How i grew 50k followers on Instagram in one year 😱

Hey guys,

i know i haven't postet much yet in my new Masterclass Light tier yet but i will start filling it up with more and more content which i hope is interesting for you.

In this post i want to tell you how i grew around 50k Instagram followers in one year. So i hope i can help you do the same or, since it's always a matter of the quality of your content, improve little by little by using my strategy.

I looked up old screenshots of my IG profile and in October 2019 i had 2.811 followers. Now i have 57,9k 😇

So here's what i did:

1.Building a core followership.

First and most important you should start building a core followership. Like this you always have a certain amount of guaranteed likes on a post from a certain group that enjoys seeing your content AND knows you give back some love to their posts. That is actually a crucial thing in the first step of growing followers -> Liking other people's posts back 

In my field of nude art photography or lingerie or even portrait photography there are a lot of feature pages or online magazines with a lot of followers and most importantly a huge group of people tagging these pages on a daily basis. 

Let's take @gallantmagazine for an example, check their profile, go to the posts they are tagged in and check out these profiles and posts.

I went through these posts and liked a lot - A LOT!

But this is how get attention from people who work in the same field as you, share the same style of photos and like your content back as well and might give you a follow as well. It's also a great way to collect inspiration and find out what other photographers or model do or which posts perform better and/or not so good. 

So basically this is not a secret tip, it's the obvious social media network strategy but instead of liking random posts i think by finding the right content and the right profiles through these feature pages makes a big difference since the possibility that you get a follow back is pretty high (if you have good content of course)

Also don't be afraid of liking posts that are (in your opinion) not as "good" as your own work. A beginner photographer/model will follow you back more likely than a professional who already has a lot of followers and gets too many notifications.

2. Tag Magazines / Feature pages instead of using hashtags

Speaking of these accounts, of course you should also be tagging them since other people might use the same strategy as you and go through the tagged posts and like your posts as well. In my opinion this works far better than using hashtags nowadays, especially since most tags that might lead to sexy/risky content are not played by the Instagram algorithm.

If you like you can always use hashtags as well, but i grew this much without ever using hashtags so you can do it too 😅

So the great goal of tagging these pages should be: Get your photo featured on their page!

The more followers a page like this has the less likely it is that they will see your photo only by tagging them, so don't be afraid by writing them a serious DM. And by serious i don't mean "Hey wanna feature my photo?" You should take your time to write a short 2-3 sentence message that comes across respectfully and has all infos in it like: 

Hey @gallantmagazine,

i really love your content and have been a big fan for a while now. I would be truly honored if you could have a look at this post right here (send the post in the DM) with model @... I thought this might fit your page pretty good 😇

Hope too hear from you soon

Best wishes,

..

Of course it could be that only 1 page out 10 will answer you, it was the same for me at the beginning! Now most of them follow my account and share my photos on a regular basis. But you shouldn't give up since these pages rely on other peoples content. They are not the ones with talent for photography, you are! So keep your head up and keep going!

Here are the photos that got me my first feautures:

Some pages might ask you for money, some do it for free. I only paid twice for a posting which was at @tophotnudemodel 5$ per post which had great results at the time and after these 10$ the engine starting rolling and other pages just started to hop on and feature my shots.

I wouldn't recommend paying for features but i think it's nothing to be embarrased about since it's not the same as buying followers and it can really help you.

3. Hope your models share the photos as well

Let's face it - it is easier for a beautiful model to gain followers so give your models the photos even when you booked the model and paid her for the shoot!

I know some photographers who will never understand why i say this, they think because they paid for the shoot only they should do something with the photos they created. Somehow they have a point, but whats the point if no one actually sees your work??

Other photographers even wouldn't understand why they should even pay a model and will only work TFP - i think you can see the difference in the results of a professional model and i love working with beautiful models from Ukraine, Russia, Poland or Italy so for me it was normal to pay models and i always gave them all photos and it was always a huge boost of valuable followers. For me valuable followers are good international models, photographers or magazines which contribute to your core followership. 

For now that's all but i might add some new points to this post in the future to stay tuned.

I hope this could help you a bit and when you use this strategy i am sure you will see some results soon ✌🏻