Introduction
Hey Steemit community! Today I am going to teach you all how to grow niche instagram accounts from the ground up with as little as 30 minutes work per day, build REAL followings and then monetize your following in the most efficient and effective way possible! I currently growing https://www.instagram.com/explorethewilderness/ which is a nature/photography niche (one of my favourites).
Step 1: Choose A Niche
A "niche" is better described as the category of account you will be growing. It is important to choose one niche and stick to it, rather than to post in a whole bunch of them. This way you will be gaining only targeted followers who will all be interested in that specific type of account. You have to choose a niche that is not overly saturated but also not too specific that there is not a large enough fan base.
My personal favorite right now is photography and nature, super easy to get content for and build a strong following. It is good to get into it right now, and I assure you if you follow all my steps and choose to grow a photography/nature account within a week you will have at least 500 real followers and be pulling in over 80 likes per photo.
Other good niches for people just getting started with Instagram are; textposts, memes/funny videos, sport highlights and of course Adult (XXX) Content.
Step 2: Choose A Fitting Username
For the best results you want to pick a username that relates to what you are posting, easy to remember and if possible refrain from using underscores, numbers as substitutes for letters or periods. It looks unprofessional in my opinion and messy. It can be annoying but once you find a good name you will be glad you spent that time looking for one.
Step 3: Finding/Posting Good Content!
As bad as it sounds, you'll get the best results when you take other peoples content rather than create your own at first. Get pictures off Google Images/other Instagram accounts and videos downloaded off YouTube/Facebook. Look for content that is visually pleasing, meaning it has good saturation/brightness, and is taken in high resolution. There is nothing worse than an amazing photo that is in potato quality - people will scroll right past it and not give it another look. You want your posts to be the ones that catch peoples eye!
Another thing I like to point out to people going into this business is consistency. Keep a schedule of when you post content and stick to it, your followers will become accustomed to it and it builds overall engagement on the account. You need to post a lot, a major mistake I see people doing is posting content once or twice a day when in fact for new accounts you want to be posting 4-5 times a day spread out evenly throughout the course of 24 hours. I currently post on https://www.instagram.com/explorethewilderness/ every 6 hours when possible to keep the account active.
Step 4: The Power Of Hashtags
A lot of people neglect using hashtags, or don't use them as effectively as they could. Hashtags are what allow people who do not follow you to find your content when searching for similar content - now you see how important they are? Hashtags are the number one most effective way to gain followers that actually enjoy and will like the content you post.
There are plenty of sites that can generate the maximum of 30 hashtags per post for you to use. The site I used to generate my hashtags is http://www.tagblender.net/ but there are countless others that you can use to the same effect. I advise you to use hashtags that have under 200,000 posts in them if possible, otherwise it is very hard for smaller accounts to get recognized since they get buried under all the other posts there are.
Please do not include the hashtags in the description of the photo or video, it makes it look very messy. Instead post the photo/video with a good description and then add a comment where you paste in all your hashtags. This hides them from the average user just scrolling down their feed, but also has the same effect of getting your content higher levels of exposure.
Step 5: Build Followers
The most effective way of gaining followers is by interacting with the community you are going to be posting to. By this I mean following/liking what other people in the same niche as you are posting. My rule of thumb is to only follow accounts that are following more people than they have followers this greatly increases the likelihood of them following you back.
The best way of finding heaps of people to follow is by going onto a large page in your niche (50k+ followers), going to their most recent photo (make sure its within the last 24 hours) and clicking on the "likers", or people who have liked that photo. Then scroll through them clicking on their profiles at random and follow the ones that meet the criteria of following more people than they have followers and that have public profiles. Don't bother following people with private accounts as they are usually personal accounts and will either not accept you or accept and not follow you back. I recommend following about 100 people per day as a new account, in spurts of about 20-40 people at once and right after you post photo/video for the best effect.
Step 6: Shoutouts
After you have reached around 1000 followers on your account you should begin looking for similarly sized accounts within your niche and contact them via DM or email (if applicable) and ask them if they would be interested in giving you a "shoutout" in return for you doing the same for them. You would be surprised how successful this method is, as most people with accounts around 1000-10000 all have the same goal - to gain followers, and will jump at the opportunity.
You have to be careful not to do too many shoutouts, or your followers will become disinterested as all they are seeing from you is promotion after promotion. At the most I would do 1 shoutout/promotion post per 10 regular posts for the best results with as little repercussions as possible.
Another option is to buy shoutouts from users with very large followings. I would stay away from these generally as they are overpriced and usually not as effective at gaining followers as you would think. I've had accounts with 2 million followers shout me out for $60 and have only received 400-500 organic followers.
Step 7: Monetize
Okay, you've amassed a following of 20k and are regularly getting 1000 likes and 5000 video views per post, so what? When you think about it this is an insane amount of traffic, traffic which advertisers want. You can go the traditional route of selling shoutouts on forums, which is very profitable in itself, but the real money lies with companies that want to get their product out there. Go take a second and look at some celebrity Instagram's, I guarantee you it wont take minutes until you find a post promoting some sort of product. Celebrities with followings of 1 million to 5 million are getting paid anywhere between $20k-$500k PER POST.
So, how do you get in contact with these companies? Look for companies that are relatively new to the market and don't already have a Instagram page as the face of their brand. Startups are great as they likely do not have huge amounts of funding to spend on traditional advertising methods and will jump at the opportunity to pay you a few hundred to show off their latest product. Go to their websites or social media pages and contact them, saying that you are a promoter on instagram and can get their product (x number of unique impressions) per day and link to their sales page. Sound professional and do not immediately discuss money in your first contact, there is time for that later.
My first ever promotion I did was with Urban Armor Gear, a company that sells protective cases for phones. I didn't even get paid for it, nor did I care. All I received was 3 different cases from them that I would use to take photos of to share on my Instagram page (and then promptly sold on eBay for $40 each). It didn't matter that I didn't get paid the first time, it was the experience and learning that came from it. I then went on to continue promoting them, and as my following grew - I began to get paid $200 per featured post.
Sometimes it's hit and miss, sometimes you need a bit of luck. But spend some time developing a strong template that you send to companies and send it off to 20-30 different ones. I assure you atleast 5 will respond if your template isn't complete garbage.