The Instagram Experiment: Race to 10k

Back in September 2016, I posted a blog post on how I was able to gain over 1000 Instagram followers in just one month.

At the time of publishing that post, I had 6339 followers. A year and a half later, my followers have decreased 5541 followers. My love and hate relationship with Instagram has caused me to be inconsistent with everything I do with Instagram.

That being said, I want to try and up my Instagram game and see if I can get to 10k followers by the end of 2018. A bold goal, right? But I love a challenge.

In this series, The Instagram Experiment, I am going to be documenting what I am doing to gain followers, things that work, things that don’t. Hopefully, you can take something away from this to improve your own Instagram game.

Over the past year or so, I’ve not really taken Instagram seriously. I’ve gone from posting photos of my fitness watch to trying a more lifestyle theme, to not posting for days at a time, to posting photos of what I eat to saying screw this and posting whatever I want.

Over the past 3 or so months, I’ve got into the habit of posting one photo I love a day and started using Instagram stories.

The amount of followers I have is still on the decrease as I’m not really making any effort at all to gain followers.

I’m going to set a few goals each week to help me grow Instagram and then share the results. After 4 weeks, I’ll make the posts once a month instead of once a week. Unless I decide it’s a waste of time and sack it off.

So here goes.

Race to 10k Instagram followers.

I’m going to set myself 5 goals to do this week.

Next week I will review them and decide if I want to keep doing these goals or add different ones depending on how well I do.

Here are my current stats:

Followers: 5541
Average Likes Per Photo: 30.1
Average Comments Per Photo: 1.2 (yikes!)

I’ve gotten the averages by taking the comments/likes from the previous 7 days, adding them up and dividing by 7. This is how I will calculate the average going forward and will hopefully see an improvement.

Here are my goals for things I need to do.

Goal 1.

Send out 1 Tweet a day asking people to follow and engage with me on Instagram.

Goal 2.

Comment on 10 Instagram posts a day within my feed.

Goal 3.

Follow 4 new hashtags and comment on any 10 posts from these a day.

The hashtags I am following this week are:

• #thisishowIhueit
• #thisprettyengland
• #tinytinymoments
• #puregym

This is to ensure I’m commenting on similar content to what I post.

Goal 4.

Review my hashtags and change them up.

As Instagram can see you as spammy and possibly shadowban you if you use the same hashtags over and over, it’s best to mix them up.

These will be my sets of hashtags for the week:

1. #untoldvisuals #tinytinymoments #awakethenight #myhandsmaking #thisprettyengland #alittlebeautyeveryday #slowlived #daysofsmallthings
2. #thisishowihueit #littlestorieofmylife #thehappynow #flashesofdelight #nothingisordinary #inspiremyinstagram #forprettyssake #alittlebeautyeveryday
3. #petitejoys #everysquarestory #alifealive #thevisualscollective #liveathentic #aquietstyle #bybeautifulmess
4. #fitinspiration #strongbody #trainmean #getfitstayfit #challengeyourbody #letsgetfit #girlswholift #gymtime #gymmotivation #gymaddict #applewatch #gymselfie 
5. #instacycle #cyclingselfie #cyclingaddit #cyclinglifeagirl #womencycling #beautyofcycling #roadslikethese #iamspecialized
6. #runstagram #runningday #runninggoals #runspiration #runstrong #womenrunning #womenwhorun #wearetherunners #justrun

Goal 5.

Take more photos of me.

This is a difficult one but I’d rather be in the shot, but this week I’d like to be in at least 3 of the photos I share to Instagram as these do get more engagement!

Goal 6.

No Instagram Comment Pods or Like Threads.

They are yuck!

So, wish me luck and let me know what your tips are for an increase Instagram following!