If I Had to Start From 0, This Is What I Would Do | Do This to Hit 10K Followers on Instagram

If I had to start an Instagram account from scratch, absolute zero followers, this would be my exact plan to hit 10,000 followers in 30 days. We're talking what I would do on day one, day two, day 30. Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, because you're going to wanna follow this plan exactly to see the quickest and best results. What's up, friends? It's Millie. Welcome back to my channel, where you can expect weekly videos from me every Sunday and Wednesday, teaching you the latest strategies for how you can grow your brand, business, and social media as an aspiring influencer. First, I wanna say a huge thank you to this video's shout-outs, because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all of you. If you want a shout-out on one of my future videos, be sure to screenshot yourself watching this and tag me over on Instagram stories, or leave a comment below and subscribe to my channel. As always, timestamps will be in the comments down below, because I value your time and you already know why you're here. So, let's get into it. All right, it's day one. I have zero followers. What do we do? Week one is all about preparing the land. Believe it or not, during this first week, I am not going to be posting every day or pumping out reels left and right. I'm going to prepare my account for new followers to make sure when new visitors do come, they're going to press that follow button. Because why would I invite somebody over for dinner when I haven't even planned the meal yet? Or when I haven't even started cooking, right? You know what I mean? Okay, so how do you do that? Day one. This might be like a minute one or hour one thing, or it could be a whole day. Depends on where you're at with your journey. But first and foremost, you need to be clear about who you are and who you want to be and what presence you want to establish on Instagram. What do you want to be known for? Where do you see yourself in the next three to five years? Start acting like, lack? Start acting lack. Start acting like that person today. When you know what the ultimate goal is that you want with Instagram, you're able to create an actual plan to help you get there. So if you want to be a fitness coach, we're going to create your plan around you being a fitness coach. If in three to five years, you want to be a, I don't know. What do people want to be these days? Or in three to five years, you want to just have an Instagram account that's about you tasting and trying different coffees around your city. Start doing that now. Start creating the plan for you three to five years from now. Okay, day two. It is day two. What do we do? First, I want to be on a creator account. So let's just get that out of the way. I'm going to be on a creator account. Now, when I set up my profile, I want to use a strong profile photo, username, and nameplate that establishes my positioning. All three of these things should match and make sense together. If you're in the fashion niche, lifestyle photos look great for profile photos. If you're in the travel niche, travel photos make sense. I'm a coach. I want mine to be professional, but also a little fun and playful. So I'm going to do a nice headshot, me smiling, looking at the camera with a solid background color because brand colors. Now that I have a strong profile photo, my username is not MillieGirl1234. It's like IG with Millie, you know, makes sense with my niche. And my nameplate says influencer coach. Next, I'm going to make sure my bio communicates why someone should follow me. Believe it or not, your bio is not about you. It doesn't matter where you're located. It doesn't matter what your favorite quote is or that you're a dog mom and you love coffee. Like, no, your bio should be about why somebody should follow you. Because when you know exactly who you're trying to reach and how you can help them, you're already ahead of the game. So I want to reach aspiring influencers, and I know that the thing they struggle with the most is growing on social media and making money. So that's what I'm going to say in my bio. I'm going to say, helping aspiring influencers establish their presence on Instagram and land paid brand clubs. I'm going to tell them right away what's in it for them. I have an entire video that teaches you why Instagram SEO is a great tool and how you can make sure that you are implementing it into your Instagram strategy. So after this video, I recommend watching this one next. Now we're on day three, content research. On day three, I'm going to dive into my content research within my niche while keeping an open mind. I'm keeping an open mind because I don't want to already assume that I know what's going to work or that I already know what topics to talk about. I want to start from scratch, fresh, what is currently happening in my niche. And if you're somebody who wants to grow fast, remaining in one niche and being topically consistent is going to be vital because it makes your content more binge worthy, like a Netflix show. Think about your behavior when you're watching TV. Are you going to watch one episode of The Office and then Game of Thrones and then Love Island and then Adventure Time? Probably not. A great show makes you binge multiple episodes and that's because they're all related. They're all part of a bigger picture and a bigger story. So when I'm doing my content research, I am looking for questions, phrases, or topics that keep coming up. And I'll do my research on places like Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, slash the Reels tab. You can even use free headline generator websites like Content Row or Title Dash Generator. And I'm also going to be looking at my competitors. The reason I'm looking for questions or topics that keep coming up is that these places are going to show you what is currently needed or being asked for or trending in your niche, making it that much easier to jump in front of your target audience's eyes and capture their attention on what's already proven to work. For example, if you type your niche or one of your content pillars, which are subtopics within your niche, into a search engine, see what is recommended for you to search. Typically on search engines, there's going to be a list of recommended searches based off of the specific keyword that you've typed into the search engine. Another thing you could do is you can go to TikTok, search for a topic, filter by the most liked videos from this week, and there you'll see a bunch of trends or trending topics. And then finally, I'll also get inspiration by looking at my competitors or niche neighbors, as one of my students likes to call it. I'm going to be looking at their posts and their reels, like if they were my own. I'm going to study the analytics. What performed well? What didn't perform well? What topics are they talking about? And I'm also looking at the comments in their posts. What sort of questions are their followers asking them? When I look at my competitors' content, I am not copying them, okay? We are not copying. Do not copy other people. We're simply just looking for themes or common topics that keep coming up to inspire us for our own creation. Your audience is out there, and they're going to be drawn to you because of your unique voice. If you're copying other people, the right people won't be able to find you because you're hiding behind someone else's voice and someone else's content, ultimately slowing down your growth process. So embrace your creativity, embrace your unique voice, because that's what's going to help you reach the right people and grow fast. If you're still with me and you're enjoying this video, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to my channel because I really do try my best to create free weekly content just like this video. And by subscribing, you're helping me continue to do so. Now, all of these new content ideas, you should be brain dumping onto a spreadsheet or list or project management software. This will help with the next step, keeping you more organized. If you're a solopreneur, I recommend using Trello or Notion. I do have a Trello Instagram content calendar tutorial video here if you need help tracking your content ideas and creating a content calendar through Trello. I also will be posting another tutorial creating a Notion content calendar next week. So keep an eye out for that. Which leads me to day four, setting up your content calendar. There are a few ways to do this, but first I want to share with you a social media scheduler tool so you can schedule out your content and save you time and money. And that tool is Metricool, who is also the sponsor of today's video. Metricool is an all-in-one social media schedule that is approved for all social media platforms with advanced analytics, easy to create reports, and so much more. I know one of the biggest pain points I see creators struggle with is juggling multiple platforms and the content that's supposed to be put out on all of those platforms. So here's some of the main reasons why I recommend Metricool. You have one tool to rule them all, direct scheduling for Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, all the things. Two, they're working on a TikTok schedule and y'all better believe I'm gonna be the first one in line for that. Three, Metricool is extremely cost-effective for social media managers, agencies, and business owners with a premium membership starting at $12 a month for an annual subscription. Their dashboard and PDF reporting is a game changer for anyone who loves to look at their analytics too. I'll be sure to leave a link down below where you can try them out. You can also use the code MODERNMILLIE for a 15-day free trial. I'm stoked to be able to share Metricool with all of you and I hope I'm able to connect this information with the right people who have been looking for something like this. Alrighty, when setting up your content calendar, you need to figure out how often you are posting, the type of content you're posting, and the first nine. If I was starting from zero and I wanted to grow fast, I would set up the first nine posts so that when I did start posting reels and people started coming to my page, it looks full on brand and inviting. I'm not saying you have to take nine new photos and do something crazy. It could be super simple, like creating a single photo grid. That's where you turn one image into like nine images on your feed, something like this. You could also do a countdown where you have a graphic and you just add nine, eight, seven, dah, dah, dah, all the way to one. Or you can create your own branding slash vision board on Canva and then break that vision board into, again, the split image so that when somebody comes to your feed, it's your entire brand vibes. These posts aren't gonna go viral or anything or get great engagement. We're just trying to set the stage for new visitors. So I'll say if you find yourself getting stuck on this part, skip it. Just start posting reels. This is simply what I would do, but at the end of the day, done is better than perfect and I'd rather take messy action than no action at all. So don't overthink it, just start posting. For anyone watching this who is serious about growing on Instagram and turning Instagram into your full-time job as an influencer, I do have a free 60-minute training that teaches you the six steps to become a full-time influencer. So if you're enjoying this video and you're getting a lot of goodness from this, then you'll definitely get a ton of free value in my 60-minute training. So I'll go ahead and link that down below for anybody who is interested. Okay, now how often should you post and what type of content should you be posting? If I wanted to grow fast and rapidly, I would post a minimum of one reel per day, period. A minimum of one reel per day. Everybody says this, and the reason why reels work so well is because they have the newest algorithm that was designed to help you reach new people. So if you're still sleeping on reels and you're not growing, it's really time to ask yourself, hmm, maybe I should start looking into reels. Hmm, I wonder why I'm not growing. Let's get on it, guys. Let's get on it. So to sum it up on day four, I'm gonna pick what my first nine might look like, and I'm gonna go through the long list of content that I already created, pick five to seven topics that excite me, and just start planning them out on the calendar to start posting on day eight. So we're not gonna post or anything yet. We're just planning out the topics on the calendar. All right, day five. Day five, you're gonna work on your first nine. No matter how you want your first nine to look, whichever way you choose to do that first nine, we're gonna get all nine posts done on day five. If you're creating graphics or you wanna create like a mood board, brand board that I was talking about, that's something that I would do in Canva, and then I would use image splitter to split all the images up, and then just post them. You don't have to be super strategic with the first nine if you're at zero followers. It doesn't matter. I will say you totally could have a strategy for every single of those nine photos, like photo one, headshot, introduction to Millie. This is who Millie is. Photo two, my journey, my timeline of how I got here. Photo three, graphic, my business. You know, like you could be super strategic and gradually introduce yourself and your business, your products to your audience, but if you're like, I just wanna get started, you keep it simple. Keep it simple, it's fine. We're just getting started. Day six, now we're going to batch film as many videos as possible. This is totally up to you. If you are like, I can pump out videos and I'm gonna pump out 30 videos for the entire month, like do it. For me, I would probably batch seven reels to last me for a week. Or if I wanted to be posting twice a day, maybe I'll do 10 reels, 14 reels, so it lasts me about a week. About a week or so, about a week ago? About a week or so ago, about a week ago. Uh, what was I saying? Oh, batching, that's what we were just talking about. Batching, this is gonna be different for everybody. Some people can batch a ton, especially if you're in the mood to batch. You can get through those super fast. We've already have our topics picked, so you're gonna create those videos on those topics. You can use trending sounds, but it's all about batching this day. Then for day seven, we're going to edit your videos. And then we're usually exhausted and we're ready to go to bed. So that's all we're gonna do on day six, record. On day seven, edit your videos, add text, get them ready for posting on Instagram, fine tune the posts so that they are ready to go live on day eight. You're writing captions, doing hashtags, all the things. Get it ready in your drafts, save them in case Instagram glitches out, but get them ready to post. Now, since I have zero followers, I don't care about a perfect hashtag strategy. These reels probably won't go viral, so I'm using hashtags to categorize my profile so that Instagram knows how to categorize my content. This leads us to week two. Week two is all about triggering the algorithm so that it knows how to categorize us and knows who to show our content to. How do we do that? Well, starting on day eight, we are going to create a new daily routine that we're going to stick to for the rest of the 30 days. Days eight through 14, this is what you will be doing every day to be consistent and trigger the algorithm. First, we're posting one reel per day, maybe two if you're able to keep up the quality, but we're posting every day. You don't have to worry about this stuff that much because you already planned out all of the reels yesterday. Next, I'm going to include hashtags to describe my content. This isn't about going viral or being seen, y'all, so don't overcomplicate this. If you want to be known as a fitness coach, use the hashtag, hashtag fitness coach. If you want to be posting fashion tips, use the hashtag, hashtag fashion tips. People overcomplicate hashtags and they try to get so caught up in the weeds, but just don't. I do have an entire video here that explains how to use hashtags, but I'm starting from zero. I'm not going to waste my energy on trying to have a perfect hashtag strategy. I'd rather use that energy discovering new post ideas or engaging with my audience, period. And then third, we're going to engage with other people in our niche and their followers. So for example, if you're somebody in the beauty space and there's another influencer that's in the beauty space doing exactly what you want to do, they have the business that you want to have and the followers that you want to have, engage with that influencer and engage with the people who are engaging with her. Go to their recent posts, see who's commenting on their stuff, engage with the people who are already engaged. Because if they have this audience and they're in the same space as you, you both probably have similar audience types. So their audience is probably your target audience too. As this person's target audience starts engaging with you back, it's going to help trigger the algorithm by communicating, hey, these types of people that are engaging with this account. So let's show more people like these people, this person's content. Did that make sense? So this week, days eight through 14, I want to spend as much time as possible triggering the algorithm. That's what I'm going to do. There is no set time or magic time where it's like 30 minutes a day, one hour a day. It's a give and take on Instagram. So if you are giving 30 minutes of your day or 30% energy into Instagram, you're only going to get 30% results from Instagram. If you're able to go all in and do as much as you can, you'll see that return. Of course, there is this fine balance of what's realistic for you without burning yourself out. So there is this like kind of cross that happens of like, is it a cross? Kind of like the teeter. Boop. I don't know. What was I saying? Obviously, the more you post, the more you grow. If you want to grow fast, post more. But if that's overwhelming for you, figure out what works for you. That is all. Throughout days eight through 14, you'll also have to batch or I'll also, because I'm at zero, I'll also have to batch reels for the next week. So maybe on day 11, I'm doing my content research again, pulling ideas from the spreadsheet. Day 12, I'm filming those ideas. Maybe there's some trends that I could start implementing. And then day 13, I'm editing so that new videos are ready to be posted days 14 or starting on the week three, which would be day 15. All right, we're on week three. Days 15 through 21. At this point, we're posting daily reels and engaging with other people. But now that we've started gaining some traction, we're going to add some new strategies to this week. So daily stories. If you're not already posting stories, start showing up. This is the best way to turn your new followers into fans so that they stick around. Next, we're also going to start adding collaborations. So find other people that are within your niche who have a similar follower range as you and do collaborations with them or live rooms with them. The benefit of doing collaborations in live rooms is that both audiences get notified. If you post a collaboration post with a friend, it's going to show up on both of your feeds and reach both of your audience. Same thing with live rooms. If you go live with one, two, three, four of you are in a room, each person who's in the room, their audience is going to be notified, expanding your reach to more and more people. This goes with all of the content that you're creating on Instagram, but you want to make sure it's delivering value to who you're trying to reach. So your reels, they are delivering value to your target audience. Going live with somebody else, that is also going to deliver value. Maybe you can have a Q&A box. People ask questions, or if nobody asks questions, you could put your own questions in there that you know your audience would be asking you, but nobody was doing it yet. So just ask your own questions and answer your own questions. Collaborations, maybe you and your friend are both sharing a tip. You're both in the reel together, like I did that with a friend. I filmed one part of a reel, she filmed the other part. We edited it together, posted it as a reel collaboration. Boom, it's on both of our feeds, reaching both of our audiences. And when I say delivering value, because I feel like everybody says that. Everyone's like, oh, deliver value. Value is gonna look different for everyone. What's valuable to me might not be valuable for you. What's valuable for my audience might not be what's valuable for your audience. I'm on BookTok. I love BookTok. That's valuable for me. I need to know people's TBRs. I need to know their March wrap-up and what they read in April. Like, that's valuable to me. That might not be valuable for you. So who is your audience and what do they see as valuable? When you can get into their head and you know how to create content, collaborations, reels go live in a way that delivers and provides to them, you're doing great. You're well off. You're soaring. Soaring, flying. I hope you know that reference. All right, week four. This is a lot of information, so I hope you're still with me. If you are still with me, comment the secret phrase down below. Secret phrase is wow, wow, wow. If you've made it this far, comment wow, wow, wow down in the comments below. I wanna know who's made it up until this point. All right, days 22 through 28. If you stick to all of the strategies we've been talking about and post consistently quality reels, you'll definitely hit 10,000 followers in no time. I know this because that's how I hit a 10,000 follower month and I've also had students see this same success, but I will leave you with a few final bonus tips for what you can implement on this last week. One, study your analytics. If a video performs well, study it. Be a learner, figure out why. Why did it perform well? If a video totally flopped, study it, learn from it. It's not win or lose or failing and succeeding. It's not about that. It's just about learning and experimenting. Two, notice how I didn't say join engagement groups. Don't do engagement groups or group pods, whatever they're called. I have an entire video here, here, that talks about all the outdated strategies that you should be staying away from because it's gonna waste your time, confuse the algorithm, actually hold you back from seeing growth. So yes, we're not doing engagement groups. That does not help with your growth or authentic growth or long-term growth. Three, be aware of what is working in your specific niche. In this video, I did harp on reels, but for some niches, educational graphics or inspirational quotes or funny memes actually perform really well on Instagram. That might not be the case for everyone, but you will discover this when you do your own research. What sort of content works well in your niche? Don't put pressure on yourself to have to reinvent the wheel within the first 30 days of posting. Do what you see is already working well because that is how you will see the quickest result. And then over time, you will learn how to reinvent the wheel your own way. If you've made it this far and you love what you saw, remember that I have a 60-minute training that teaches you the six steps I took to become a full-time influencer and how to grow your Instagram account. So be sure to check out that training down in the description below and hug that subscribe button and turn on the bell notification so you don't miss when I post my next video. All right, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one. It's all your joy. Bye.