 What's up everybody once again, it's Fran, man, Sean and we got to talk about how to grow your Instagram following a super popular subject and so many people want to understand it. But especially when we talk about now, there's a lot of things that have been put out there 2019 and beyond. There's a more strategic approach is really going to help you take control of and grow your followers. So now there's three categories when it comes to growing your Instagram following. Number one, there's content, number two, there's awareness, and number three is frequency. That's just the consistency. How often you do it. Number one, which was content, I'm going to spend an entirely different video on that because it gets deep and you know, I like to get deep on this channel into the subjects I'm talking about. So I'll put a link in the description below and maybe put a link to it at the end of the video whenever that drops, haven't even created the video yet, but I decide I'm going to do it. So number two, creating awareness on your Instagram, which is the most popular subject. That's really the part you hear most people actually talking about also has three primary categories. It all comes down to distribution and a little bit of engagement. So what do I mean by distribution exactly? Distribution is essentially how your content gets out there. What methods, what platforms or mediums. Now this is all within Instagram. So when we talk about indirect distribution and direct distribution, indirect distribution is essentially your content being discovered through somebody else's platform, through somebody else. Direct distribution is essentially your content being discovered through yourself. For the most part, that's going to be directly on your page, but there are some nuances to it. It could be more complex, not going to get into that in this video. One thing I do want to talk about before I get into the massive awareness that you can create through specific distribution strategies and engagement strategies is a wild card. And this is something that can have huge results for the people that do it and commit to it. It's not guaranteed, but let me explain. Instagram TV, the platform is still highly underutilized and what's going to happen for the people that commit to it. If it ever catches on the people who are doing it early are going to find massive results. And as of now, there's a very low adoption rate. Yes, there's a lot of people that you probably see in terms of content on IGTV, but in terms of Instagram's audience, there's likely less than 10%, probably less than 5% of the audience utilizing IGTV, which means there's far less competition on IGTV, which is like the second coming of Instagram altogether. Instagram is doubling down on their investment. So you have the system working for you. Remember when Instagram didn't have as much competition and it was easy to become viral. The algorithm worked in your favorite. Now the algorithm barely shows all of your own followers, your content. And now it's not chronological. Those are the type of benefits that you get from using a platform like IGTV. That's still early on Instagram is putting billions of dollars of investment to make sure this thing works. They really want to make sure this thing works. So they're going to be helping the content. If already there go viral because they're trying to get the consumers, the non content creators to get stuck within the platform. So they're going to help you get seen early on. So that's my wild card. If you have the energy time and just willpower to commit to being an early person on IGT, one of those innovators, those first movers, what's the rest of the crowd starts to move in? You'll already have a position because there's just not a lot of people who are there just yet. Now moving on to direct distribution methods. The first thing, and as our minor, this means this is the stuff that you pretty much have control over. It doesn't have to be shown on somebody else's platform. You can do this most repeatedly because you're in control of your own platform. And that's how you are showing your content through it. And you're giving your content visibility through your own platform. But I'm talking about more than just posting. One, we're going to start with ads. I know ads are a scary thing for a lot of people. I'm not going to get into super detail about how to make your ads more effective in this video. But one thing I can say that a lot of people are killing themselves with is boosting posts on Instagram. Do not boost your posts on Instagram because it's not going to allow you to be as meticulous as targeted as you should be. Go to Facebook and then when you're on Facebook and the placement options, get rid of Facebook placements, get rid of the other ad networks because this video specifically about Instagram and leave it on the Instagram options for advertising. That's the Instagram news feed and the Instagram stories to add on to that. Instagram stories right now. And my opinion is one of the best ways to advertise outside of it. Having a similar price, obviously to any of these Facebook ads, Instagram ads, cause it's the same thing. The fact that it takes up 100% of the real estate on your screen, you're clicking through a story. Each story on Instagram or Facebook is taking up your entire screen. That means for a split second, you have their full attention. Now whether you keep people attention or not, that depends on the ad content. That's another video, as I said, but there's nothing better than that. Take the time to understand Facebook's ad system, run your ad for Instagram through there and just make sure it links back to your page or whatever other relevant link you're trying to take people to, but you can link people directly to your actual Instagram page. I know you've seen an ad on Instagram. When you click it, it just takes you to the person's Instagram page. The second type of direct distribution is just adding hashtags because you get that visibility within the hashtag. Hashtags do still work. I know they seem old and dusty and just not a useful, but they do still work. Obviously it doesn't work for everybody. It depends on, you know, what you got going on, but they do still work. And it's a direct distribution because when people click the ad, this is you. This is still on your page, your control platform. And another one of the biggest benefits that you're going to get when it comes to having just the direct distribution is honestly just creating really dope content that's going to engage people and move to the point that it starts to become viral, get them to the explorations page and essentially creates visibility for itself content that creates visibility for itself. That's not going to be every video that everybody posts, particularly if you aren't something like a comedian or something like that, but just keep that in mind. Again, it will talk about that in a whole another video as far as creating great and engaging content. All right. So for these awareness strategies, number one, we're going to keep it to the basics of things that actually work. Now for these awareness strategies and let's start with engagement. There's two things that they kind of work, but not really in my opinion than there's two things that do work. One that does not work in my opinion, or does not work well enough and not worth the time is engagement groups. Engagement groups do work, but if you aren't a power of a powerful engagement group is likely not worth your time. Just trying to save you guys time there, but that's just my opinion from my experience, what I've seen and people I've talked to, but give it a try. I know a lot of people are pushing that you should use engagement groups to each his own. Number two, follow for follow. It should be known at this time that follow for follow is a bad idea. I'm not going to spend a lot of time harping on it, but the one thing that you should keep in mind is if the only value people are getting from each other is following each other. If that's the only reason they're following each other, then you're not having a follower that's legitimately caring about the content that you create. And now you still essentially have a fake follower. It's the same thing. Don't waste your time. So for stuff that does work, liking and commenting on people's pictures, that stuff works. It gets attention. And now when we talk about awareness, just think about it from the mere fact that nobody knows who you are, but then you like that person's picture and they're like, yo, who is this person who liked my picture? People still do it. I don't necessarily believe in liking 50 pictures, maybe two or three that people benefit from. When someone sees you like a billion pictures, they already know that this is some fake stuff. You don't really care. You're just trying to get their attention. Don't do that. One picture, two pictures, three pictures max. In my opinion is enough. If they happen to look at your pictures now, or they go, Hey, they look at your profile, then you'll get that benefit on them deciding based on the content that you have, whether they follow you. Only a small percentage of the people, probably 10% will actually go through that funnel and end up becoming a follower. But if you do this systematically, your fan base will grow. Gary V pushes. This is like the dollar 80 cent strategy because he has a specific way of doing it. I know a lot of people who just do the top nine posts of a relevant hashtag that works. But a lot of times those top posts in those hashtag will be posts of people who already have a lot of followers. So in that vein, you're not expecting the person who's page that you're liking and commenting on to follow you. You're expecting the people in that community to see your name constantly and you're just staying constantly engaged. And then they eventually click on your page and see who you are. The other strategy when you're not clicking on top posts, you're just finding people who are following similar people to who you think are relevant. Like maybe they're in the same industry as you, or they are similar artists to you. When you do it that way, your whole goal is really coming down to just getting people's attention that might not necessarily have a lot of followers, but they are more likely to also become fans because they're a consumer, not a content creator for the most part. Again, the engagement thing is a highly manual process unless you're using somebody else to do it. You're hiring a company or something like that. And most people are not doing that. I don't even recommend it for most people. So if that being said, to make it most valuable to you is to do it in a systematic fashion. Don't try to binge five hours and get 10 followers or get 20 followers. And then, you know, you take a week break and then you do it again. You do 10 hours this time and then you take another week break. Now you're kind of just tired of it. It annoys you. You don't do it for months. Just say, Hey, I'm going to do this for one hour a day. And over time you will get the results when you look back at your progress over that time, an hour a day, maybe an hour a week, maybe five hours a week, but just pick a specific time and an amount of time you'll dedicate to it so you don't get burned out from doing this process. That highly manual stuff is tiring. I've done it before. And boy, I had to quit. Now moving on to indirect distribution. There's two primary ways to focus on this. And when you think about it, first you have to remember the fact that when indirect distribution means your content is being discovered through other people, right? Where engagement isn't really based around your content. It's just about you getting involved with other people. Content is about getting yourself seen by other people. So first you can get shout outs, right? Your content or your mention is on somebody else's page. So now people are funneling to you because you are placed in a different platform. But secondly, ever so common collaboration. So that one doubles down on not only are you being seen on somebody else's platform, but it's also showing an additional level of approval and association with whoever you're being shown by to this day. Collaborations are the holy grail. I don't know. I don't believe in trying to act like there's some super secret to things. There's the simple things that work. Just do them. Collapse, still work. Shout outs. Although they aren't as popular or they're not as effective as they used to be. They still work. They just do. So other than that, I would love to know what you guys think. Are there any additional methods that you know about Instagram that work? I want to know your guys opinion on IGTV. Have any of you started it or have you used any of these methods? Is there something that I forgot? But just remember when you strategize, know that there's these three things. There's the content itself. You can create understanding and strategy. Make that more effective. There's these awareness, but you need to know which strategies you're using by understanding the distribution or how it creates awareness. Is it indirect? Cause we're going through other platforms. Do I want to focus on that? Do I want to focus on direct right now? I can tell you for most people, people start with the engagement because it's hard to scale though. They stop and then once they get to that level, they start to focus a lot more on creating really good content that's going to use the fan base they have to create new fans because that fan base will help that content go viral. So it becomes much more of a direct distribution focus and indirect whenever they can find the right route or they have money to put towards it. As always, other than that, if you liked this video, go ahead and hit the like button. 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