How to Get Your First 1,000 Instagram Followers

With a small following, most of the people who might follow you have never seen your account. In 2023, Instagram said most of what people see in Explore, and the majority of what they see in Reels, comes from accounts they don't follow. So your first 1,000 are likely to be mostly strangers. You reach them by being shown to them and by talking to the right people. Then your profile has to give them a reason to follow.

This guide splits the work at 100. Before that point, Instagram Insights doesn't show follower trends, so you keep a tally by hand and focus on being found. After it, you read the trends and do more of what works. You won't find a timeline here, because nobody can honestly give you one.

The guide covers only what changes at this size. Our organic Instagram growth guide has the full method, and the beginner's guide to Instagram followers has a wider list of tactics.

Why the first 1,000 work differently

Instagram "doesn't have a singular algorithm," Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, wrote in Instagram's ranking explainer on May 31, 2023. Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels each rank posts in their own way. In Explore, most of what people see comes from accounts they don't follow. In Reels, Instagram says the majority does.

That means a small account grows mostly through people who don't follow it yet. With few followers, your feed reaches few people. Reels and Explore are where strangers can find you.

On April 30, 2024, Instagram announced a new input to ranking that it said "will give smaller creators more distribution." The same update replaced copies with originals in recommendations. That announcement states Instagram's intent. It gives no follower cut-off and no measured effect, so treat it as a reason to keep posting, not as a promise of reach.

So the job has two parts. Get shown to people who don't know you yet, and turn a profile visit into a follow. Every step below serves one of the two.

Before you start: set up so you can measure

Three things come first, because the plan depends on seeing what works.

1. Switch to a professional account. Insights lives there. If you're unsure which type fits, see professional vs personal Instagram accounts.
2. Check Account Status. In the same 2023 explainer, Mosseri calls Account Status "the best way to understand if your account and content is eligible to be recommended on Instagram." A small account depends on recommendations, so if something is flagged there, fix that before anything else.
3. Start a weekly tally. Instagram's Help Center says follower trends in Insights, such as followers gained and lost, appear only once an account has at least 100 people following it. Until then, a note or a spreadsheet does the job.

Keep the tally to what you can see on your own profile. Once a week, write down your follower count. For each post that week, note its likes, comments and shares, and whether your follower count jumped after it went up. It takes minutes, and until 100 it's your only record of how your follower count moves.

You're ready when the account is professional, Account Status shows nothing flagged, and the first row of your tally is filled in.

Stage one: from zero to your first 100

The goal here is to get in front of people who have never heard of you, and to make sure the profile they land on asks for the follow.

1. Pick one audience and make your profile say why to follow

This is the step most likely to fail, and it fails quietly. A Reel can travel well and still bring no follows, because the stranger who taps through can't tell what they'd get.

Start by choosing one audience: who they are and what they come to Instagram for. If you're stuck, this guide to finding your target audience on Instagram walks through it. Then make three parts of your profile speak to that audience:

• Name field. Say what you post or do, not only who you are.
• Bio. Say who the account is for and what they'll get by following. Our post on writing an Instagram bio has examples.
• First row of your grid. Put the posts there that a stranger from your audience would want more of.

The check is a stranger test. Show your profile for a few seconds to someone who doesn't know your account. If they can say what you post and who it's for, the profile is doing its job.

2. Post original Reels made for people who don't know you yet

Instagram's 2023 explainer says the most important things Reels ranking predicts are whether someone will reshare a Reel, watch it to the end, and like it. A stranger owes you none of those, so put the point up front and make something worth sending to a friend.

Keep it original. Instagram says it shows low-resolution or watermarked Reels less, and its April 2024 changes put originals ahead of copies in recommendations. Film your own footage and export it cleanly.

Trial reels are worth trying at this size. A trial reel is a Reel that Instagram shares with people who don't follow you at first, and Instagram says it made trial reels available to everyone. For an account with few followers, that's a test audience you don't otherwise have. Instagram reports that in its internal analysis of more than 400,000 creators, 40% posted Reels more often after trying trial reels, and 80% of those saw more Reels reach from non-followers. Those are Instagram's own figures, and Instagram adds that performance is not guaranteed.

Hashtags do less than older advice suggests. Instagram limits each post or Reel to up to five hashtags, a change Social Media Today reported rolling out from mid-December 2025. Mosseri said in 2025 that hashtags don't increase reach; they help say what a post is about. So treat them as labels and pick up to five precise ones, as covered in our guide to choosing hashtags for Instagram growth.

Post on a schedule you can keep. A pace you abandon teaches you nothing.

The check lives in your tally. After a handful of Reels, look at which ones came right before a jump in your follower count. Make more like those.

3. Talk to people who fit, by hand

Reels bring strangers to you. Conversations bring you to them. Spend your time on three groups:

• accounts about your size in your niche;
• the followers of accounts similar to yours, who already care about your topic;
• everyone who comments on your posts. Reply to all of them.

Leave comments that respond to what the person actually posted. Put this in a fixed weekly slot rather than an occasional burst, so it happens on slow weeks too.

You'll know it's working when some of these people follow back or start commenting on your posts. Note them in your tally.

4. Bring in people who already know you

These are some of the easiest follows to win. Ask your email list, your website visitors, your customers and your audiences on other social profiles to follow you on Instagram. Give them the link and one reason to follow. A follow line at the end of a blog post or newsletter costs nothing.

Count it as working when a few follows arrive from people you invited.

Stage two: from 100 to 1,000

Once 100 people follow you, Insights starts showing follower trends, so you no longer rely on the tally alone. Your job becomes reading those trends and doing more of what works.

Read follower growth in Insights every few weeks

Open Insights and look at followers gained and lost. Our walkthrough on using Instagram Insights covers where things are. Keep noting which Reels and conversations came just before each rise, as you did in your tally.

When the numbers stall, the pattern often points to the fix. These are rules of thumb, not Instagram's diagnosis:

Start collaborating with accounts your size

Collaboration makes more sense now than at the start, because you have an audience to offer back.

A Collab post is a post or Reel you co-author with another account. Once the invited account accepts, it appears on both profiles and is shown to both sets of followers. Shoutout swaps and takeovers with accounts your size follow the same logic. Each of you introduces the other to people who already like the topic. If a takeover appeals, here's how to host an Instagram takeover.

Pick partners whose followers would plausibly want your posts too. Then check your follows in the days after each collaboration, and repeat with the partners that brought them.

Check the whole system every few weeks

Run through the plan alongside your Insights review:

• The profile still passes the stranger test.
• Your Reels reach people who don't follow you.
• Follows arrive from Reels and from your conversations.
• The follower trend in Insights is rising.
• Account Status shows nothing flagged.

When one fails, go back to that step. When you reach 1,000, the full organic growth method picks up from there.

What to skip while you're small

• Buying followers or likes. Instagram announced in November 2018 that it was removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments. Meta's spam policy prohibits buying or selling engagement such as likes, follows and views. Bought followers also aren't the audience you chose, so they can't tell you which posts work. Our page on buying Instagram followers covers the rules in more detail.
• Follow-for-follow trades. They add followers who came for a trade, not for your content. In stage two, that can show up as follows you gain and then lose.
• Commenting on huge accounts. Your comment sits among a crowd of others. One creator's published experiment found it brought little, while engaging with followers of similar accounts worked better.
• Stuffing hashtags. You get up to five, and they label posts rather than add reach.
• Anyone promising 1,000 in a day, or any fixed number. Instagram decides who sees your posts. Nobody outside Instagram can honestly guarantee a count.

How long does it take to reach 1,000?

There's no honest universal answer. Several of the personal growth stories that rank for this search predate Reels, which Instagram announced on August 5, 2020. Those accounts grew on a different Instagram, and their timelines don't transfer to yours.

Watch signals instead of the calendar:

• whether your Reels reach people who don't follow you;
• how many follows each Reel brings, from your tally;
• the follower trend in Insights once you pass 100.

If those are moving the right way, the plan is working, however long it takes.

Where a growth service fits at this stage

Flock publishes this blog and sells an Instagram growth service, so read this section with that in mind.

Flock finds the audience that fits an account, then engages those people through automation. You point it at the accounts and hashtags your audience follows. The followers who come from it are real people. Nothing is bought, and Flock's plans don't sell followers. Any follower numbers are estimates, never a guarantee. Flock acts on your account through automation. Even so, no automation tool, Flock included, can promise that Instagram will never limit an account.

At this size, do stage-one steps 1 and 2 yourself first. A service can take over part of step 3, the hours spent finding and engaging people who fit. It can't fix a profile that doesn't convert or Reels that don't travel, and it doesn't fit if you haven't settled on an audience. If you're past that point, here's how Flock works.

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