The Instagram Follow-Unfollow method is a popular strategy used on this platform to gain more followers. You can quickly gain more followers by targeting people with similar interests. The best way to start is by following people in your niche. Posting useful content and following interested people increases your chances of earning a follow back.

The biggest advantage of this approach is that it enables you to gain followers who are specifically interested in your content or product offerings. When following people, you must accept the fact early on that you will follow complete strangers; however, there are correct ways to follow people and incorrect ways to follow people. These techniques make it easy for us to grow accounts in any niche.

We have previously covered the best methods to get 10k followers on Instagram. In this article, we will focus on follow unfollow method:

Identifying the Right Targets:

The first thing you need to do before you start following ” Find people who aren’t superstars, but still have a good following. Kylie Jenner would not be a good option if you’re into makeup and fashion. Although she represents that particular category on Instagram, her followers may not be interested in your content, as they might have various reasons for following her. Large accounts are often targeted by bots like that. A company discovered that over half of Justin Bieber’s Twitter followers were fake, specifically 53%. Look for people who have 100,000 – 400,000 followers and at least 10% of their follower count as likes per post. If a person has 100,000 followers, their pictures must receive a minimum of 10,000 likes. Avoid using that account as a ‘target’ if the number is less than 10%. The audience you want can be gained by following likers, commenters, and customers from target accounts.

Followers / Following Ratio:

Another thing you need to consider is the ratios from the perspective accounts that you are following. When people discuss ratios on Instagram, it typically means the number of followers a person has, compared to the number of people they’re following. When following people, it’s best to find people who are close to an equal number of followers/following – or a 1-to-1 ratio.

For example, if you see someone who has 500 followers and is following 500 people, that person is much more likely to follow-back than someone who is following 100 people and has 2,000 followers.

Following Private Accounts:

Public accounts are easier to follow than private accounts. Following public accounts will allow you to proceed to Step 2. The number of accounts you can follow will be impacted by following private accounts. You can follow up to 7500 accounts on Instagram, but if you’re waiting for approval on 500 private accounts, you can only follow 7000.

Check out their Contents:

If the person doesn’t have any posts, don’t follow. These people might be likely to follow back, but they are not good customers.

To grow our accounts, we follow over 200 people every day. It’s worth the effort despite being time-consuming and tedious. Reaching 200 follows and providing good content often results in gaining 50-75 followers. As your accounts grow, you can reduce the number of people you follow and concentrate more on your content.

Following with a 1-2 Punch:

Following with a 1-2 Punch is the not-talked-about method that has helped us gain millions of followers. Once you follow a user that you identified in step 1, the ideal way to get them to follow-back is liking the latest post that the user had, and then liking an older post from about 2- 3 weeks back. If they don’t post consistently, then liking one of their first photos is also a great way to gain their follow-back.

This looks great because when the user sees this notification, it’ll look like you scrolled through their account and found content that you liked. They’ll appreciate this, and they are much more likely to follow you back and like some of your photos – hence improve your engagement rate.

Often when people get followed by strangers, they will have a hard time following back because

they will assume it’s either:

Following to get a follow back (and then un-following).
A bot following (and then un-following).

But when you follow with the 1-2 Punch, most people will believe you are genuinely interested in

their content. This gives you a much greater percentage of receiving a follow-back.

Does the follow unfollow method work on Instagram:

Absolutely, it’s still a very effective method for growing accounts, but also consider that the 1-2 Punch is the best way to grow on Instagram using the follow/unfollow method.

Let me give you a quick little cheat sheet.

Find Targets in your Niche

Find target sources in your niche that has a lot of people that comment and like on their posts. If you have a comedy account, a great example would be @kalesalad. They have 3.5 Million followers, and they have on average about 200,000 people that like their content, and get +5K comments per post. Identifying great long-term target accounts can be extremely beneficial.

Target Accounts under 5000 followers:

Search through the comments and likes for people who have a public profile. If they have under 5,000 followers, they are much more likely to follow back. Like their most recent photo and a photo from a few weeks ago, then give them a follow. Repeat this over & over again for the best results.

Also keep in mind

Successful Instagram strategy involves analyzing your growth. Monitoring your followers can offer valuable insights into the level of interest in your brand or product, as well as the demographics of your audience. This information enables you to customize content to better suit your audience’s needs and desires, as well as to discover new potential markets that might benefit from your offerings. By analyzing engagement levels, you can understand how people interact with your posts.

Un-following

Unfortunately, at some point, you must un-follow the people you have once followed (even if they followed you back). Instagram has a following limit of 7,500. Un-following depends a lot on what your ratio cycles are. This is described below.

Instagram follow unfollow bot

If you are only interested in un-following people that don’t follow you back, there are plenty of apps that can help you determine who these people are. Just search in the Google Play or Apple Store, and you’ll be able to find an app like that! For example, use phantombuster and proceed with the “Instagram Auto Unfollow” phantom. The app automatically unfollows people who don’t follow you back.

Obviously, un-following people you follow will result in a loss of followers to some extent; however, this is canceled out due to the number of people you will gain organically. Also, people will have a tough time un-following your account if your content is what made them follow in the first place. Meaning, if you provide good content, people won’t un-follow, because they are genuinely interested in your posts.

Ratio Cycles:

Following a ratio cycle can optimize your follow-back percentages. A ratio cycle is what your account’s following-to-follower ratios should look like at any given point while you are growing your account. Please refer to the table below to see how you could gain 5,000 followers in a month (easily scalable, up to 15,000 to even 20,000 depending on how aggressive you are and how good your content is). By sticking to a strict ratio cycle, you optimize your account’s performance. Note that these types of results only occur if you have enjoyable content, are in a fast-growing niche, and use the 1-2 Punch following method. Nobody likes following hundreds of people per day–but it’s the unsexy truth about gaining followers when you first start off on Instagram. Don’t believe in these “secret tools” or “unique methods” that promise you thousands of free followers – those are all scams. You need to attract real people to your account to get real results–and the only way to do that is by finding them yourself.

At some point, you don’t need to follow people to gain followers; unfortunately, that’s not the case initially. Once you gained your first 15,000 followers, then you can start focusing more time on creating viral content and interacting within engagement groups.

Notice that you don’t un-follow for several days. This is because it’s better to give people time to follow back. There are automated programs that can un-follow people after they haven’t followed you for X number of days; however, without programs like this, it’s difficult to know if they’ve had enough time to follow you. I recommend doing your daily un-followings before you do your daily followings, so you give everyone at least one day to follow you back.

You also need to be aware of Instagram delays. Instagram delays have varied over time.

Instagram delays are the time it takes to process each action an account commits. For example, you aren’t allowed to follow 60 accounts in 60 seconds – Instagram will limit your actions if they believe you are spamming. It’s best to spread out all your Instagram actions throughout the day to avoid Instagram limitations and delays. These delays and limitations vary from account to account, so be cautious.

Now obviously, this ratio cycle is incredibly idealistic and hypothetical. Most people aren’t going to go about this exactly, and you’re likely not going to get that high of a follow-back ratio every day (especially considering recent Instagram action blocks), but this should give you a good idea how to move forward. We will talk about Instagram limits a lot in another article.

Other Growing Methods:

Commenting

Consistent commenting can greatly enhance your Instagram presence. In some sense, it is more important than following because you can attract more people than just a single user. If the target’s statistics are similar to yours, commenting is most effective. Identify people in your niche who would be genuinely interested in your account. Don’t bother commenting on celebrity accounts.

I advise against spamming of any kind. There is no need to write comments like, “Go follow my account!” or “Nice post!” on every single post you come across. Get personal with the person.

Ask questions. Be specific, so it looks like you’re not just another bot.

Liking

Your aim in liking photos should be around 100-150 per day. That may seem like a lot, but if you are following 100-120, then technically you can just have a 1-2 Punch and like two photos when you follow someone, and you should be fine. Liking alone doesn’t work well unless you’re already following the person, except for the ones in your own feed. A test was conducted earlier, during which we liked 1,000 random photos based on popular hashtags within our niche, but we only gained two followers. We conducted a comparable experiment where we used a 1-2 Punch strategy on the 500 individuals we tracked and gained 400 followers. Liking the photos of those you follow is of utmost importance, whereas doing so for those you don’t follow is comparatively less impactful.

Final Thoughts:

Ultimately, the follow-unfollow technique on Instagram proves to be an effective approach to enhance brand exposure and interaction. Through a strategic process of following and unfollowing accounts that match your niche or target audience, you can effortlessly establish an active following base that is more inclined to engage with your content.

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Instagram Follow | Unfollow Method