Journey To 50k Instagram Followers on Complete Autopilot


Last year I created an Instagram account about dog. I had a strong passion toward dogs, I grown up with having dogs in my family, but after moved out from my parent’s house and stay alone, I can’t have a dog myself as my current house doesn’t had enough space for a dog. But my loves for dog stay the same.

I want to share cute dog’s photo and gather a large followers on Instagram. There are a lot of other dog’s Instagram account but I believe there are still rooms for one more dog’s account.

A couple of months ago I started an experiment to see if it was possible to grow my Instagram followers & reach without doing a huge amount of work.

I have tried a few different approaches over that time and have fine tuned the method to require as little work as possible to get the biggest results possible. I’ve to admit that I did use my own service and purchased 5k Instagram followers at the beginning, though 90% of these followers were removed during December 2014 Instagram mass purging.

In this journey I’m going to share the strategies, tools and methods with you and then show you how you can do it yourself!

Instagram Automation Tool Kicks In

What You Will Learn

  • How to increase Instagram followers
  • How to automate the entire process
  • The exact strategy I used
  • How to set it all up in less than 30 minutes

Current Account State


To kick things off I’m going to show the current state of my account and then we’ll move into how I did it.

I’ll be only spend 5–10 minutes a day to monitor and maybe change some minor settings towards the whole journey.

All of the growth is happening on complete autopilot which is just how I like to do things so I can focus my limited time elsewhere while everything is growing.

The account was inactive for around 2.5 months as I was having trouble to access a phone that can let me upload photos to Instagram (more on this later), but finally I solved this and had gained 1.5k new followers since 29 April 2015, that’s average 100 new followers a day. However the whole automation comes in only 1 week after I started back, so that’s average 200 new followers a day.

In this journey I will be using these tools:

  1. Iconosquare — Web-based Instagram account monitoring
  2. Use Instagram on Chrome (PC and Mac) — Yes! I will show you how to use Instagram or any Android app on Chrome browser!
  3. Massplanner — A super nice paid social media automation tools (Best investment I ever made on any automation tool)

If you want you can follow me and start your own journey, ask me anything and share your ideas and journey in comment below!

The Master Plan

  1. Post quality photo everyday.
  2. Follow 500 people a day until 7500 (Instagram’s follow limit)
  3. Unfollow all 7500 following and repeat step 2.
  4. Like 1500–2100 photos daily.
  5. Looking for related accounts and similar size in followers, ask for exchange shoutout.

Very simple, right?

How To Increase Instagram Followers with only 10 Minutes a Day


Well, to gain followers on Instagram is pretty simple yet time consuming. The keys to getting more followers in Instagram are very simple:

  • Post quality photos — If your followers like what you posted, they will want their friends to see it too. They will comment and mention their friends. This helps you gain more new followers, and some sort of viral happen here.
  • Interact with your potential followers and current followers. Social media is about interaction, so you need to interact with people here. Like and comment your potential followers and get their attention, interact with your current followers and build loyalty, turn them become your promoter.

However to do all this tasks, 10 minutes a day is impossible. I figured out I need an automation tool to turn this daily repetitive tasks into auto pilot, so I can reach my goal without spending too much time on it. Let me introduce you my best automation pal: Massplanner

Massplanner — Automate 6 Big Social Network Easily

Massplanner is by far the BEST social media automation tool I’ve used, it offers 5 days free trial, full features are available during the free trial period. It let you automate Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn, this is the most comprehensive automation tool in the market right now. What you can do with Massplanner:

Instagram:

  • Auto-Follow, Follow Back, Unfollow, Auto-Like, Auto-Comment.

Facebook:

  • Schedule Publishing, Find Groups and Pages, Publish Clickable Images, Join Groups, Un-join Groups, Ignore Groups, Flexible Scheduling, Export/Import Group and Pages, Schedule Posts in bulk, Auto-Share posts to Group, Auto Stop campaign, Schedule posts from RSS feeds, Add Signature to posts, URL shortening, Auto Backup, Support Spintax, Auto accept new Group Members, Auto Invite friends to your group.

Twitter:

  • Schedule Tweets, add multiple tweets from file, add signature, add multiple image tweets from your computer, auto follow, auto un-follow, follow back, pull tweets from RSS Feeds, auto retweet.

Pinterest:

  • Schedule Pin, auto repin, add video pins, export followers list, add multiple pins, default URL, add signature, auto likes, auto comment, auto follow, follow back, auto unfollow, auto URL shortening, add pins from URL or computer, watermark pins, pull pins from RSS Feeds.

Google+:

  • Schedule Posts to pages, communities and profiles, find communities, join communities, turn off group notification, auto unjoin communities, create exact time posts, ignore communities, publish clickable images, export/import communities list, schedule posts from RSS feeds, add signature to all your posts, URL shortening, schedule in bulk, auto follow, auto unfollow.

LinkedIn:

  • Schedule updates on profile and groups, export group lists, publish clickable images posts, flexible scheduling, schedule in bulk, schedule posts from RSS Feeds, add signature to posts, URL shortening, find groups by keywords, auto join groups, auto unjoin groups, ignore gorups.

When the first time I discovered this awesome tool and the super long list of their features, my jaw dropped on my desk. But, to make it more awesome and scary, the pricing is really really really low and affordable, you will regret if you don’t invest in it today! Massplanner offers 2 packages, $9.95/month or $44.95/month. For $9.95/month you are allow to manage 12 social media accounts (2 per platform) or 24 accounts (4 per platform) for $49.95/month. I am using $9.95/month package as I don’t need to manage 24 accounts. Head over to Massplanner.com and grab a copy today before they increase the price!

I used Massplanner’s Instagram tools to auto follow and auto likes. I set it to likes around 20 hashtags that are highly related to dogs, and also I set it to auto follow my competitors’ followers.

How To Setup Massplanner for Instagram


Step 1 — Add Instagram account into Massplanner

Massplanner — Add New Social Profile

Select Instagram to add, and fill in details of your Instagram profile.

Massplanner — Add Instagram Profile

You can define the proxy to use if you manage more than 3 Instagram accounts with Massplanner. If you only use it to manage 1–2 accounts per platform, don’t worry about it, just leave it blank. If you do want to use proxy just because you won’t want Instagram to know you are running this from your VPS or home computer, I highly recommend SSL Private Proxy.

SSLPrivateProxy.com offers private Instagram proxy that is fast and safe, I’ve used them for more than a year and never had problem. Sometime when I was too aggressive with the activities and got my accounts banned, I will request them to replace the proxy just to avoid any footprint. They will replace any proxy for you free when you request. Excellent service.

Remember to enable the Nightmode and define the time frame for it, we are playing safe here and don’t want to get detected by Instagram that we are using automation tool.

Step 2 — Setting up the tasks


Once you had added your Instagram account and Massplanner had verified in the status, move on to Tools section.

In the Tools section we are going to setup:

To do that just click on “More Tools” link at the back of each social profile you added.

Massplanner — Tools Screen

Once you are in More Tools page, you will see 5 functions Massplanner can automate for you. I use auto-follow and auto like only. I don’t use auto comment as this is really spammy and you will have higher risk of getting block by Instagram. If you want to try it, make sure you use spintax so you won’t be using same comment over and over. I will use the unfollow function once I reach max 7500 following.

Setting up Auto Follow

My Massplanner Auto Follow Setting

My settings for auto follow:

  1. Wait between 30 to 45 minutes before each new operation.
  2. Follow between 30 to 40 people per operation.
  3. Follow a maximum of 500 people per day.
  4. Scroll the search page for 97 seconds.

Massplanner — Auto Follow Source Setting

As for the source to follow, I ask Massplanner to follow followers of my competitors. There are hundreds of Instagram accounts which are about dogs. I can easily get their followers to follow me back once I followed them because I post high quality photos.

As you can see from the screen above, there are 3 types of sources you can use.

Follow people by keyword search — Keyword here will be hashtag. Since Massplanner use Iconosquare at the back to perform all the tasks, you can easily test by searching in Iconosquare yourself with the hashtag you want and see what are the results.

Follow friends of target accounts — Using this option when you want to follow your competitors’ followers. The instructions on how to get the URL are pretty straight forward.

Follow friends of existing friends — This will let you follow your follower’s followers. I’m not sure when I will want to use this option.

So just select the option and click Start Auto Follow on the setting page and you are done.

Setting up Auto Like

My Massplanner auto like setting

My setting for auto likes:

  1. Wait between 25 to 45 minutes before each new operation.
  2. Like between 5 to 9 posts per operation.

I used around 20 keywords (hashtags) to find my target follower’s photo, and like them. Find the right and targeted hashtags of your own so you can get targeted followers. Don’t use those common hashtags like: love, like4like, shout4shout, s4s, l4l. They just don’t work and you are wasting the power of Massplanner. Find relevant hashtags, don’t be lazy.

With these settings, I am able to gain around 200 new followers on daily basis. One feature that Massplanner got me so excited and I can’t find in other Instagram automation tool is the “Night Mode” feature. You can defined the time frame where you want the activities to be pause aka sleep during night mode. You can even define different night mode time for separate social accounts! That’s a very useful feature to keep you fly under the radar because any account follow or like 24 hours a day definitely look spammy.

I never had any block or ban by using Massplanner. By the way Massplanner provides very details video tutorials on every single functions on their software, and their support response is top notch, all my questions and problems are solved within 12 hours! Can’t find anything to complain!

Now we need a way to upload photo from my Macbook Air without using phone.

How To Use Instagram On PC / Mac


Run Instagram on Mac

Remember I mentioned I was having trouble to access a phone to upload photos on my Instagram account? That’s because I’ve used my phone to create too many accounts and Instagram banned me to access any Instagram account with my phone. I can’t find any nice tool that allow me to upload photo via my Macbook Air, until I found ARChon runtime.

How Does This Works?

It is really easy! What we are going to do is the following:

There is a super detail step-by-steps tutorial on how to get this work, you can read it at maketecheasier.com.

Once the Instagram app had up and running on my Macbook Air, I went into the setting and turn off “Use Instagram’s Advanced Camera” function so I can upload photos from my Macbook Air.

Turn Off Advanced Camera In Instagram Options

Once this is done, what I do everyday is to upload a new photo using this app. Why I am doing so is because I received a lot of email on daily basis asking me to feature their pet dog. I can’t schedule ahead of time for these post because I need to select the best photo to feature everyday. But that only took me 5 minutes.

We are 95% done, the rest is tracking and monitoring.

Tracking Progress


Login my Instagram account with Iconosquare

Manage Instagram with Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a nice web-based Instagram management tool where you can access to all the Instagram functions except upload photo. You can comment, like, follow, unfollow. What I like the most about them is the search function. I can search any hashtags and the result page is so friendly. I use Iconosquare to track my followers number, and reply to comment on my photo. There is nothing much we will do on Iconosquare, so I will not go into details about it. You can read this post on how to use Iconosquare that I wrote sometime ago: How to use Iconosquare to manage Instagram.

I will reply any comments or questions on my photo, and I will track the numbers of new followers I gained with Iconosquare. I will use it to search for accounts that I can contact for exchange shoutout too.

What’s Next


I just leave Massplanner.com running on my VPS 24/7 and it automatically gets to work at 9am every morning. It is never late and never phones in sick — it just does what you tell it to do!

Stay tuned and make sure you follow my journey. I will update this post on weekly basis and when there are some changes in my strategies. Make sure you bookmarked and share with your friends!

Comments and feedback are welcome!

Originally published at socialkingmaker.com on May 15, 2015.