5 habits to grow your social following in 2024, according to Good Influence(r)

Good Influencer is a course built on the expertise of the Home Renovation account, Chris Loves Julia. Started in the summer of 2015, CLJ had about 4,000 followers on Instagram, holding steady. It was mostly a personal account where Julia shared what she wanted with no thought of who was seeing it. It really was a very standard Instagram account, where she sometimes posted about a wedding she went to or a daughter who emptied a drawer or a photo of renovations she and Chris were doing.

Now, this is all fine if you just want to be an Instagram user. But Julia was also a full-time blogger and had been for six years. She could sense that Instagram was going to be a platform where people digested information—one that was going to be for more than just pretty pictures. It was then she decided to make a focused effort to grow her Instagram account and audience.

At the time, there were a lot of creatives who were buying followers and buying likes and participating in round-robin giveaways, where 20 of them would get together and pitch in money so that they could giveaway $500 to someone who followed all of them (tsk tsk tsk…).

Julia didn’t want to do that. She wanted people to follow Chris Loves Julia because they loved her content. She wanted to create a community of engaged, loyal followers whose eyes wouldn’t glaze over once a giveaway was done. So Julia made a plan.

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Within a few months, she hit 10,000 followers and celebrated with all of them. Then, two months later, doubled that number. Now, over eight years later, CLJ has blown past 1,200,000 followers on Instagram and is one of the top DIY/Home Design accounts on Instagram. Chris Loves Julia is consistently gaining another 30-45K organic followers every month.

When Julia wrote her own plan of action years ago, it required a lot of testing, pivoting and perseverance through algorithms and updates (hello, Instagram stories and reels! You’re important!). But growth is simpler than you think; not easy, but simple.

You’re here because you feel like Julia did in 2015. You want to grow. You want to do it right. The Good Influencer team applauds you because that’s the only way to do it!

And you can grow and turn your Instagram into a legitimate, monetize-able brand that followers and advertisers alike will flock to. We’re eager to have more good influencers proving their value and being a positive force, and we know you have it in you.

So get ready, because it starts now.

Looking at platforms like Instagram or TikTok, whether you’re an influencer or business owner, can be daunting. But we’ve boiled our findings down to five habits that, if followed, will help you to grow your following in an organic and sustainable way.

1. Participate on the apps as a user, and interact with other accounts in your category. Instagram has made it known that they don’t just want you posting, they want you to be consuming content on the app as well. By commenting and engaging with other accounts in your category, you’re putting your page in front of users who follow and engage with accounts similar to yours. Being the first to comment on a Reel or share another creator’s content to your stories, can help to expose your page to a whole new audience.
2. Post daily. The most efficient way to gain followers is to post often. The quickest way to lose followers is to post inconsistently. These apps want you to be posting often, and in doing so, you’ll be rewarded. In an age where one viral video can dramatically change the course of your business, it’s important to be putting consistent quality content out there. Look for ways to stretch a content idea into a full week’s worth and, don’t forget about Stories—those are really important too.
3. Stay up to date on trends. Ten minutes a day, that’s the minimum you should spend on each platform exploring what’s trending. Now, this is not to say just take the idea and copy it. Look at the elements of the video that make it so popular and re-create it in your own, uniquely branded way. P.S This one ties into #1. It’s just as important to act as a consumer as it is a user.
4. Set goals. If your only goal is to hit a certain number of followers, then you have your sights set in the wrong place. Smaller analytics like story views, link clicks, engagement rates, average likes and comments are all indicators of whether you’re creating the kind of content that can attract new followers. If your follower count is stuck, dive deep into the analytics the apps provide to see where the weak link is. Our team sets goals for all of the above mentioned analytics each quarter.
5. Photograph and record everything…and we mean everything. Everything is content. And once you start acting as such, the content creation process will become much easier. Build up your portfolio of images and videos to pull from so you’re not scrambling to create tomorrow’s post. Whether you’re a business owner or an influencer, get into the habit of capturing everything- even if you don’t have a particular use for it in mind at the moment. Excess content is the key to staying ahead on content and jumping on new trends you come across during your 10 minutes/day.

If you’re anxious about growing your following, whether you are starting from scratch or your following has been stagnant for some time, we know these points can jump-start your growth, but only when you do the work.

It’s time to take action.

Ready to take your social following to the next level? Start off 2024 with a new kind of resolution and join our Race to 10K Challenge starting on January 8th. This is a four-week, guided challenge to help you organically reach your first (or next) 10,000 followers.

The challenge takes place in our creator Mastermind forum on Facebook, and every day we’ll be sharing homework, worksheets, workshops and guides to set you on the right path for growing your following. Topics we discuss include: how to set up your Instagram page, finding your niche, writing your bio, creating your content calendar, how often to post, what to share to stories, showing up in feed, creating high quality content, standing out in your niche, and so much more.

To join, click on the link below and subscribe to our Good Influencer Course on Teachable. The subscription gives you access to our entire course library as well as the Mastermind forum. Once you’ve subscribed and joined the Mastermind group, you’re all set to participate in the challenge. We look forward to seeing you there!