how I got 1,000 new Instagram followers in 30 days

Summary

I’m not a social media guy. in 2022 I posted on Instagram twice. all year. but I do believe personal brand is the asset of the next decade, so I started giving it 10 to 20% effort. here’s what got me 1,000 new followers in two months without ruining my life.

1. content has to be something you’re proud of. I started publishing one polished reel per week pulling concepts from Killing Comfort. B-roll, music, actual editing. takes me about an hour each, beginning to end, because I have the skill.

2. then I boost them. that’s the whole strategy. a few dollars per day, automatic audience targeting, let Instagram show it to people similar to my existing followers. no agency, no funnel, no follow button trick.

3. you pay with time or you pay with money. I refuse to be glued to my phone posting every day, snapping 47 stories, chasing the algorithm. so I pay with a small budget instead. either path grows. one wrecks your mental health, the other doesn’t.

4. quality is the cheat code. boosting bad content with money doesn’t work. boosting genuinely good content with money compounds, because people watch it, click your profile, and follow on their own.

5. it’s not unethical to advertise. all advertising is, is paying a platform to put something you’re proud of in front of more people. that’s it.

one good piece per week, boost it. that’s all I did. if you want a personal brand and you don’t want to live on your phone, try harder.

Transcript

the 10 to 20 percent effort

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. This is the better human business podcast, and I’m Jerred Moon. Today I’m talking about Instagram. Now what the hell do I know about Instagram? I honestly may be the worst social media operator in the digital space as someone who’s only ever had online businesses.

I’m pretty, pretty terrible at social media in general, and I always have been, but I’ve been paying attention to it a little bit more this year. I would say I’ve been giving it about a 10% to 20% effort. I’m definitely not on the try harder level on social media or Instagram right now. But one thing I am a big believer in and I think is not only the future, but is the right now is the growth of a personal brand.

I think that personal brands really matter. They matter more than actual brands. These days it seems like those are the ones that win out. And I think everyone needs some sort of personal brand to some degree. Now I’m not saying you have to go all in on being an influencer or try to shoot for getting a million followers or any of those kind of things.

I just think that having a personal brand to some degree is a valuable asset moving forward in the online space. That’s just a belief I have, theory a hunch. And so I decided I was going to work on it a little bit more this year. Now in 2022, I posted on Instagram two times. That was it. And then I picked it up a little bit more this year.

But again, giving it the 10% to 20% effort, not in the try harder category yet. But I’ve been playing around with different things. And I wanted to share something on how I gained about 1,000 Instagram followers in a relatively short time period. I don’t know if this was over the course of one or two months, something like that.

But I want to talk about the quick strategy that I use because it could be helpful for you. Because like I said, I’ve been giving it this 10% to 20% effort. Nothing overwhelmingly hard and yet I gained nearly, honestly, it’s over 1,000 now that I’m looking at it. It’s over 1,000 followers in two months.

personal brand matters more than brand

And I will tell you how I did it because I had a little bit over, I was in the 8,000s. I don’t have a huge Instagram following. I was in the 8,000s for total followers. And now I’m getting closer to 10,000. And I’ll tell you exactly what I did. So I decided, I’m not a person who can post something every single day.

I’m not. And I know that’s what everyone says, that you need to grow an Instagram profile. That you need to be super consistent, post every day. Even if you talk to the employees at Instagram, Facebook, they’ll tell you the same thing. But I’m not there yet. Maybe I’ll get there eventually with a team who can help organize these things and stuff.

But it’s still just not of the greatest importance to me. I’m just back burner trying to grow my personal brand in a very small fashion. It’s still not a major priority or major goal for me. But when I saw these initial results, I was like, I definitely will share this on the podcast. So anyway, I’ve only recently, I started sharing a few things here and there earlier in the year.

I didn’t feel like anything was hitting. I didn’t honestly love the content. So I didn’t stay consistent with it. Really just because I didn’t like it. I’ve always been in the fitness industry. I tried to pivot to starting talking more about business on Instagram. But I just still didn’t feel like I, that was what I really wanted to talk about.

I’m still most passionate about what I’m doing and training on the fitness side. I love business, but I don’t know if I have to publicly talk about it all the time. If that’s the direction I want my personal brand to go, if you will. So I took a break after posting some things, and you can go look at my profile if you want.

I was posting business things and like the written posts and all this kind of stuff. And then I stopped to take a break to just try and decide, hey, what do you want to do? You’re like not motivated to do any of this stuff. Like why do it at all if you don’t really need to? And then I started just posting to stories.

Once I started, once my back injury was back, I got back to normal. I started posting more just on Instagram stories, only my training. And that’s all I still post on my Instagram stories is just what workout I did that day, a snapshot of it, just to really try and motivate others to be consistent and let people know what I’m doing, if there’s anything new or interesting.

one polished reel per week

And again, just trying to show people like, hey, I’m hitting it, like you go hit it. And the feedback has been really great just sharing that stuff. And then I guess about four to six weeks ago, I started, and I mentioned it, the last podcast episode, I started publishing way more polished Instagram reels kind of covering ideas and concepts from my book, Killing Comfort.

And they’re way more produced, not like in a crazy way, but they’re way more produced like with B-roll. I added music to a couple, and I’m actually building these my own. I’m not delegating this out to a team or anybody else. Like I actually enjoy doing those things and it doesn’t take me very long because I’m just developed those skills to be able to do it.

So it takes me about an hour to knock one of those reels out from filming to editing to publishing. And so I do that about once a week. And that’s all I’ve committed to is doing that once a week. But then what I found interesting was I was like, those got a little bit more traction than all the other kind of talking head videos I had done.

And so I was like, I like these. I feel confident in them. Like I like the product, so I don’t care if the algorithm loves it or anything like that because I know if I wanted just the algorithm to love it, I could start the first portion of the video with a cat slapping an elephant in the face and then getting to the content I want.

Because that’d be like show stopping, people would stop, they’d watch, and then they’d listen to me. Like those are like tactics and strategies, but those things are idiotic to me and not something I want to put out there. Like I’m not trying to be a tabloid magazine or anything like that. So I’m actually proud of the things that I’m creating and I want them to be a part of what I’m publishing out there and the message that I want to put out there.

And so now I’m more motivated to publish these things. I only do it once a week right now. Maybe if I do get my team involved, we could increase that to every single day if someone else was doing the editing and all that stuff, I just batched and filmed it. Anyway, I really liked these pieces. And so what I did was I just boosted them.

And this is not some in-depth crazy strategy. All I did was boost all of these reels because like I said, organically, they did better than any of my other content. They’re a bit more produced. And then I was like, if they’re good, like better than my other content I’ve been producing, I’m just going to boost them.

boost the content you’re proud of

And so I boosted every single one that I could for not an overwhelming amount of money, just a couple bucks a day for about a week. And that started getting me a lot more followers, like pretty fast. And so I’ll probably just honestly increase that spend. Like I’m accustomed to spending a lot of money on Facebook and Instagram.

That’s how I look at these platforms. And I’m sure that you could grow just fully organically and post every single day and all this stuff. But the way I look at it, especially with advertising, if you’re like, oh, that’s cheating, I think that’s a hilarious statement, a hilarious mindset, if that’s what you think that is probably coming from somebody who like really loves social media and they’ve had to do it all on their own the hard way.

But you either grow these kind of things with your time or you grow them with your money. So I could sit on Instagram for hours a day and being consistent and doing all this crap that I don’t want to do. I’m not going to do it. Or I could create one amazing piece of content per week and then I could just boost it for five bucks, 10 bucks, 100 bucks, $1,000, whatever I feel like doing and getting more reach, getting more followers.

And that’s what I’ve done. That’s all I’ve done is I’ve created really good content once per week that I like and I’ve boosted it. And then I’ll continue to boost it. And I might even boost them for longer durations and bigger budget amounts and grow my following that way. And you’re not getting any fake followers.

These aren’t like, there’s not an unethical approach, right? It’s like all you’re doing is taking content that you’ve created. You’re telling Instagram, hey, I’ll give you five bucks to go put this in front of more people. And the targeting I’m doing when I boost it is just, everything’s automatic.

I say boost it. They’re like, what audience? I’m like, you tell, automatic. You do the audience. I don’t care. Boost it. I’ll let you fully run with it. And that’s not how I’ve done online advertising in the past. But it’s actually worked out really well because what they do is they take your followers and people who engage with your content and they try to show it to more people like that.

you pay with time or money

And then those people see these reels that I’ve created, these videos that I’ve created and that I’m proud of. And then there’s not a follow button. They can just click to your profile if they’re interested in what you watched. And then they can click follow if they want, but they don’t have to, right?

There’s no, there’s no, there’s nothing unethical about this or like a sleazy way of growing a following. It’s really just taking something that you’re proud of and paying to get it in front of more people. And that’s all really advertising ever is. Advertising is you’re just taking something that you’re, you’re proud of like your product or service and paying someone or something, a platform to put it in front of more people.

And this has actually worked for me in the tune of getting a thousand new followers in a relatively short timeframe. I haven’t spent a lot of money. I haven’t even tried that hard yet, but I probably will. Like if this is a way I could actually grow a following so I can create one awesome piece of content per week, put a bunch of money behind it, grow a more organic following again as a back burner, trying to grow the personal brand very slowly over time.

Not a big priority for me right now, but something that I am working in on the back, working on in the background just a little bit, maybe like an hour or two per week. If you are looking to do something similar, definitely try out this approach. I do think the quality of the content is probably the biggest factor here.

I think if I boosted some crappy content, I don’t think it would work as well. Like I said, I’m really proud of these pieces and I think that they should be seen by more people, so I’m happy to pay to get them seen by more people, and that turns into more followers. If you think this is a lot of work or maybe you’re not interested, you know what?

Maybe you should just try a little bit harder.