Step One: Setting up your profile.

First, you want to get a catchy username. Get one that goes along with the niche of your account. A shorter username (5-12) characters would be ideal. Anything longer looks too much and ugly.

Profile pictures can be a significant part of your account as well. If you run a textpost page, I suggest using a high-quality photo of a female such as Kylie Jenner. This catches the attention of a lot of males, you'd be surprised and can boost the number of followers you get by a little bit. Make sure your profile does flow well with the theme of your account as well (colors, niche, etc).

Your bio can be an eye-catcher as well. I suggest putting something like "You're already here, might as well follow" or "follow if read you this wrong" so they feel the need to follow you. It works more than you'd think.

If you are a brand new account, you want to post a lot for the first couple days. Possibly around 20 posts over the course of two days to start out the base of your account. Then you'll want to die back and post 3-5 times per day, so it's not too much, but it keeps your followers active.

Step Two: Who should I follow?

If you do want to follow other accounts, follow those of similar niche to yours. If you are growing another account, there is a smart tactic. You can follow that one account and only that one account. People may become across your page and be like "Oh wow they're only following 1 person, I wonder who that is" and then they'll check out your second account.

You may also want to take content from other accounts, and nothing easier than seeing similar content to your own in your feed.

Step Three: Growing a little base of followers.

To do this method most effectively, it is good to have an aged account of at least 3+ months. What you want to do is follow roughly 30 celebrities with at least a fan base of 10mil+ followers. An example of this is Selena Gomez. After following around 30, wait 2minutes, then unfollow. Follow them again after 30 seconds and repeat this process. Do not go too fast or do this too much or else you will get follow blocked. You should be able to get roughly 100 followers a day if you do this like 20-30 times.

Step Four: Making friends on Instagram.

It is always good to make companions with similar accounts online. I personally have made friends with large accounts, not for their accounts, but because they are nice. And it can pay off, when I was at 9.8k, one of my friends boosted me up to 10k just because I was friends with them. It never does you wrong being nice to other people!

Step Five: Start doing likes with other pages.

A very easy way to get your posts onto the explore page is by doing likes and comments with other accounts. Essentially this is where you, and a bunch of other accounts are all in a dm group. And when one of you posts, they say something along the lines of, "Like and Comment on my recent, cwd returning fast." They just like and comment on your photos. Only do this with accounts that have similar niches and amount of followers as you for the best outcomes. NOTE: there is NEVER a guarantee to making it onto the explore page.

There are also engagement groups on telegram, which personally I have no experience with, so I cannot assist you with that, unfortunately.

Step Six: Interact with your followers.

A great way to keep your followers following you is by interacting with them. If they dm you, respond! In all honesty, nothing makes them happier then you respond to them. They absolutely love it. You can also host giveaways for both IRL stuff, or something like a follow back.