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I posted daily on my Instagram for 30 days.
I went viral multiple times.
And I grew to 80k followers in one month.
If you’re new around here, I’m Madeline, and I’m here to help you with your online business, help you grow your blog, YouTube, and Instagram, and create different streams of passive income as well.
So if this is up your street, welcome!
In this article, I will share with you the strategy that I used for my Instagram account to go viral and grow my following by thousands.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Feel free to keep reading below or watch the video:
Stagnating at 7,000 followers
On the 22nd of November (2023), I had 7,900 followers on my Instagram.
I had been stagnating at that point for the longest time, probably over a year.
I was getting 2,000, maybe 3,000 views per reel, and getting average engagement. So it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Then I decided to try and do something a bit different and see if it would work.
After about a week of posting daily and more intentionally, on November 29, three of my reels started to pick up.
These reels started to get about 20,000 views, which was a huge increase from the 2,000 views I used to get.
This brought a sudden influx of about 200 followers in just 2 days, which was a lot for me. I was really excited about this, as I had reached a bit over 8,000 followers at that point.
On December 1st, I had 8,150 followers, and then I kept posting daily for pretty much the entire month of December, give or take.
I did have a few days off for Christmas and Boxing Day.
Going viral on Instagram
On December 2nd, I had 8,400 followers, so it was starting to pick up a few hundred followers a day.
And then I had multiple reels going viral with over a million views.
I soon reached 10K followers, and when that happened, I started gaining over 1,000-2,000 followers every single day (sometimes even more).
I think the peak was 7,000 new followers in one day, which was absolutely insane.
Reaching 80,000 followers
On January 1st, I had 81,000 followers.
In 1 month, I had gone from 7,000 to 80,000 followers.
So, was it just luck?
I don’t think so because there’s a lot of strategy that went behind it, a lot of being intentional about it.
And I’m going to share with you a few things that I did to make this growth happen.
Here’s the thing: I had other reels in the past that had gone semi-viral.
They would get 80,000 views or maybe 100,000 views.
Not quite the millions of views these new reels got, but they were still picking up views. But those old reels wouldn’t really get me a lot of followers in the past.
They would get a lot of views, and a specific reel would get maybe a lot more engagement than others, but that was about it. It wouldn’t really translate into a big following growth.
I think that was for a reason because December was completely different: in that month, every single reel that went viral and got over a million views, also got me a ton of new followers.
How I grew to 80,000 followers on Instagram in one month
Why have these new reels had these results?
I think it’s because I was starting to speak more specifically to the type of person that I’m helping with my content.
Tip #1: Your Audience
I’m talking to mums in their 30s who want to declutter their homes or who feel overwhelmed with their homes. They feel stressed and tired, and they don’t know how to address it, but they know they have to do something about it.
I was also addressing a pain point that we have in common. I had been there myself.
With my content these days, that’s what I’m trying to help them do: declutter.
So in December, in my content, in the new reels I was creating, I was offering help by giving my audience, in the caption, some extra tips.
Tip #2: The hook
I would also make sure to have a hook on the screen of the reel.
As people are scrolling on Instagram, you want your reel to capture their attention when they see your content for the first time in a sea of reels.
And the way that you do that is through a strong hook.
Something that’s going to resonate with them, something that’s going to speak to them, call them out, something that will stand out.
Tip #3: The caption
In the caption of my reels, I would give them extra tips. Then I would also tell them about a decluttering freebie checklist that I had created for them to further help them out.
So a mum in her 30s who wants to declutter or feels stressed and overwhelmed with her home would see a reel of mine that catches their eye.
Then they would go to the caption, and find loads of more tips for them.
And then they would get another thing, a freebie checklist, that’s a little bit more help.
I feel like taking my audience on a journey like this made a big difference.
Tip #4: Simplifying content creation
Another thing that helped a lot during December was making it my goal to make the process of creating and posting content for Instagram super simple.
I wanted this to become a habit.
That’s why I started posting daily.
This doesn’t mean I was spending hours every day creating reels.
In fact, I managed to simplify my process a lot. I knew that if I wanted to post daily, I had to make the process quick and easy so that I could stay consistent in the long run.
Posting every day is anything but easy if you have to film, edit, and write captions every single day.
So I had to have a system that was quick and simple.
These days, posting a reel takes me less than 20 minutes to write the caption, edit the video, and do everything else that’s needed, because I have simplified the process a lot.
Tip #5: Automate DMs when someone comments on your post
Another thing I implemented that proved to be of real help was automating my DMs from my comments.
In my captions, I would write, “Comment checklist and I’ll send you my free checklist for decluttering”.
But the thing is, once things started to pick up, that meant I would have had to reply to hundreds or thousands of comments. I just couldn’t keep up with that!
This is how I started using Manychat, which is an app that has a free feature and that can be used to automate comments.
This means that the app will automatically send the link to my freebie via DM to all those who have left a comment on my reel with the word ‘checklist’ in it.
See here the full tutorial on how to set up this to auto DM someone who comments on your Instagram post.
I go in more depth into how I made this fast growth happen in my masterclass Scroll Stopper (available in my Insta GlowUp Kit course as well).
Things that don’t matter on Instagram
Now let me tell you about the things that didn’t work, I didn’t do, or didn’t really matter.
1. The time that I posted
I used to think it was so important to post at a certain time, but I found it didn’t matter if it was morning, noon, afternoon, or evening.
In the grand scheme of things, the posting time didn’t really matter.
2. Another one was the hashtags
It didn’t matter the amount of hashtags that I used.
And I played with using 15 or 30, but it didn’t make a difference. I feel like having keywords in your caption is more important.
This doesn’t mean stuffing keywords, but using relevant keywords in the actual sentences that you use normally in the caption.
Of course you can still use relevant hashtags.
And I don’t feel like Instagram will negatively mark you if you use all 30 hashtags. But don’t obsess about the number of hashtags.
3. Didn’t ask for follows.
Something I didn’t do was go and leave comments on other people’s posts or send them messages, asking them to come back to my account and follow me.
In reality, those things never work.
I know there used to be ‘follow groups’ or ‘engagement pods’ or other names they were called.
I used to get many invites to these types of groups, and I haven’t really gotten them anymore, so I think people have realised that those don’t really work.
If you want to truly grow a successful online business, what works is attracting an engaged audience that actually cares about you and finds your content useful, rather than chasing them and trying to get them to follow you.
4. And the fourth thing I didn’t do was ask people to share my content.
Even without asking this in my captions or stories, I actually got a lot more shares during December than I ever did before.
My only call to action was always ‘comment checklist’ or something similar, depending on the freebie I was offering.
I never asked them to share, but I got loads of shares.
And I think people will share content that they find valuable, or relevant enough to share with somebody else that they know.
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So these are a few of the things that I did differently in December.
I go in more depth into how I made this growth happen in my masterclass Scroll Stopper (available in my Insta GlowUp Kit course as well).
In the Scroll-Stopper masterclass, I share with you the 10 things that I did differently that I think made this growth happen.
It has my full Instagram ‘Wheel of Growth’, and if you make all of these little cogs or wheels spin together, that’s when the magic happens.
I hope this post on how I grew to 80k followers in one month was helpful.
Use the comments below and let me know where you are on your Instagram journey and how I can further help you.
