10 days, 10 posts, 100 followers

Shall we crack a cheeky champas to celebrate?

Patima Tantiprasut
Jul 25, 2017 · 9 min read

Ten days ago, I branched off from an interest, nay, a pursuit from my personal instagram account and started a new account with posts specifically about this special interest. What started off as initially not wanting to spam my friends with a subject they might not be too keen to see too often, turned into a mini challenge with a few goals.

By way of background, I’ve designed strategies and brand voices for numerous clients, including getting them started on social media, implementing the strategies that I designed for them and maintained social media accounts for multiple brands over the years. I’m pretty familiar with helping to connect brands with their customers, but this project is quite different. It’s the first time that I’ve focused on a personal interest as the subject, with no business objective driving it.

For this adventure, I wanted to see how quickly I could grow the followers from zero to… [insert any number here] and experiment with the current instagram algorithms to learn a little more about how to more effectively grow the presence of a new account in an already saturated virtual world.

The amount of followers doesn’t specifically matter as much as the quality of engagement, so I’m therefore avoiding any follow bots and paid avenues, and want to see what it’ll look like to build it purely off good photos, hashtagging and other organic methods.

I’ve deliberately kept the handle name quiet from any of my friends and family, keeping it nice and anonymous for the time being so that the data is kept as pure as possible. With the same goal in mind, I won’t share the handle just yet in this post, but planning on documenting the journey, learnings and findings as I go along.

Here at day 10, I’m very excited to report that this mysterious new account currently has over 100 followers and a decent amount of post engagements.

Hey, sure, it might not be many, especially with a lot of articles out there about how to get to thousands of followers, but not many that I’ve stumbled across that are about just simply getting started and what it can look like in the early days. It takes effort and hard work to gain traction, so I want to share my journey with you all.

So, 100 followers after 10 days of effort. I can see why people starting new accounts might start feeling impatient at this stage. Had I’d gone into it thinking, “I’ve got great photos and content, surely hundreds of people will love it immediately!”, this post might be one speaking of disappointment rather than success. I believe that slow and steady wins the race when we’re building on the voice, tone and personality of the account. After all, it’s about building genuine relationships, and this process takes time.

Let’s have a look at what’s happened over these past 10 days;

Day 1

Thursday 13th, zero followers.

Content

Prior to this, I had taken 12 photos on my phone of this mystery topic, so I knew that I had a small, but quality bank up of content ready to use.

Creating an account

Creating the account was easy of course. I created a new email address, chose a handle and wrote a quirky bio to go with it. Here we are, at day one, zero followers.

Posting up a photo

I posted photo #1, adding a descriptive caption and 30 popular and relevant hashtags to the post (the max amount that instagram allows), using a hashtag finder tool. I added a location as well.

Banned hashtags on Instagram

I checked each of the hashtags to make sure none were banned by Instagram before using them. It’s easy to do this yourself by simply clicking on the hashtag and seeing if it comes up with recent posts. If it doesn’t, and a message like this appears below the “top posts”, then don’t use the hashtag 😘

Also, this wasn’t an accidental spoiler alert on the topic, in case you were trying to guess it…

The first ever post was published on the afternoon of Thursday, 13th July at 1:45pm (Perth local time). To my delight, the post received 25 likes over the next 24 hours and I went from zero to 5 followers.

A slow start, but it was a start nonetheless.

Following others

That night, I started following some [ secret topic ] related instagram accounts, and ones that are regularly posting with the same hashtags that I used.

I was a little excited (impatient) and I repeated the process from day one, posting up another photo from my library on that same night. This time, I posted one of my better photos at 11:36pm.

Same hashtags, similar content structure.

This time, I received some more followers and the following morning, was at 10 followers!

Day 2

Friday 14th, 10 followers.

On day two, after the excitement of the 100% increase in followers over night (lol), I changed the account to a business account so that I could start receiving insights on the posts. Sadly, I can’t see the reach and impressions of the previous two posts, but could start tracking from here.

Most excitingly, the previous post received a whopping 43 likes! This could have been due to a few factors; the main ones perhaps being the quality of the photo or the time of posting.

I uploaded another post at 11:04am that morning. Similar caption format and the same hashtags again.

The stats don’t look as great on this post, which could be from a couple of factors; either the quality of the photo (it’s not as attractive as the others) or the reach during that time of day. It’s difficult to pinpoint the reason without more data.

At this stage I couldn’t compare the reach performance with the previous posts because I hadn’t enabled analytics sooner. I also can’t see the insights on when my followers are online yet to ascertain when the best times to post are. I’ll have to wait until I get 100 followers to be able to access this.

The impatience was getting to me.

I opted to put up a second post on the same day, which went up at 12:25pm; same hashtags and although the reach was higher, the likes and engagement were lower.

Again, it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of the drop without more statistics to understand. Was it simply that Fridays were no good for this interest? Onwards!

Liking, following and commenting

I started liking posts of similar interests and following other accounts throughout the day, commenting on the ones that stood out. I wouldn’t normally do this on a personal social media account, but for this purpose, this was how I wanted my posts to be treated; it seemed only fair and logical to do so.

We’re now up to 14 followers and following about 120 others. Almost a 50% increase in 24 hours…

Day 3

Saturday 15th, 23 followers.

This morning I’ve woken up with even more followers; we’re now at a whopping 23! That’s right, over a 100% increase from day one.

Time to upload the next post. This time, picking a similar time to avoid changing too many factors and uploading at 12:33pm. The reach was even better this time and there was an improvement in the engagement. Progress!

I went back and started tagging some of the other posts with the brands/subject matters that appeared in them, also checking that location had been tagged.

That afternoon was much of the same work; liking, commenting and following other interesting instagram accounts.

Day 4

Sunday 16th, 34 followers.

This day’s post, uploaded at 12:23pm, was a jackpot!

🎉🎉🎉

Again, the contributing factors could have been quality of the photo, the time and day, or the larger follower base, but the reach (77) and engagement ratio (75) couldn’t have been sweeter. Things are starting to get exciting.

Day 5

Monday 17th, 46 followers.

Time to mix it up even further. This day’s post went up later at 4:45pm and received a decent reach to engagement ratio again (61 reach, 63 engagement).

I used the same hashtags and continued to like and comment on other instagram posts.

Day 6

Tuesday 18th, 57 followers.

This day’s post went up in the mid afternoon (3:19pm) and received a higher reach (78) and decent engagement (53).

As per the previous posts, I used the same hashtags and continued to like and comment on other instagram posts. This time, I also uploaded instagram stories throughout the day that were more lifestyle related (a morning coffee, beach walk, some sky and waves) to see what impact this content avenue might have.

I uploaded a combination of photos, videos and boomerangs.

Example of a beach shot I posted in the stories (added some quirky text too)

Day 7

Wednesday 19th, 67 followers.

This day, I decided to mix it up even further by creating and uploading a graphic with some content rather than a photo, also tagging some brands that it was relevant to.

The post went up at 12:39pm and although the reach was slightly lower (59), the engagement was still sound (42).

More stories were posted as well, this time of river walks, sunshine and the outdoors.

River walk photo added via stories.

Day 8

Thursday 20th, 76 followers.

Photo of some juice I had, uploaded to stories.

This day followed much of the same process as before; posting a photo (12:42pm), uploading stories throughout the day (coffees, juice, outdoors), along with liking and commenting on other posts.

The reach was back to the high end (78) and engagement was similar to the previous day (56).

Day 9

Friday 21st, 85 followers.

We’re getting close to 100, which means I can access the audience insights soon!

Continuing on from the effort from the previous days, I posted a photo (a little later, at 2:54pm this time), uploading stories throughout the day (healthy lifestyle related), along with liking and commenting on other posts.

Day 10

Saturday 22nd, 104 followers 🎉

I was so excited on this day to reach the 100 followers milestone! I indeed celebrated with champas that night. The insights area now showed a graph with the hours that my followers are most active, but I won’t be able to access the most popular days for another week.

This day’s post went up a little earlier than usual to match the popular times according to the insights, at 11:51am.

The adjustment in posting time unfortunately didn’t have a big impact on the statistics though. The reach was at 61 and the engagement was at 50, even lower than the previous Saturday. What does this mean? Nothing conclusive yet! The experiment continues, now armed with more stats to compare and measure.

As usual, I continued on with posting stories and engaging with other instagram accounts, in particular, influencers in the space, with the aim to keep building on this momentum. I’ve also developed a strategy to experiment and refine the hashtags to optimise the reach.

From zero to hero?

Not quite! I’m having a great deal of fun having a play around with the platform for personal use. Now that I have access to insights, I’ll be monitoring the change in metrics as I continue to experiment with the content, sharing stories, having conversations and engaging with other accounts.

My formula will consist of patience and consistency, so stay tuned to see if that leads to success! I’m personally looking forward to seeing how this little experiment goes.

So far, it’s been a steady growth in followers (via iconosquare).

Discovery!

I stumbled across this sweet post on tracking your instagram followers via google sheets along the way and can’t wait to get it set up.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and I’d love to hear your comments, feedback, tips or advice on any other methods I should give a try. For now, I’ll keep at it with this mystery account! 🤙

Patima Tantiprasut

Written by

GM @ PetRescue | Co-founding @team6Q & Organiser @localhostAU & @mixinconf. Previous: Head of Product & Design at @sevenwestmedia | Director @bamcreative 🖤

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