How We Gained 191,406 Instagram™ Followers And Reached 100m+ By Beating The Algorithm

Last updated on August 11th, 2023 by Gautie Tank.

This strategy is not designed for an average user.

It is designed to help people become a high level influencer as quickly as possible. 

In fact, it’s the exact setup we used to attract more than 191,406 followers organically through posting content. 

So If it's a goal to get thousands of supportive followers & fans, get in front of millions of people on the Explore Feed, or attract hundreds of customers per year, then this strategy is ideal.

The Firework Formula To Help You Reach Millions on Instagram™

Hashtags, Time of Posting, and Post Format are all really important factors needed to contribute to your growth.

But nothing beats having a complete system for getting huge levels of organic reach every time you share a post. 

Here’s what that system looks like:

Ask any ‘Insta-Guru’ on how to grow and they’ll usually tell you this:

1. Follow people, HOPE they follow back, and then unfollow them after. 
2. Use a tool (or automation) to engage on other peoples posts and HOPE they follow you.
3. Take part in a giveaway where people HAVE TO follow you in order to win some grand prize. 

These strategies result in people following you for all the wrong reasons. 

In all 3 scenarios, you’re chasing after followers instead of attracting them to willingly follow you.  

We Used “The Firework Formula” To Get In Front of 50,769,040 People in Just 30 days.

Over the last 12 months we built up a new profile starting from zero.

12 months after executing “The Firework Formula” we attracted 99,142 followers, more than 36,662 Organic Website clicks, and had a outstanding Month where our Posts were shown to 50,769,040 people.

That traffic converted into 99,142 followers total - with 7,743 targeted people following in 30 days and 1.5% of the followers were from New York.

Over those 12 months, we came to the controversial conclusion that the Algorithm deliberately limits your reach. 

You might have amazing content that Millions would love to see.

But Insta won’t show your post to these people, unless you feed it the right ‘Signals’ first. 

As we refined our strategy we tested out everything you could possibly think of, to see what actually produced the best measurable results. 

The outcome was a 3 Step System that we use for our Clients, to get results them which results which can surpass our expectations.

Like this Client that gained an extra +20,296 followers in 49 days (see below).

We didn’t do Follow and Unfollow, Giveaways or use Automation… 

So, what did we do?

The 3 Step “The Firework Formula” For Ridiculous Amounts of Organic Reach.

There are 3 steps to executing “The Firework Formula” successfully: 

• Step 1: Post Content that is worthy of people’s attention. 
• Step 2: Increase your Posts “Signals” to get past the limits of the Algorithm. 
• Step 3: Do a 30, 60 or 90 day Content Sprint, depending on your budget & resources. 

Below is a breakdown of how every part of the Formula works.

But first, let me tell you what this has to do with Fireworks.

I want you to think about your Reel, Photo, Carousel or Video post as firework that wants light up the sky and makes some noise (to get people’s attention). 

But at the moment, your Posts are a small Rocket. 

After you ignite the small Rocket, it flies up into the sky, it makes a little bit of noise, but in a flash it’s gone. 

It didn’t really last long, just like that post you shared recently - it’s forgotten about pretty quickly. 

But what if you could swap a small Rocket for a Professional Display Rocket? 

And instead of it making a small flash, you light up the ENTIRE night sky, get people's heads to turn, and get them curious about where all this is coming from? 

Once you light it up, you can’t help but attract swarms of ideal Followers, force them to turn their heads and pay attention to you, and convert them into fans who love everything that is ‘you’ (including products or services you sell).

Step 1: Share Posts That Are Worth paying Attention to.

People Give You Attention, When They Receive Value.

If you want someone to pay attention to your Post, someone has to voluntarily want to pay attention to it. 

How do you do that?

We spent the last 3 years sharing 11,145 posts across 5 test profiles (which is 30 YEARS worth of daily posts) to get to the bottom of this. 

After analysing those posts and the Profiles, we have created a list of 7 rules that guarantee people will pay attention to your posts:

7 Rules to Guarantee You Get Attention:

1. Know the landscape where you’re competing for attention. 
2. Use a Thumbnail / Cover Image that forces people to notice it.  
3. Hook your viewer in the first 3 seconds (Videos & Reels).
4. Use 0, 11 or 30 hashtags.
5. Convert Viewers into Followers with your Caption Text.
6. Post to Stories regularly too boost your ‘Signals’.
7. Make it obvious what your account's purpose is.

Your competition is not other just accounts in your niche, it’s the whole userbase of IG (Rule 1).

Here’s an example of what the Explore Feed might look like for the average person: 

It’s pure chaos.

Remember, this is where you're trying to get attention from.

Which is why you have to use a Thumbnail or Cover image that is designed to force attention first. (Rule 2)

People will decide in the first few seconds if they should bother watching your whole video. 

So you have the first 3 seconds to ‘hook’ your viewer, so that they watch the whole thing. (Rule 3)

Then after that, you have to give the viewer something valuable to them, so they watch 100% of it.

If you simply focused on doing this, you could see a 2x, 5x or even 10x increase in your reach. 

We had a client who was stuck at 4k - 6k viewers have a breakout video that gained 127k viewers overnight by implementing just this.

If you read nothing further of this Article and only implemented this, you could still reach up to millions per month with enough focused effort.

(Rule 4) Statistically, the best amount of hashtags to use are either 0 hashtags or 11 hashtags.

However, we also found in our own tests that when we used all 30 hashtags, the chances of our Content going reaching more increased substantially. 

It was the posts that had a total of 30, with a mix of broad tags (e.g. #LadyGaga, #SelenaGomez) and highly specific hashtags (e.g. #FaceLifting) that gained millions of impressions. 

For Rule 4, on some posts use 0 hashtags, on some use 11 and on some use 30. Rotate between these. 

(Rule 5) Once your Content gets lots of eyeballs, the job of your caption is to turn a viewer into a follower.

You have to craft a short sentence at the beginning and at the end of your caption in order to increase the likelihood of this happening. 

How to structure your Captions:

1. Write a short 1 line caption at the top to hook the viewer into reading the caption - use emojis. 
2. Then write ‘Follow @username for more [x]’
3. Then write a lengthier caption, or paragraph explaining the Post a bit more.
4. Then at the end write ‘Follow @username for [X]’

That’s the basic template, but jazz it up a bit.

Use emojis and make it irresistible for the viewer to want to follow you after reading it and give them a value proposition; a compelling reason to follow. 

If you want someone to double check you do this right, talk to our Team.

(Rule 6) After that, you need to make sure your Stories get pushed to all your followers.

There’s a method we pioneered that can help you do that. 

When you post your Story, share a photo of a Person’s face, or a relevant Celebrity and add a Poll / Sticker that allows people to engage with it. 

Example: 18K story viewers and high amounts of interactions.

This works extremely well when it’s a well known celebrity being posted... But why is that? 

The algorithm uses Artificial Intelligence to scan what’s going on inside the Content.

It’s able to detect when it’s a well known celebrity being posted and will reward that post with extra reach, because there’s a higher chance people are interested in seeing that over other content.  

The first slide of your story, use a Celebrity image, then on the following ones, do your regular Stories.

Stories that follow will get more viewers than they otherwise would have if you had posted them first. 

If using a Celebrity photo won’t work for you, then you can use a face, or something more relevant.

As long as a visible face is on the first slide, they will give you additional reach.

Smiles are generally the most effective emotion to show, their Ai can even pick up on the strength of the emotions displayed.  

That brings us to our Rule 7: what’s the point of your account existing, and how exactly do you serve others? 

Whether you like it or not, if you want people to follow you, you have to serve them something that they want or are looking for.

It doesn’t mean you need to be a teacher, but it means you need to become an ‘influencer’. 

An ‘influencer’ is a person others want to COPY from, to EMULATE and straight up rip-off.

Kylie Jenner is a leading influencer, because people follow her so they can copy her style, the way she frames her photos, her facial expressions, the way she does her hair and makeup, the types of places she visits, her product choices, and her mannerisms. 

She is one of the most followed ‘How-to’ influencers, but doesn’t actually sit there and explain stuff verbally, she demonstrates it. 

So this final Rule is for you to think about how you can be the one that others look to copy. 

Once you have engaging content that is absolutely fire, what’s next?

Step 2: Get The Algorithm to Push Your Posts Further.

Give it 'Signals' to Push It Further Than Usual.

Instagram™ wants people to constantly use their app.

Their goal is to show you great content, so that you will spend more time using their app. 

When people spend more time on the app, it means that they will see more ads. 

Having lots of active users encourages advertisers to spend more money to advertise on their platform.

Which means they will make more money in the long run.

But, they can't magically know how good your post is, so it needs a reliable way to measure it. 

The way it measures how good a Post is, is to analyse:

• Main Signal 1: How many people have Engaged (Like, Comment, Share, Save, View, Interact) with that Post?
• Main Signal 2: How influential are those people who are engaging? 

But there are a lot more than just 2 signals. 

They look at a variety of ways people can interact with a profile. 

Here are some more Micro-Signals it measures:  

• How many people watch a video all the way to the end? 
• How many people enjoy a post so much, they save it? 
• How many people search for the profile in the search bar? 
• What % of people viewed and then interacted with a Post they shared?

All of these Micro-Signals they use to measure how good a post or a profile is.

After that it decides who should see the Post, and how many should see it.

It is a well-oiled machine, designed to distribute relevant content to all the users on the platform. 

This is how Insta works at a basic level and you might already know this. 

If you feed your Profile and Posts the signals that they want to see, they will do all the heavy lifting FOR YOU.

They will push your posts to as many people as possible. 

If you were wondering “How the heck are you able to get 50,769,040 Impressions in 30 days”, there’s your answer. 

It’s a mixture of posting attention worthy content and then boosting the Signals that Insta measures, that makes this a possibility. 

Here’s how you boost your Signals (Interactions): 

Method 1: Find Others Trying to Do The Same, Search on the Internet & In Forums.

Method 2: Manage and Build multiple accounts yourself.

Method 3: Search for Services That Provide Interactions.

Now you can appreciate why getting huge reach is so difficult.

If Signal Boosting was readily available, then everyone would be doing it.

You need to find profiles with influence and at a quantity of 100+ in order for it to even begin being worthwhile.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort each day to manage.

For them to perform all the required Signals so the Algorithm voluntarily pushes your post further.

Here's some examples of posts using our setup:

The fact is, if you want to reach millions, they need to be fed these Signals one way or another. 

If you're keen to build your own Signal boosting setup, refer back to the types of Signals we mentioned before to start with.

And make sure you boost your Signals on every Post you share.

How do we light up the night sky? 

Step 3: Do A 30, 60 or 90 Day Content Sprint.

Post Daily To Make Your Reach Compound.

In Step 1 you created the shells for your fireworks. 

In Step 2 you added the various powders to make spectacular effects. 

In Step 3 you’ll be launching your professional Rockets. 

Here we take advantage of the compounding effect, to reach an unlimited amount of people. 

In Step 3, the focus is to share 1 piece of content per day, for a period of 30 days, 60 days or 90 days.

How many days depends on your budget; if you can hire someone to help. 

It also depends your resources, if you have a lot of content you’ve already posted that you can re-share. 

This third step is where you ignite your Rocket, and let it shoot off into the sky to start turning heads.

This is how you light up the night sky to grow your influence (click to make the image bigger, rotate your phone if you need to):

How it works: 

• Step 1: You share a Post and it gets e.g. 4000 impressions total. Normally you reach 1000 people on average when you post, but after boosting Signals, that post gets 4000 impressions.
• Step 2: That means 3000 new people see that Post and a percentage of those people will be curious about you, and go to check out your Profile.
• Step 3: They might Follow you, Check our your Story, Engage with Previous Posts. These increase your 'micro Signals' that Insta measures. 
• Step 4: Your Signals have increased, and your Profile grows larger slightly. And instead of reaching 1K people normally, maybe you reach 2K people normally. 
• Step 5: After you Share A New post, you reach your bigger base of 2K + an extra 3200 from your Signal boosting, so 5200 total. 
• Step 6: A portion of those new people it reached will check out your profile and increase the 'micro Signals' you give Insta.

As you Post more, what happens is that more and more people will go and check out your profile.

They will engage with a previous Post, Follow you, check out your Story, engage with it or click on your Website link (or do all of these things). 

As this happens, they're being fed with more and more Signals each day.

These Signals tell Insta that your profile is a good one, and people are interested in it. 

As the amount of these Signals increase, your Posts are rewarded with more organic Reach. 

This is the secret to how organic exposure compounds. 

This is how it's possible to get an extra 7K followers in a month or highs of 50m+ impressions in a month.

In our specific case, we posted 3x per day for a period of 90 days; at 3pm, 6pm and 9pm local time - to get there as quickly as possible. 

Here’s some examples of Posts you can share during the Content Sprint: 

• Before and after transformations ~ personal or client transformations. 
• Critique videos of other people’s popular content ~ debunk, or react to other content. 
• Video remixes of popular content ~ your own version of what already works. 
• High quality photographs from life / nature / world ~ highly precise photos that have a 'wow' factor. 
• Carousel posts with educational lessons ~ teach people high value information they must know. 
• Moodboard style carousels ~ a collage of highly engaging visual images that have mass appeal.    
• Meme photos and videos ~ related to your niche. 
• Cats / Animals / Pet related content ~ figure out how you can get your goodest boi in your content.
• Inspirational and aspirational content ~ inspire and get people to copy you.
• Re-share Posts that already performed well in the past. 

Before we wrap up, there’s a few points for you to keep in mind while you grow. 

We want to stay on Insta's good side. So whatever you don’t do the following: 

1. Get inactive followers through a service, usually via Google search  
2. Obtain interactions from robot profiles 
3. Enter into a giveaway to get followers
4. Use tools that automatically do actions on your behalf. 

To Insta there’s no such thing as a ‘robot’ or ‘fake’ profile.

Every profile is very much real. 

Even if you were to use a service to get thousands of followers who have no profile picture and who clearly don’t have a real user on the other end, they still treat the profile as ‘real’. 

The difference is, the level of influence these profiles have is non-existent. 

Getting interactions or follows from these profiles is completely meaningless and on top of that, it harms your reputation for how other real users perceive you. 

Don't believe us? Below you can see the difference between 4,000 interactions that came from robots (left), versus 4,000 interactions that came from accounts that have high influence (right).

Look at the difference between the Impressions & Reach that these posts have. 

The image on the left is from a typical service provider you'll find searching on Google. 

The image on the right with 43K impressions is using our Signal Boosting setup.

Their accounts basically have no weight or status to the algorithm.

They don’t contribute to boosting your 'Signals'. 

When most of your followers are robots, you lower your ‘Followers Who Engage’ rate. 

If you have a thousand people who follow you loyally, then go and get thousands upon thousands of robots to follow you, you’re getting dead profiles who don’t engage with your content and your Post reach is going to collapse almost immediately. 

If your own followers don’t even enjoy your content and engage with it - why should Insta bother showing that post to other people? 

This is one of the fastest ways to destroy your profile. Yes it’s great to have a large amount of followers, but don’t trade it for no organic reach. 

If you have obtained them there is some good news, our Signal boosting setup actually increases the number of healthy Signals Insta sees, which positively swings back the balance.

After signal boosting you can ‘recomp’ them and replace them with happy users who find your content from Explore.

When you enter into a Giveaway where someone promises you [X] amount of followers, you’re basically doing the same thing. 

These people didn’t follow you because they liked your content.

They followed because they’re in it for themselves - to try and win something. 

You’re hoping they stick around. If they all unfollow, then tough luck - you just wasted a sizeable amount of cash on users who don’t care about you.

This is not how you become an influencer in your niche. 

Lastly are tool that do interactions on your behalf, when you enter your username and password into a website for them to do things for you, you’re putting yourself at MASSIVE RISK of losing your account.

This is one of the things they have clamped down on the most. 

If you do a quick Google search you’ll find companies offering this, but when you go and scour for some reviews you’ll quickly find a heap of 1* reviews with people explaining how they’ve lost their account and all their hard work forever, because these companies had reckless practices so Insta banned their account. 

If you want to do it the best way possible, follow our 3 Step “Firework Formula”.

It is safe, and rather than harming your profile, you're rewarded by them - they give you huge organic reach. 

Because you’re giving them what they want, helping them fulfil their objectives of keeping users on their platforms for longer. 

Now You Try It

Every influencer builds their notoriety by sharing quality content.

And they rely on some help from the algorithm of the platform they’re on. 

But posting content and hoping for the best isn’t how you become an influencer. 

Sure, it can work for some.

But we believe it's better to have a plan, a step by step method you can follow: “The Firework Formula.”

It helped us get our content in front of hundreds of millions of People, gain hundreds of thousands of Followers, and help us and our Clients become leaders in various niches. 

With this strategy you can reach more in your niche without being desperate and chasing after people. 

To get the best results possible with using “The Firework Formula” get our Experts to help you out, using the system we developed: