How I Grew My Travel Blog From 265 Instagram Followers To 275 In Only Six Months

Damn, this is tough.  Growing Instagram followers is a nut I have not cracked, though it’s seemingly a must.  Perhaps ten years ago no one needed social media even though it was still Internet 2.0, but nowadays when one sets up a travel blog like mine, A World of Flophouses, many accounts come with it.  Your travel blog needs an Instagram account, along with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Google Plus, minimum.  Plus, consider being active on StumbelUpon, Flipboard, your own YouTube channel, and of course Tinder.

Sorry, not Tinder.  But a travel blog needs most all that other stuff, and you should spend time on them promoting your blog, everyone says.  Most experienced bloggers say they were shocked at first at how much time is needed.  One reason this blog, and me, are not famous is because I really can’t be bothered.

 

I haven’t yet written anything on this travel blog about actually running the blog, because such meta-cognition is not my style.  I’m not usually a public navel gazer.  This is not another “Why I’m quitting social media” story, as there are too many, plus I’m not quitting social media, not even Instagram.  Some bloggers have written about the feeling of being inadequate from all from the remarkable, gorgeous photos other travel bloggers are posting showing them relaxing by a resort pool, eating a perfect breakfast, jumping for joy with arms spread wide showing how exciting they are to being in a wonderful place.  It’s called Fomo – fear of missing out.

My photos are not like that, but I don’t suffer from feeling inadequate.  I have complete confidence my life is better than theirs.  I do feel much travel-themed Instagram accounts are not even a little bit realistic, but I don’t follow those anyway.  I hate those photos of people jumping for joy or even with their raised arms spread out, the “oh, what a wonder place this is” shot.

 

 

A typical Instagram post for me, complete with bot comments.

 

Instagram generates little engagement, and most of the comments I get there anyway are things like ?✌ and “So beautiful ?”..  One suspects bots in those cases because normal people don’t write that way, not even millennials.  The purpose of social media is supposed to be driving traffic to the blog, so that people can read your wonderful stories and fall for you.  And then they follow you, and that increases your Google Analytics scores and you have more “likes” on all your social media.  And that helps you if you’re monetizing your blog.  Or, just get lots of followers so you can wield the term “influencer” to describe yourself.  And that helps you make money and get freebies and you feel like a somebody instead of nobody.

I’m not making any money or getting freebies from my blog, and I have not yet tried to do so.  I have a regular job, and I’m not selling anything here.  I don’t approach companies or products for freebies the way some do.  Moreover, more followers for your photos doesn’t mean people are reading your stories.  Especially on Instagram, which I suspect drives almost no one to the blog.  More followers on “the ‘gram” means nothing if your focus is the blog.

 

When I first started with Instagram, my follower numbers seemed to grow steadily.  After my first boost of just regular friends and contacts, soon I was over 200 followers, then to about 265.  And somewhere around there I stayed.  This blog’s Twitter account has been slowly but steadily rising; same with Facebook followers.  But at Instagram, I have clearly plateaued.

As for Pinterest, I haven’t a clue how the damn thing even works.  This blog has an account, and I pin every new blog post there, but no idea if anyone sees them.  I’ll get to it one day.

 

Look at any travel blog’s Instagram account (they all have them) and the follower count will be like a random number generator.  Having loads of followers does not at all correlate with quality photos, not even slightly, not at all.  Quality and quantity in that world have zero connection.  I’ve seen a few Instagram accounts that haven’t even posted any photos yet, and still they had more followers than I.  I’ll posit this:  my photos are more than decent.  I have higher-end photo equipment, a good eye, post-processing skills, and I know what I’m doing.  Doesn’t matter.

 

Here’s an account with four, a big four, postings and s/he has 1,536 followers.  Wonder how that happened?

 

Here’s what happens every time I post a new photo on the gram:  I get a decent amount of likes, usually between 100 and 125.  I use lots of hashtags, and I’m convinced that’s how most people find my photos.  Then my followers go up by about five to ten.  Within four days or so, five to ten accounts unfollow me and are gone.  It’s mostly the ones who have just followed me, but not always.

If you don’t have a blog or a business or a brand (such as yourself) that is trying to grow on Instagram, you may have no clue how many games are played there.  People with common interests form what they call “pods” with the purpose of liking and commenting on each other’s posts, strictly to fool the Instagram algorithm into pushing them higher.  People do “follow for follow” rounds where they all agree to like or follow each other, or just follow back everyone who follows them.  If you see a blog that has 4,000 followers and is also following about 4,000, they’re probably playing that game.

 

 

The worst technique to grow your followers is “Follow/Unfollow”.  The blogger goes out and finds some Instagram accounts, let’s just say twenty, and she follows them all.  The hope is that a few will follow her back.  Then a few days later, she unfollows the original twenty, hoping none of them will notice.  She then picks twenty more, and the game continues.  Apps exist to help with this, to track activity on the gram, or even to schedule Follow/Unfollow activity automatically for you.  I bet the person above with four photos is doing that.

I know a fellow travel blogger who hit 20,000 follows a while back, and wrote a post about the milestone.  I asked his secret, and he admitted he does the follow-unfollow game.  The technique has developed a nasty reputation, deservedly, but damn it works.  He’s near 50k followers now.  Nearly all the 5-10 new followers I get after each new photo are playing this game.

 

I get the damnest followers.  It can be an account from a resort in the Philippines, a lawyer firm in Seattle, a safari travel agency in Africa, a random weightlifter posting photos of himself.  With some of them, especially a corporate account, you just know they’ll be gone in a few days.  Just one example:  “Jump Coffee Company” recently started following me, and I knew damn well they weren’t interested in me.  For individual accounts, once you learn the characteristics of the wanna-be-influencers, they are easy to spot.

 

No posts, no name, and over 5k followers.  I cry bullshit.

 

Yet another travel blogger friend introduced me to a few apps that will track activity on Instagram.  I started using one called “Unfollowers”, which will keep track of your follower list and let you know who recently unfollowed you.  I’m sorry I ever heard of this app, for now I can’t stop checking it.  Of everything I hate about social media, this follow-unfollow practice drives me crazy the most.  I’m suspicious now of anyone new who follows me, because I know damn well they’re probably gone soon.

Nowadays, every time I post a new photo and get the five to ten new followers, I take mental note of some of them.  Then I check the Unfollowers app later and see how fast they fly away.  If it’s an especially egregious turnaround time, I sometimes leave them a comment on their latest photo, always the same message.  “Thanks for the quick follow and unfollow.  Hope it works out for you,” I always say.  Only one person has ever complained, someone who quickly re-followed me.  Then three days later, she unfollowed me once more, and I left a second message for her, followed with “again”.

 

For someone who wants serious number of followers, they can always be bought.  Lots of companies will provide you with numbers by setting up huge volumes of fake accounts or just bots, and using them to follow you.  Just yesterday, as I write this, someone stole one of my photos (of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris) and reposted it on his own account.  I got Instagram to take it down, but as I looked at his stats, I noticed he had around 30,000 followers, but averaged only about 25 likes per photo.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason was most of his followers are fake, so of course they won’t have any activity.

A screenshot of one of the services where you can buy followers.  2,500 for $29.99 USD, not bad.

 

I do not worry, as some do, that Instagram is taking all the joy out of traveling.  Maybe for you it has; maybe you spend all your time getting the perfect shot and going to the most ‘grammable place.  If so, you are just acting like a normal photographer.  I started learning about photography about five years ago and I travel in part to do photography.  Not for the ‘gram, for me.  If there’s no blog and no social media, I’d still go take photos.

One thing I do like about Instagram is that the content is new.  There’s no way to repost or share photos, unless you steal them.  Unlike Facebook, you won’t see the same post by your cousin over and over again simply because people keep commenting on it.  Most of the stuff is real photos, very few (but not none) of those JPGs with insipid inspirational messages on them such as “Follow your dreams.  They’re the only thing worth following.”

 

This also makes Instagram hard.  Unlike Twitter, where a glib phrase can quickly go viral with the shares and retweeting, the only way you’re going viral on Instagram is if someone stumbles upon your profile and decides to follow you.  There’s no going viral on the ‘gram.  So people use tricks, like the pods, like bots, like buying followers.  Others search hashtags for new accounts, liking and commenting on some of their photos, hoping to be noticed and liked back.

Some wanna-be influencers even buy their photos.  That perfect sunset shot over their reclining feet, that perfect breakfast shot, and the cool cocktail photo they post, may not be theirs.  The shots that don’t have them in it (the “lifestyle” shots) may be bought from services specializing in just those types of things.  The person featured in the account never saw the sunset, the breakfast, or the drink, and the feet sticking out on the beach may not be theirs.

 

 

Read any article about how to grow your Instagram followers and they’ll say the same things:  Engage with your followers and with other accounts.  Post lots of bright, colorful photos, at the same time every day, and have a theme to them.  Tell a story with your photos.  Use hashtags wisely.  A few will give advice on what makes good photos, but not many, and clearly having good content DOES NOT work on its own.  I cry foul to all this stuff, as it’s tough to increase your followers naturally.  I have read many articles that conclude the best way to grow your account is to have lots of followers already.

Other people have written articles, like this good one, on their research-only attempts to be famous on Instagram.  A friend of mine, a good photographer, recently started a food-based Instagram account.  He intends it to be an experiment, how many followers he gets natively, without any promotion or interaction.  He’s up to three follows as I write this.

We are all trying to be sold on something, but there is no product.  The product is only other accounts.  One of my weaknesses is I don’t want my travel blog and its social media accounts to be all about me, yet that’s what seems to sell these days.  The canonical shot of the beautiful person jumping for joy in the plaza or having breakfast in a sunny bed with #LivingTheDream.  Part of it is the popular travel bloggers tend to be oversized personalities who are selling that.  The other part is they tend to be young and cute and look better in a bikini than I ever could.

 

This is not me, and I will never, never have such a photo of myself.      (Photo from pexels.com stock photo)

 

I enjoy accounts that mock and call out other travel accounts, such as Insta-repeat, which identifies the overly-used canonical scenes.  Boyfriends of Instagram shows photos of people taking photos, the boyfriends going to ridiculous lengths to shoot their girlfriend.  You did not sleep there calls out photos of tents set up in impossible places, just for the photo, because no one would actually sleep there.

 

As for the Fomo thing mentioned above, I don’t post photos of me having breakfast in bed, because normal people do not do those things, but every photo I post is a decent one (IMHO), because why would anyone post bad photos?  A while ago, a friend pointed out that my food photos always looked like expensive dishes, and I took it as a challenge.  I posted seven photos, one each day, of cheap traveler food, items such as falafels and noodle soups.  Posting every day for a week (I don’t usually do that) got me some perhaps-longer-term additional follows; I moved from 265 to 275 followers.

And then gradually it fell back to around 265 again.  Later, I declared it to be “sushi week” and posted seven photos of just sushi.  Again, followers went up, then gently sank back to around 265, my magic number.

 

And there I sat.  And there I still am today.

 

Would you, uh, consider following me on, you know, the Instagram thing here?    My photos are decent, I promise….