I’m in the travel photography niche with about 2k followers. Had my account for about 2 years now but only really got into trying to grow it towards the end of last year. I only post content I create myself and try to post everyday if possible and am trying to grow it as sort of a personal brand.
I have been taking 30-45mins manually engaging with hashtags in my niche, specifically targeting hashtags relating to my country. I try to like recent posts on these hashtags and post personalized comments on posts that I feel are good. However I have only been gaining about 30 followers per week and other similar accounts have been growing much faster than me despite doing about the same things. I do not wish to do follow/unfollow on this account unlike my other theme pages as I have seen a number of instances where fellow accounts in the same niche and location as me have been exposed for doing follow/unfollow and it ruined their business and account.
What other ways could I go about growing without doing F/UF? I’m open to trying anything other than F/UF and using automation
Hello,
Just do what you do so far. Your doing it alright. Next, doing shouts and put some money into adds is always the best solution. F/UF is good if you want fast growth but not quality. Giveaways are best and fastest but don’t be discourage if you grow slowly. If you post good content and it’s yours, sooner or later you will start to grow big and fast. Do a story shares of other people who are in same niche as you. You will appear into someone explore page once they like a few of your posts. Also, be active with new followers, try to respond to comments as soon as they post them, engage with others a few times a day. Keep them engaged with your posts. You can buy followers but that will definitely destroy your account. (i wouldn’t recommend it to anyone) There is no shortcut. Your account is aged also so that means you can do a lot of follows and unfollows and likes without been blocked. But don’t push it. Also, check this post (Instagram Growth Strategy 2019)
Beats me, all I do is lose followers these days so I can’t comment on other methods that work. However, the hashtag route used to be powerful but I’ve been noticing that it seems to only be good for gaining extra likes, but not follows. Possibly due to the way people follow hashtags, having the username of the post almost impossible to click so people just follow tags, like content and move on to the next without ever even finding you.
I think this may be the best method going forward, depending on budget for prizes and the size of your network