The #1 Best Method for Growing Your Instagram Following

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Friends of ACFW, Social Media, tips 1 Comment

By Lara Helmling

If you’re not using the method I’m about to teach you for your Instagram account, you are missing out big time.

You probably know that Instagram is the most effective social media platform right now.

Do you also know that publishers expect you to have thousands of followers?

To make it even more fun, they expect you to have more followers than people you are following.

Yes, they check.

Why are publishers so mean?!

They’re not. It really isn’t their fault at all. The bookstores set the terms, and the publishers do what the bookstores want.

At the end of the day, publishers’ customers are the bookstores. Bookstores’ customers are the readers. So bookstores tell publishers what they expect, and publishers have to do it if they want their books on those shelves.

Bookstores aren’t mean either. It’s just that their marketing bean counters know what is necessary to have the best books – that is, the most sales worthy books – on their shelves.

Now, let’s get back to you and your social media following.

Steps to Instagram Follower Success

Get your pen ready. I’m going to make this short and simple.

Step 1: Find and follow 20 people per day, 5 days a week. Make sure these folks are from one of two groups:

1) They are your perfect readers.

2) They are people who have audiences full of your perfect readers.

Step 2: Like, love, or comment on something each of these new folks has posted.

Step 2.5: Try to limit the amount of time you spend on each profile or you’ll find that 4 hours have passed. This is the black hole of social media – beware. You might even consider setting a timer.

Step 3: Three days or so after you follow these new people, check to see if they followed your back. If they haven’t, unfollow them.

Step 3.5: Here’s how to do this step by step:

1) Go to the app store or Google Play Store on your smartphone or tablet.

2) Find an app for Instagram followers that is fairly well reviewed and well rated.

3) Make sure that the app you choose allows you to track people who haven’t followed you back.

4) Download this app and track those who have followed you back and who hasn’t.

Step 4: Repeat these steps until you have 40,000 followers. Yes, you read that right. Forty thousand.

C’mon, stop laughing! It’s not only possible but scientifically probable. Until Instagram changes its algorithms, which could be any moment now that Zuckerberg has complete control of Instagram, this method is going to work awesomely. It does, and has been, producing great results for a lot of authors.

Case and point, a good friend of mine started building her following two years ago on Instagram and now has 45,000 followers.

Two years is about the right timeline for reaching that level.

And remember, this process if exponential. Your progress will get better and better the more you work the system, and as your momentum grows you’ll find that your following begins to grow itself.

You can do this!

Follow the steps above, and let’s see you rock your book marketing this year.

Lara Helmling is an acquisitions editor with Morgan James Publishing and an author of stories for caregivers of the elderly. She is the president of the ACFW Chicago Chapter where she serves a fabulous community of authors. Lara and her husband Stephen live in northern Illinois with three ridiculously spoiled dogs and one rotten kitty.

 

Comments 1

  1. Is 40,000 the expectation for a debut author? Because I do not have anywhere near that number, nor am I sure I want to due to concern for the safety of my kids.

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