A Different Instagram Journey

[CrazyeyeZ]

Hey.
Good luck with your journey mate. Glad to see u r making progress, slowly but steadily. I have a question, everyone says instagram doesn't allow u to upload content created by others, so, how do u guys keep creating pics/videos to keep posting everyday?

Hey man, thanks for popping in. Yes, slowly and steadily is what this one is all about, I know it will be worth it, this journey will still be here come christmas and it will be interesting to see what is happening then, and what people are saying about this journey then!

I reupload others content with credit to the original poster, everyone loves it so far, all I have had is people saying thank you for featuring them, and no issues with IG whatsoever. Obviously if this changes ill have to use another method to get photos, of which there are plenty here in BHW. But for now, so far so good.

C

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Update:

I have been unfollowing manually the last couple of days, my plan is to slowly take the amount of people I am following down to zero, and balance this action with the increase in people following me. I am predicting that as long as I keep this balanced, this will result in my follower count going up steadily as my number rises.

Here are the stats for today:

Followers: 573 (-3)
Following: 762 (-130)
Likes: 102
Comments: 2

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Technical Update:

Quite interesting this one, I am now able to manually unfollow up to 60 people per hour, I have been slowly increasing from my standard 30 up to 40 and then 45. The account is around a month old, so make of that what you will, but ill take it! I have had no Mass Planner input on my account for a few days now and I am rapidly shedding people i'm following, another stats update tomorrow, along with another technical update which I hope some find interesting.

C

 

[TheNoobGuy]

Technical Update:

Quite interesting this one, I am now able to manually unfollow up to 60 people per hour, I have been slowly increasing from my standard 30 up to 40 and then 45. The account is around a month old, so make of that what you will, but ill take it! I have had no Mass Planner input on my account for a few days now and I am rapidly shedding people i'm following, another stats update tomorrow, along with another technical update which I hope some find interesting.

C

Hey bro, I started my own journey yesterday, it's been 24 hrs now, and I've followed over 430 ppl and 104 are following me as of now.

I think u can step up a bit as far as following is considered.

Good going

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Hey bro, I started my own journey yesterday, it's been 24 hrs now, and I've followed over 430 ppl and 104 are following me as of now.

I think u can step up a bit as far as following is considered.

Good going

Hey yes, I am going to mark your journey so I can follow it, I had a read earlier. Yes, as I have mentioned a few times in this thread, I am adopting a slightly different approach to building my account, it is focusing on engagement and interaction rather than speed of growing the account. The results I know will be well worth it. There will be a technical update tomorrow which references your point, and will allow me to grow in spurts, ill explain it along with the theory behind it tomorrow.

C

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Hey everyone, a triple update with lots of interesting things to mention, a technical update, an interaction first and todays stats! OK, so lets dive into the technical update first.

I mentioned in an above post I would elaborate on why I am reducing my followers down to zero. The account is growing slowly, but I have noticed that as soon as my following number went below the follower number, I had some very interesting comments, which I will explain at the bottom.

Anyway my strategy is now to get my following number down to zero or almost zero, and then gently add up to a couple of hundred followings, and then manually unfollow 5 or 6 days later and repeat. No rush but the point of all this is that you gain more followers when your account looks authoritative and popular. For my numbers so far the account is definitely popular, and it is gaining in authority even with the small figures, which I will explain at the bottom in the interaction update.

So the really exciting update is on interaction. Literally 3 hours after I got my following number below my follower number, I was contacted by two larger pages in my niche, (one with around 5k followers and the other 2k) asking to be curated on my feed. One of them has high enough quality pics to feature, and the other I am talking to at the moment, but the point is that the quality and high engagement has already given these two first results.

I doubt I will charge them for these first two shoutouts, but I am very confident that once my account reaches around 5K followers, I will be starting shoutouts for tightly aligned niche photos. (This is not the monetization strategy I will be using for the account, but if the pictures are tight enough, and they will be most of the time, I can feature them and not lose any followers).

OK, onto the stats then, here they are!:

Followers: 577 (+4)
Following: 414 (-348)
Likes: 126
Comments: 7

C

 

[TheNoobGuy]

Hey everyone, a triple update with lots of interesting things to mention, a technical update, an interaction first and todays stats! OK, so lets dive into the technical update first.

I mentioned in an above post I would elaborate on why I am reducing my followers down to zero. The account is growing slowly, but I have noticed that as soon as my following number went below the follower number, I had some very interesting comments, which I will explain at the bottom.

Anyway my strategy is now to get my following number down to zero or almost zero, and then gently add up to a couple of hundred followings, and then manually unfollow 5 or 6 days later and repeat. No rush but the point of all this is that you gain more followers when your account looks authoritative and popular. For my numbers so far the account is definitely popular, and it is gaining in authority even with the small figures, which I will explain at the bottom in the interaction update.

So the really exciting update is on interaction. Literally 3 hours after I got my following number below my follower number, I was contacted by two larger pages in my niche, (one with around 5k followers and the other 2k) asking to be curated on my feed. One of them has high enough quality pics to feature, and the other I am talking to at the moment, but the point is that the quality and high engagement has already given these two first results.

I doubt I will charge them for these first two shoutouts, but I am very confident that once my account reaches around 5K followers, I will be starting shoutouts for tightly aligned niche photos. (This is not the monetization strategy I will be using for the account, but if the pictures are tight enough, and they will be most of the time, I can feature them and not lose any followers).

OK, onto the stats then, here they are!:

Followers: 577 (+4)
Following: 414 (-348)
Likes: 126
Comments: 7

C

Good going mate. Its great that u got contacted for Shoutouts already. But I'd suggest, only monetize it once ur account has a considerable number of followers and u are confident abt the love u r getting from ur followers. That's the point where ppl won't unfollow u for recommending someone or advertising. I might b wrong, coz I'm a Noob after all good luck!

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Update:

A few days have passed and its been very stodgy since then, a fair few people unfollowed me, I had run out of women to unfollow, and the guys are a bit more clued up, so I have made no real gains since Friday. I will follow up to my follower number and let them settle, to get a boost. Everything else is running smoothly, here are the stats since the last update:

Followers: 565 (-12)
Following: 414 (0)
Likes: 301
Comments: 9

 

[Cruncke]

Good luck mate!

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Good luck mate!

Thanks for popping in!

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Update:

OK, so things really ground to a halt when unfollowing and the low following number did not result in increased followers, the numbers are too low for this yet, I will try this tactic again when im over 1000 followers. So, I have decided to follow again to get the numbers up, I am still picking targeted accounts to follow, and always following recently active account on other related niche feeds.

I think this period is going to be quite difficult, but ill get through it like I did on my SC channel, that difficult period lasted about two solid months of follow/unfollow grind to break clear into good organic follows.

OK, here are todays stats:

Followers: 595 (+40)
Following: 556 (+142)
Likes: 90
Comments: 2

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Update:

Have just done some manual following, so tomorrows figures will be a bit higher, I was contacted today by an IG account that has a curating website, and they have asked me if I would like to create a curation channel on their site. I am not quite sure how this is going to work, so I have asked for more info; ill update on that when I understand what they are offering.

Things have slowed down a bit recently in the likes and comments area, I have slightly targeted my photos more to the niches ill end up doing business with, and I think this is the reason. Here are todays stats:

Followers: 598 (+3)
Following: 624 (+68)
Likes: 89
Comments: 3

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Apologies for not updating for a few days, I have still been working on the account, but work commitments had to be taken care of. OK, so whats been happening the last few days? Well firstly I have noticed it has gotten much tougher to gain followers, I have ramped up the following to get over this, as the stats will show below.

The people that contacted me about curation on their website want me to do exactly that, open up a style section and provide content for it. I havent replied yet, as I am not really sure of the point of me doing this, there is no financial incentive that I can see, ill ask the question and investigate the site further to see if their is another not so obvious benefit to doing this.

OK, here are the latest stats, its been a tough few days..

Followers: 656 (+58)
Following: 910 (+286)
Likes: 201
Comments: 7

C

 

[CrazyeyeZ]

Update:

Not a lot to add beyond the stats for this update, other than it is definitely still tough going, I am going to follow some more people after this update; here are the stats:

Followers: 665 (+9)
Following: 944 (+34)
Likes: 163
Comments: 6

C

 

[iglearner]

Update:

Not a lot to add beyond the stats for this update, other than it is definitely still tough going, I am going to follow some more people after this update; here are the stats:

Followers: 665 (+9)
Following: 944 (+34)
Likes: 163
Comments: 6

C

Hey,
Any updates? Would like to see where you are.

Here's my opinion:
Your engagement seems high (20%), but from reading other people's journeys it seems to be very high for everyone at the beginnging. I suspect it's because following people brings new visitors to the page who boost likes and make it more likely to be seen by others. Following and engaging with people seems just as important (if not more) as posting high quality content.

So your slow follow strategy doesn't fit instagram as well as it fits soundcloud. Just like none of the strategies for IG, Twitter, FB, etc would fit Snapchat..