People might say that now it is hard to grow on Instagram for free.

But it is relatively SIMPLE, if you follow the principles that work across ANY social media platform, as I have done it, to grow pages to 400k+ followers for free.

And there are only 4 such principles:

1. Market research;
2. Great content;
3. Consistency;
4. Network.

Let’s talk about these in more detail, so you can understand how to implement them.

Market research – you have to know what is your goal with Instagram… and NOT just a follower number, that doesn’t count.

You have to know what you want to do with Instagram, what you would like to SELL or OFFER, because that way you will know who is your target audience.

When you know your target audience, you know what they are interested in, what they like (or even if you don’t know, you can go and ask them).

Then you look at similar accounts in your niche – the ones who are doing really well and the ones who are not doing so well.

See what is the difference. And then do what are the successful ones doing differently.

It includes looking at their feed, their bio, their captions, their stories (mind you, not all great accounts use stories correctly), everything that comes to Instagram.

With market research you have to do the hashtag research. You can’t use random hashtags, and you can’t use only big hashtags.

The goal of hashtags is to rank in the top posts. So that means that you have to take hashtags that are smaller (they have less posts), and build up on them, and use few bigger hashtags.

Great content – many people get this wrong. They think that the content should be all about them, or they don’t pay much attention to it or the target audience.

But you MUST HAVE a great content that speaks to your target audience, that is valuable to them.

It ties into market research because with it you will see what content audience likes better and then you can use that content.

And remember – give value with your content to the audience, don’t make it about you, or what you had for lunch (unless you are a fitness or nutrition expert, where you can tie it in), because that is a sure way to not get followers.

And leave all the behind the scenes stuff for stories – the feed has to be CLEAN not full of behind the scenes posts.

Consistency – another big point where most of the people fail.

You have to be posting consistently for Instagram to reward you – they see that you are serious, and if you have a quality content, then they will show it to more people.

I have had people come to me and ask what I have been doing differently, because it seemed that we do everything the same…

But they lacked consistency – I was posting every day, but they weren’t, so they could reach my numbers.

Network – now that you have prepared your account for it with all the previous principles, it is now time to apply network.

It is like pouring gasoline on fire – it makes it spread wildly.

But only if you use it correctly…

You have to build a network of good, quality accounts in YOUR niche.

They have to be from your niche because your content will be shown to their followers or people who are like their followers.

And you have to collaborate with these accounts.

That way you will be pushing out your content to more people for them to see.

But remember – this relationship has to be mutually beneficial for it to work.

If you apply ALL of the principles then you are guaranteed success not only on Instagram but any other social media platform you choose.

But if you miss one of them, it will most likely mean failure to your efforts.

So make sure you do the work – in the beginning it could take a few days, but later you will have to do maybe 1 hour a day to get minimum 100 followers a day.

And if you have any questions, you can message me or ask in the comments.