-12-27T16:44:29Z")

</div>

Follow and unfollow is not dead, but it does not produce the best followers unless done properly.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Junglenaps](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/junglenaps/32/18827_2.png) [@Junglenaps](https://mpsocial.com/u/Junglenaps)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 5:17pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/32 "2017-12-27T17:17:42Z")

</div>

I think OP has made some great points in this article. Your stance on F/U being dead or not will depend on your niche and the type of content you post. For me its not beneficial and I tend to get better results when by liking targeted posts.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/myfocus/32/31061_2.png) [@MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/u/MyFocus)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 1:17pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/33 "2017-12-28T13:17:05Z")

</div>

**Thank you everybody** for your opinions, the people that didn’t continue reading after they saw something they don’t agree with or didn’t like are typical headline readers and need to get straight with themselves imo 😃

**Follow/Unfollow will cut your exposure** , since the IG algorithm/computing system/AI knows if you do F/U come on…we live in 2018 almost and every single movement is being tracked.

The IG system takes **everything** into account, screenshots from stories and posts (that’s why you get the notification that you can ‘Share this post with your friends’ after you take one), messages you write with whom and the content of these messages, it can even see where you came from when you click on a Instagram link (yes it can see that you’re coming from Telegram when you click a link from there).

The Algorithm takes **_EVERYTHING_** into account. _ **Everything** _.

**My point is** to take a look at your engagement when you suddenly decide: “Ok, my account is now big enough I will stop using F/U, EG etc. and because I have 40K followers everything will be ok!”

**Imagine your reach is completely predicated on automated actions** …OF COURSE it’s going to drop when you stop, less people will see your posts, you will receive less likes and your posts will therefore be shown to even less people.

If you do F/U your likes will most likely come from people that saw “XYZ started following you”.  
People will see the notification, some will think:

_“Cool account, I’m following back”_  
_“Cool account, I’m not the follow back guy, but I will like some pics of the account”_

**_YES_** , you can get it up again with tricks and patience (there’s no Viagra for organic growth…well maybe there is). We can discuss the things that the IG alrogrithm takes into account in another post if you want!

@dma0245  
Ok if your only goal is to grow the number of followers than F/U is perfect. I wonder what the engagement looks like after you sell the account.

@Alexnvo  
Using EG is the same principle as buying likes, you pay with engagement. And if that engagement is automated you probably paid for it. In the end you bought likes again.

(Talking about big Telegram groups to get thousands of likes that can, by no chance be performed manually.)

To your concerns about post number: What about having 3-4 high quality posts? If one can only do 1 that’s perfectly OK, but there’s people that can do both. Post often and high quality content 🙂

@ErikL

This post is more dedicated to people that want to build a brand the real way and don’t want to play the “Fake it 'til you make it” scheme.

@nocturnae  
Very cool that you’re doing a account ressurection case study, what is the reason behind the engagement going up again and how did you measure it?

To your point on engagement groups: IG also takes into account what you comment and if it relates to the post, where the person came from who performed the action and how long they stayed on the post, if they shared it with their friends etc.

* * *

TL;DR: Love all of you, but some of you suck 😛

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ErikL](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/erikl/32/23373_2.png) [@ErikL](https://mpsocial.com/u/ErikL)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/38 "2017-12-28T14:13:35Z")

</div>

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> @DaveNL
> 
> Go die 😃

Was uncalled for. People will disagree with you sometimes, even if you’re right. A lot of people here reep major gains from f/u so when you make a statement saying it’s dead, you kinda look silly and people will say that.

Don’t need to tell them to go die over it..

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kshitij\_Munjal](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/kshitij_munjal/32/10063_2.png) [@Kshitij\_Munjal](https://mpsocial.com/u/Kshitij_Munjal)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/41 "2017-12-28T14:30:00Z")

</div>

yes garyvee, very good advice  
why don’t you copy more stuff from internet personalities and post it here and think that nobody has seen this shit before

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/myfocus/32/31061_2.png) [@MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/u/MyFocus)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 2:33pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/42 "2017-12-28T14:33:34Z")

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> [@ErikL](#):
>
> > [@MyFocus](#):
> >
> > Now I have to paste my post again because people will get turned off by your low self worth, thank you:
> 
> Lol you’re great at networking in a community. 💚

Ok cool, Erik! 😃

@Kshitij_Munjal

Hey KShit,

please let me know exactly what I copied? 🤣

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kshitij\_Munjal](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/kshitij_munjal/32/10063_2.png) [@Kshitij\_Munjal](https://mpsocial.com/u/Kshitij_Munjal)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 2:40pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/43 "2017-12-28T14:40:22Z")

</div>

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> “The customer is king!”

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> Put your ego aside and think of ways to outsmart similar accounts…be patient and consistent.

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> “Give, Give, Give…”

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> Think of your IG like a TV Show or a schedule.

also please be more innovative than “KShit” people used that shit when i was in kindergarden you really lack creativity dont you?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/myfocus/32/31061_2.png) [@MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/u/MyFocus)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 2:59pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/44 "2017-12-28T14:59:11Z")

</div>

“The customer is king!” has been a saying for hundreds of years now, dude.

What are your tips for growth on social media, Kshitij? 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![upproiggame](https://mpsocial.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/90db22/32.png) [@upproiggame](https://mpsocial.com/u/upproiggame)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 3:02pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/45 "2017-12-28T15:02:11Z")

</div>

add me in some good epic strong nice Engage group on ig 🙂 i want semi organic grow 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/davenl/32/19258_2.png) [@DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/u/DaveNL)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/46 "2017-12-28T15:04:59Z")

</div>

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> I thought the emoji after ‘Go die’ would make it seem less offensive and more sarcastic, but I forgot that people nowadays get butthurt over shit like that 🙄

Great, so now you can be a fucking asshole as long as you put a smiley at the end.

And i thought smileys where dead too.

Live and learn i guess.

I am out

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/myfocus/32/31061_2.png) [@MyFocus](https://mpsocial.com/u/MyFocus)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/47 "2017-12-28T15:09:57Z")

</div>

And again because some people never learned to notice when they’re useless..

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> Thank you everybody for your opinions, the people that didn’t continue reading after they saw something they don’t agree with or didn’t like are typical headline readers and need to get straight with themselves imo 😃
> 
> Follow/Unfollow will cut your exposure, since the IG algorithm/computing system/AI knows if you do F/U come on…we live in 2018 almost and every single movement is being tracked.
> 
> The IG system takes everything into account, screenshots from stories and posts (that’s why you get the notification that you can ‘Share this post with your friends’ after you take one), messages you write with whom and the content of these messages, it can even see where you came from when you click on a Instagram link (yes it can see that you’re coming from Telegram when you click a link from there).
> 
> The Algorithm takes EVERYTHING into account. Everything.
> 
> My point is to take a look at your engagement when you suddenly decide: “Ok, my account is now big enough I will stop using F/U, EG etc. and because I have 40K followers everything will be ok!”
> 
> Imagine your reach is completely predicated on automated actions…OF COURSE it’s going to drop when you stop, less people will see your posts, you will receive less likes and your posts will therefore be shown to even less people.
> 
> If you do F/U your likes will most likely come from people that saw “XYZ started following you”.
> 
> People will see the notification, some will think:
> 
> “Cool account, I’m following back”
> 
> “Cool account, I’m not the follow back guy, but I will like some pics of the account”
> 
> YES, you can get it up again with tricks and patience (there’s no Viagra for organic growth…well maybe there is). We can discuss the things that the IG alrogrithm takes into account in another post if you want!
> 
> @dma0245
> 
> Ok if your only goal is to grow the number of followers than F/U is perfect. I wonder what the engagement looks like after you sell the account.
> 
> @DaveNL
> 
> Go die 😃
> 
> @Alexnvo
> 
> Using EG is the same principle as buying likes, you pay with engagement. And if that engagement is automated you probably paid for it. In the end you bought likes again.
> 
> (Talking about big Telegram groups to get thousands of likes that can, by no chance be performed manually.)
> 
> To your concerns about post number: What about having 3-4 high quality posts? If one can only do 1 that’s perfectly OK, but there’s people that can do both. Post often and high quality content 🙂
> 
> @ErikL
> 
> This post is more dedicated to people that want to build a brand the real way and don’t want to play the “Fake it 'til you make it” scheme.
> 
> @nocturnae
> 
> Very cool that you’re doing a account ressurection case study, what is the reason behind the engagement going up again and how did you measure it?
> 
> To your point on engagement groups: IG also takes into account what you comment and if it relates to the post, where the person came from who performed the action and how long they stayed on the post, if they shared it with their friends etc.
> 
> TL;DR: Love all of you, but some of you suck 😛

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/user_avatar/mpsocial.com/davenl/32/19258_2.png) [@DaveNL](https://mpsocial.com/u/DaveNL)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 3:23pm UTC](https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-growth-guide-semi-organic/33414/48 "2017-12-28T15:23:13Z")

</div>

> [@MyFocus](#):
>
> And again because some people never learned to notice when they’re useless…

I had the same thought when i was reading your nonsense that f/u was dead…

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