A Different Instagram Journey

UPDATE:

As I mentioned further up, I have now set Mass Planner to follow around 40 people per day, using a few extra parameters in the settings to help find accounts that aren't a total waste of time. Examples are photo in bio, a minimum of 15 posts, and no follow on private accounts.



Here are the stats for today, I have been posting 3 ultra high quality images a day since the start, and these all get a better response if posted in the first half of the day, so I will continue with this strategy.

I also write a small caption to go with the picture, sometimes a question, and others are statements about the picture.

Here's todays action, I am pretty pleased with the figures and importantly, the engagement:

Followers: 186 (+25)
Following: 670 (+155)
Likes today: 67
Comments today: 4
 
Interesting strategy, good luck! I'm using Massplanner as well, pretty happy with it.
 
I'm also aiming for high quality photos. I edit them and post once a day. getting about 60 likes/pic, at 275 followers now. I follow about 200 people a day in my nishe. Let me know if you are in the inspirational or animal nishe :)
 
Interesting strategy, good luck! I'm using Massplanner as well, pretty happy with it.

Yes, I feel it is the way to go, I am only building one account and so I am focusing totally on quality content and interaction. Mass Planner is amazing, easily the best SM software.

Cheers for popping in.

C
 
I'm also aiming for high quality photos. I edit them and post once a day. getting about 60 likes/pic, at 275 followers now. I follow about 200 people a day in my nishe. Let me know if you are in the inspirational or animal nishe :)

Thats great, good going. I guess I am in the inspirational niche yes, I focus on certain types of interior spaces.

Yes, its all about the photos, there are literally hundreds of amazing photos being posted each day in terms of subject matter, but whoever is taking them are not taking the time to then edit them, so with a little editing, as I mentioned above, I can turn an average photo with great content into something amazing.

Today someone commented that this was the best page he had seen in this niche, which motivated me a lot.

More updates coming tomorrow.
 
Update:

Today, I set MP to unfollow for a few hours, engaged with my followers...all in all a smooth day with no problems. I will leave the unfollow off overnight and turn it on again in the morning. I manually followed some accounts today as well.

Stats:

Followers: 218 (+32)
Following: 696 (+26)
Likes today: 42
Comments today: 1
 
Update:

Looks as though I have been hit with a follow/unfollow ban today as I cannot follow anyone. I left Mass Planner unfollowing at a VERY low rate through the night, which if I am honest I forgot to switch off.

I will let the account sit for a day or two, I can still post photos so I will just do those today. Stats coming in a bit.

C
 
Good luck on your Journey mate :)

Thanks mate, appreciated. OK, here are the stats for today. I will update on the temp ban tomorrow, hopefully ill be able to follow/unfollow again. If so, I will be doing this manually for a period of time.


Followers: 222 (+4)
Following: 641 (-55)
Likes today: 75
Comments today: 3
 
Update:

Temp ban has now been lifted, I edited something in my bio, saved it, posted my next photo and all is now OK. Onwards and upwards! Next update tomorrow.

C
 
Thanks mate, appreciated. OK, here are the stats for today. I will update on the temp ban tomorrow, hopefully ill be able to follow/unfollow again. If so, I will be doing this manually for a period of time.


Followers: 222 (+4)
Following: 641 (-55)
Likes today: 75
Comments today: 3

Judging by your stats, this really is not viable method long-term and you're going to burn out quick, you could easily be getting 200 follows daily but you choose to do it manually based off their content? Whoever you follow is going to get a notification and will check out your page, it is better to mass follow and as long as the photos are good quality and your posts are targetted towards getting people to comment and tag their friends, you will get far higher engagement than you are currently, you really are overdoing it on the quality over quantity aspect
 
Judging by your stats, this really is not viable method long-term and you're going to burn out quick, you could easily be getting 200 follows daily but you choose to do it manually based off their content? Whoever you follow is going to get a notification and will check out your page, it is better to mass follow and as long as the photos are good quality and your posts are targetted towards getting people to comment and tag their friends, you will get far higher engagement than you are currently, you really are overdoing it on the quality over quantity aspect

Thanks for your input you raise some valid points, let me answer them. The first point is that I am primarily posting content from a select group of accounts due to the photo quality being high. A small percentage of other content comes from some of the accounts that follow me, I would say it is overall about 90/10...which is great because in six months time, those accounts that I choose to feature will hopefully be glad I am continuing to feature them.

I do know and agree with the rate at which I am gaining followers, and I know I could be more aggressive with my following, but I do not see how mass following and doing what you mention would keep the same level of engagement.

What do I mean by engagement? I mean having conversations with people about their pages, about what they do. I speak to property owners and vendors, and am building relationships through Instagram with them, later on I am sure this will also move into other areas. There are other avenues which are going to come from this which are not about the amount of followers and unfollowers, comments and likes.

However, I totally respect what you said, you did not know anything except what you have read so far, and everything you said was completely valid, so thank you.

C
 
building relationships through Instagram with them, later on I am sure this will also move into other areas. There are other avenues which are going to come from this which are not about the amount of followers and unfollowers, comments and likes.

I totally understand and just wanted to bring up some points that maybe you hadn't thought of yet to possibly become even more efficient. But do you know the best way to build a relationship through Instagram? By having something to offer them, exposure. You will earn much more respect and people willing to create relationships with you with a much higher follower count as you'll seem more beneficial and worth their time, most people are in it for themselves so if they see you have 5,000 followers they can capitalise on then they'll be much more willing to listen than say, 500 followers so you're just making it more difficult for yourself, you need to make it worth their time. The more followers you have, the easier it is to get a foot in the door with these people.

You should definitely keep to the content you are posting, followers will appreciate the high quality posts and in return the accounts you feature will be sure to shout you out further down the line.

"but I do not see how mass following and doing what you mention would keep the same level of engagement."

Because word of mouth, be gaining more exposure you'll have more people contacting YOU so you now have the upper hand, they want to work with much bigger channels because it'll benefit them and in turn, you
 
Also feel free to PM me, I might also be totally talking bollocks as I've only been at it for two weeks, in that time I've got around 17k followers across 5 accounts with my main having around 7k followers so I may not be the best but I've got a fair few friends with 1mil+ networks.
 
I totally understand and just wanted to bring up some points that maybe you hadn't thought of yet to possibly become even more efficient. But do you know the best way to build a relationship through Instagram? By having something to offer them, exposure. You will earn much more respect and people willing to create relationships with you with a much higher follower count as you'll seem more beneficial and worth their time, most people are in it for themselves so if they see you have 5,000 followers they can capitalise on then they'll be much more willing to listen than say, 500 followers so you're just making it more difficult for yourself, you need to make it worth their time. The more followers you have, the easier it is to get a foot in the door with these people.

You should definitely keep to the content you are posting, followers will appreciate the high quality posts and in return the accounts you feature will be sure to shout you out further down the line.

"but I do not see how mass following and doing what you mention would keep the same level of engagement."

Because word of mouth, be gaining more exposure you'll have more people contacting YOU so you now have the upper hand, they want to work with much bigger channels because it'll benefit them and in turn, you

I agree with everything you have said, in the normal process of building accounts this is the way to think about it. However, I have plenty of time, and I am in no rush to build this account. I will be experimenting with different follow rates and timings, but I know that I will not be doing this aggressively.

I have applied this technique to another social media platform where the account has been running 9 months, and what I found was that by doing it this way, I get to the "natural organic follow" much sooner, and the engagement rate is much higher, along with activity happening in the account at much lower follower rates than other accounts that are larger. Some accounts on IG have 500k followers and are terrible, low engagement, low likes.

I also have something to offer them that has nothing to do with IG, a service, and that is part of my plan.

I really appreciate your comments though, and get where you are coming from. I have another IG account in the pipeline, as I mentioned in my thread opener, and this account WILL be more suited to what you have said, as it does need to be large to succeed. I will update this thread when the time comes for that one.

C
 
Here is todays stats update:

Followers: 239 (+17)
Following: 722 (+81)
Likes today: 69
Comments today: 5

I will continue to manually follow chosen accounts. I keep getting comments that my feed is the best quality and to keep it up, so I know the content is engaging and hitting the mark.

Sometime in the next 7 days I am going to increase the following count for a few days which will be split between manual follows when logged in and Mass Planner when logged out.

Morning seems to be the best engagement time for me, literally within 5 minutes I have over 20 likes each morning. Subsequent posts although still good, do not have the same response level and it takes longer for the same engagement to come in.

All good so far!

C
 
Here is todays stats update:

Followers: 239 (+17)
Following: 722 (+81)
Likes today: 69
Comments today: 5

I will continue to manually follow chosen accounts. I keep getting comments that my feed is the best quality and to keep it up, so I know the content is engaging and hitting the mark.

Sometime in the next 7 days I am going to increase the following count for a few days which will be split between manual follows when logged in and Mass Planner when logged out.

Morning seems to be the best engagement time for me, literally within 5 minutes I have over 20 likes each morning. Subsequent posts although still good, do not have the same response level and it takes longer for the same engagement to come in.

All good so far!

C

its better to use manual follow/unfollow on 1 account. + the limit on manual method is 1000+ follow or unfollow/day.

Use 20-30 hashtags in every post. it brings more exposure. Hide it on your comment.

good luck on your journey :)
 
its better to use manual follow/unfollow on 1 account. + the limit on manual method is 1000+ follow or unfollow/day.

Use 20-30 hashtags in every post. it brings more exposure. Hide it on your comment.

good luck on your journey :)

Thanks for the sage advice man, I appreciate it. I will mostly be doing manual work, I do already use 20-30 hashtags per post, and it is working very well...totally agree. I didnt know it was as high as 1000 a day, do you have a source for that? I am operating well below that area.

Here are todays stats:

Followers: 257 (+18)
Following: 722 (+74)
Likes today: 69
Comments today: 4
 
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