White hat Instagram growth (giveaways?)

I starting a blog about six months ago and I am looking to expand into social. I previously did black hat tactics a year or so back but want to keep it clean as its attached to my brand. My plan is to grow the account naturally to around 500 - 1000 followers with just proper hashtag research and quality content. Once I get into the 1000 range I will open up a simple dropshipping webstore. I then plan on hosting a give away and purchasing shoutouts from around 15 accounts (will do proper research on engagement rate etc). The webstore is not going to be my main source of income more just a diversification. I am mostly hoping the giveaway will grow my account but sales are nice too

Few questions.

1. Should I spend the shout out money somewhere else ball park $300 - $500

2. Will most people just unfollow after the giveaway

3. Is there a better growth tatic I should be using

4. Is this a waste of time

Be cautious with the giveaway.

Example: Your acc is about Cars,
You do a iPhone Giveaway,
Get a lot of followrs,
Giveaway ends, and you result with a lot of followers who dont like cars on your page = Bad engagement.

It would be more cheaper if you just buy those followers (dont do it)

babelonia said:

Be cautious with the giveaway.

Example: Your acc is about Cars,
You do a iPhone Giveaway,
Get a lot of followrs,
Giveaway ends, and you result with a lot of followers who dont like cars on your page = Bad engagement.

It would be more cheaper if you just buy those followers (dont do it)

Click to expand...

I plan on doing the giveaway with products from my store so it would be all niche related. shoutouts from niche related pages as well

Focus on creating a high quality audience and spend the money on ads for that audience or buy shoutouts from high authority accounts in your niche, giveaways are not as good as they used to, better save them to promote/celebrate when reaching certain amounts of followers.

perrymason said:

Focus on creating a high quality audience and spend the money on ads for that audience or buy shoutouts from high authority accounts in your niche, giveaways are not as good as they used to, better save them to promote/celebrate when reaching certain amounts of followers.

Click to expand...

Have you had any luck gaining followers with Instagram ads

For the ad do you just choose one of your top performing posts?

llama77 said:

Have you had any luck gaining followers with Instagram ads

For the ad do you just choose one of your top performing posts?

Click to expand...

You're gonna need to test and find out what attracts more followers, sometimes a picture of a white wine bottle (for example) might perform better in terms of likes because the picture is cute but your audience is more interested in buying red wine therefore a picture of red wine with a catchy caption could bring more followers.

Spread few dollars on different posts and see which type of product performs better, also pay attention to the demographics of your audience.