How I Grew 50,000 Followers in 90 Days on Instagram

I'm going to show you how I gained 50,000 Instagram followers in just 90 days and how I'm leveraging this to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. After making a ton of posts on Instagram, I finally figured out the formula for massive growth. And I want to share this with you so you can use the same formula. Now, I'm going to drop a ton of value in this video right now because I really want to help people with what's working right now. There are a ton of people talking different strategies online, but most of these things are strategies that worked years ago. But there's been a ton of changes to the Instagram platform in the recent months, and people just haven't really pivoted and adapted to these new changes. Now all I ask from you is that you help support my channel by hitting that like button and subscribing so that I can reach more people. And what I'll do for you is, if you have any questions, please drop them in the comments below and I'll do my best to get back to all of you. Okay, so I started posting consistently on my current Instagram account around September 2020. It took me a while to get to the first 10,000 followers because at that time it was really hard, it if not impossible to go viral on the platform. My best strategy at the time was to create the best content I could so that my followers would share it and that way my profile would be discovered. I also was hoping that the platform would pick my account to promote it on the Explore page and also through hashtags. But what changed the game for me was in 2021 I started to post more short form videos known as reels. And this is what really helped my account catapult to the next level. I started to get faster growth and then in the last 90 days I. I got what we all are looking for, which is viral growth. A lot of my videos have been getting hundreds of thousands of views and I even had one hit over a million views recently. Now this is all 100% organic. There's no paid ads or anything running to any of these videos. I'm not buying any engagement or fake followers or doing any giveaways or any of that spammy stuff. Years ago I had an Instagram account that I started and I did a few of those things and it actually ruined my engagement on that account and I had to start all over with my current account. Trust me, you do not want to do any type of fake fall followers, fake engagement, anything that would be considered spammy, like following unfollowing or engagement groups. Because all this is going to do in the end is reduce the engagement on your account and it's going to make it even harder for you to reach new people. If your account is having a hard time reaching new people, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to get viral growth on this platform. Okay, so now let's get to the good stuff, how you can grow fast on Instagram. As I said earlier, the way I've been growing my account is through short form content known as Instagram reels. By now, most of you guys know what Instagram reels are, but I don't think you realize how big of an opportunity this is and how you can personally use it to your advantage. The reason this is such a huge opportunity is because the platform is actually pushing this harder than they've ever pushed anything before. Both Zuckerberg and the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, have said numerous times about how Instagram reels are the future of this platform and they're going to be pushing hard in that area. They've even said specifically that they want to incentivize people who create engaging reels, and they're going to push those creators and push their content to new people. Now, the reason they're doing this and pushing it so hard is because they've been losing users and advertising dollars to TikTok. So they really have to fight back and join the trend in full force. Short form content is not a fad or a trend that's fading away. In fact, it's gaining more and more momentum as this is the way that all these platforms are keeping users on the platform. There's still always going to be a place for long form content, but if you can get good at short form content, you can really dominate in 2022 and beyond. So what does this mean? Means free opportunity. The platform is literally going to push you and your content to hundreds, eventually thousands and eventually millions of people for free. Now, the thing is, when most people think about Instagram reels, they think about these dancing TikToks where you have to dance or point to things. Now, I'm here to tell you that you do not have to do that now, if you can do those things, that works. It's really cool if you can do it. But for me, it seems to be not sustainable unless you're really talented at that type of content. Because think about it. Every day or every week, you're going to have to come up with new Trends, new dances, new jokes, new ways to stay funny and relevant on the platform. And for many people, that's just not sustainable. Again, if you can do it, stick with it. But I want to talk about something that all of us can do every day that's really sustainable, and that is informational reels, a video where you turn the camera on and speak directly to the viewer. What are you going to talk about? Well, you're going to teach them something. It could be a tip, a hack, or a mistake that they should avoid. But here's the thing. You have to do informational content in an innovative way. So I'm going to show you right now how I structure my content and how I set it up to be able to reach the most amount of people possible. The first thing I do is I look for topics that the audience would be interested in. Since I'm in real estate and finance, I'll typically look at the questions I'm commonly getting asked by clients. And I'll ask my employees, what are the things that are coming up most often in their conversations with customers? Many times the same things keep coming up because most people have the same questions. That tells you that that's a topic that needs to be addressed. Another way you can look for topics to talk about is go to answerthepublic.com and you could based on keywords. This site does a great job of telling you the things that people are actively searching for right now. Once I have the list of topics or questions, now I need to turn these into good hooks. The hook is the way we start these videos. It's literally the first words out of your mouth in the beginning of the video. And this is how you're going to be able to capture attention on the platform. So let me give you an example. Let's just say I wanted to make a video about how to buy a property. Most people would start this video out by saying, hey, everybody, this is Neil with ABC Real Estate or Mortgage. Hey, and I want to tell you today how you can buy a property. The problem with that approach is you're going to lose everybody because the first three seconds of the video, you didn't start with anything to grab them. So what happens is your video pops up in the feed and then people just scroll right on by. So the important thing to learn here is if you don't start right, you're never going to get a chance to educate them. So you want to start really good. And then that way you have the opportunity to give them the information in the body of the video. So here's how I would start that video with a good hook. I would say something like this. I want to tell you the three biggest mistakes that home buyers are making today. Or I could start with something like this. Here's a tip that will save you literally thousands of dollars when you buy your first home. Now, did you see the difference there? Wouldn't you really want to watch the videos where I started with a good hook versus the previous idea, which is how normally people start these videos and they lose almost everybody unless they know the person. You have to think about it this way. When you're growing your account, you're making content for strangers. You're not creating content for people that already follow you. You're creating content for people that never have seen you before. So in that case, you have to start really well in order to get their attention and keep their attention. That way they can learn from you and have an opportunity to hit that follow button. Now, another thing you'll notice is that I'm speaking to one person because the content is primarily going to be shown to people who have never seen you before, and it's going to pop up in someone's feed. You really need to speak to just one viewer. When you do this, you have a greater chance of connecting with the individual and getting them to stop scrolling. So the trick is, when you shoot these videos, whether it's with an iPhone or a DSLR, imagine that the lens you're talking to is just one individual. And give that person your best advice. You can check out the way I'm doing this on my Instagram page right now, because I'm posting a few videos every single week. And by the way, if any of you want the full blueprint on how I'm creating these videos and what I'm working on in real time throughout the year, things like how I'm coming up with the scripts for these videos, how we set up the shoots, how we actually shoot the content, what equipment we use, how we edit the videos, how we optimize the videos, and then how we turn this audience into real clients, real business results. I have a program for this. It's called Neil's Content Accelerator, and it has literally everything that I do from start to finish. And, oh, the best part about this is I also do a group zoom call with the entire group every other Tuesday. So I keep you updated on exactly what I'm working with and give you new scripts and ideas throughout the entire year. I set this program up because I was getting so many DMs asking me the same questions and asking for advice. So I decided, hey, why don't I just put together an amazing program for the entire audience and. And that is linked in the description below. So check it out if you have any interest. Okay, so back to the formula. After I create these videos, it's time to enhance them. You can edit them yourself. I use Final Cut Pro for some of the edits, but honestly, the best way to do this is just to outsource the editing. Because if you're like me, the highest and best use of your time is going to be working with clients and not editing videos. So I would recommend you find a good video editor and then outsource the entire edits to that person. I'd also recommend that when you get these videos edited, you don't put any music on them on the edit. You can add the music directly in the Instagram Reels app. And that is very easy to do by picking a song and then turning the volume down when you post the video. So here's how I pick the music for these videos in the app. You can search for music and you could search for either trending music, or you could search for a song that just people would know. It doesn't necessarily have to be trending. For example, it could be a song that was popular three years ago, five years ago, even 10 years ago. But it's going to have that same effect because people are going to recognize it when it pops up in their feedback. Now, on these talking videos, you don't necessarily want to have a song where there's singing or rapping going on so many times. I will look for the instrumental version of the trending song. I'll just type the name of the song and then type instrumentl and sometimes you'll get the instrumental version right there in the app. The next thing you want to do is optimize the caption. I do write another hook as the first opening line because if people are watching these in Instagram reels, they only see the first line of your caption and then they would have to open it up to read the rest of it. I do recommend writing a full caption below that because you really want to type a good description for the platform to use. I do believe that the platform is analyzing the content within your caption to tell the algorithm what your video is about. So you want to make sure you write a really relevant caption and just provide more value inside of that caption. Now, the last thing that's going to determine whether these videos reach a lot of people is going to be your delivery. Now, here's the thing. It's hard for me to tell you, hey, here's how you deliver the message, because every single person is going to be different, and every single person is going to take a certain amount of time to get comfortable on camera and really get good at the delivery. Meaning when you pause, when you emphasize certain words just in the way you're delivering the message, it's going to make a big difference for how many people watch the video. In the beginning, when I did videos, I really sucked at this, honestly, and it took me a while to get good at it. I know other people who start and they're good right away, so every person's going to be different. Now, once you start posting a lot more good reels, you'll notice that your account engagement goes way up. The reason that is is because this type of content works better than any other type of content. I'm noticing a huge difference in engagement between my reels and and my regular videos, and then also between reels and image posts. It seems that the platform is just pushing reels above everything else. So when your account engagement goes way up, you'll notice that you're going to gain more followers. And you'll notice that pretty quickly if one of your reels takes off. I remember in the beginning I had one that really took off. And you'll notice that that single video is producing a lot of growth for your account. But the real growth is going to come when you have multiple videos taking off. And then when the platform starts to see, hey, this guy or gal is putting out really good content, let's start pushing it to even more people. And that's when you get this viral growth. When you see multiple videos taking off, you see your engagement rate is in the top tier, and the platform is actually recommending your account as an account to follow within whatever niche that you're in. The cool thing is you're going to get some discovery on your account even when you have no audience. I have people in my program who post their first reel and get thousands of views. Tens of thousands. I even had a student get hundreds of thousands of views on their first reel, which isn't the norm, but it shows you that it's possible to reach a lot of new people even if you don't have an audience. And this type of opportunity has not been possible on Instagram for many, many years. I mean, you'd have to go back to when the platform first started before you'd see this type of discovery on your account when you don't even have followers. Now I'm in the stage right now where I'm trying to be consistent and really stay in this pocket of viral growth. It's not possible for every single video to go viral, but I noticed that if I consistently put out better and better videos and just focus on quality content and doesn't necessarily mean production quality. I meant a good message that would be helpful to people. And then I do it in the best way I can. If I consistently focus on that every single week, then my account will continue to grow. Remember, even if you post just once or twice a week, that's going to be way better than going super hard for a month and then falling off for like two months. You want to be consistent because the platform really rewards this. Now, once you have your audience growth growing, you can start throwing in some sales content. You can do this through Instagram stories, or you can do this in the actual end of the videos with a call to action. I don't recommend that you do this in the very beginning because in the beginning you're just trying to grow your account. So the better way is going to be to just put out the videos with no sales, no call to action, and people are going to want to watch more videos and follow you for more. Now stay tuned to my channel because I'm going to be putting out way more content on this specific topic on how you can really build a powerful brand on Instagram and other platforms, and how you can use this to make a lot of money no matter what business you're in. So until then, I will see you all on the next video.