How We Grew Our Old Instagram Account to 25K Followers
…and what I wouldn’t do the same again.
Last year, I was the co-founder of a different business. I created the brand, the messaging, the website, the members platform, and the list goes on, but I also grew the Instagram account to around 25,000 followers.
Then the business ended. Instagram removed the account. I’ve shared more about that chapter elsewhere, so I won’t turn this into the full story again, but the short version is that I walked away and started over. New business. New brand. New Instagram account. No inherited audience, no 25K sitting there waiting for me. Back to zero.
Which, has actually given me the perfect opportunity to look back at everything I did last time and ask: what genuinely worked?
Here’s the spoiler incase you want to cut to the chase: The account grew very quickly, the numbers looked great and from the outside it probably looked like a very successful business. The problem was that the actual business results, and what was happening behind the scenes) did not mirror the effort, money and stress that went into it.
That experience has completely changed the way I think about social media now. I do not think follower growth is pointless, I do not think ads are a waste of money and I definitely do not think Instagram is dead.
In fact, there are parts of what I did that I would absolutely recommend and will probably do again. What I learned is that growing an audience and growing a business are not automatically the same thing, and if you are not careful you can get very good at growing the wrong metric.
How I grew the account to 25K followers
I started with a nine-post Instagram grid
Covering the key things somebody needed to know about the business. Who we were, what we did, who we were for, what we believed, and the sort of work we wanted to be known for. I still think this is a really good place to start. Your Instagram grid does not need to look like a perfectly curated magazine, but if somebody lands on your profile, they should be able to understand what you do fairly quickly.
I ran engagement ads behind the best-performing content
Once I could see which posts were already performing well organically, I put paid spend behind them using engagement ads. These worked well and were relatively cheap. They helped push already-good content further and brought more people onto the account. I would absolutely recommend doing this again because you are not guessing from scratch. You are taking content that has already shown signs of resonating and giving it more reach.
I ran lead ads promoting free content
I also ran lead generation ads promoting useful free content, and these were genuinely good. The leads were strong and, importantly, we were building an email list rather than just growing a follower number. I would definitely recommend this again and I will probably do it with Eighth Era once my offers are properly in place. So this is not an anti-ads post. The ads were actually one of the more useful parts of the strategy.
I posted on Instagram three times a day
This is where things started to get a bit ridiculous. At one stage, I was posting three times a day. That included educational content, business content, engagement content and short Reels using trending audio. It worked in terms of growth, but it also became a full-time job. I was constantly thinking about content, creating it, posting it, checking what was performing and then starting again. I worked like a dog, and the sheer volume of it became exhausting.
I used strong Instagram engagement content designed to be reshared
Some of the content was designed purely to get people interacting. Things like zodiac signs, quick questions, “which one are you?” posts and easy prompts that almost anyone could answer. And of course they worked. People shared, commented, Instagram saw engagement, the posts got pushed further and the account kept growing.
The problem was that a lot of that engagement had very little connection to the business. Someone telling you they are a Virgo does not necessarily mean they are a good potential client. At the time, I was looking at the numbers and thinking the content was doing its job because people were engaging with it. In hindsight, I should have been asking whether the right people were engaging with it.
We used short Instagram Reels with trending audio
We also posted short Reels using trending themes and audio, and some of them got great reach. If I’m honest, sometimes it was a bit of a stretch to make the trend relevant to what we were actually offering, but it got eyeballs on the account and helped the follower number go up. What it didn’t give us was relevance. A Reel can get thousands of views and still do very little for the actual business if the people watching it are not the people you want to work with.
That is probably one of the biggest things I would pay attention to now. Reach is useful, but reach from the wrong people is still just reach.
So what did all that actually get us?
We got to around 25,000 followers. I was posting up to three times a day. We spent more than $300 on ads. We were creating a huge amount of content and the account looked busy, successful and established.
We got two clients.
Except one of these people already knew me, so if we are being accurate about it, all of that effort generated one genuinely new client who had come through the new business. And with the benefit of hindsight, that client was also high stress and full of red flags, so not exactly the sort of client I would actively be trying to attract today.
That is a very different story to the one the follower count was telling.
Then we tried to sell digital products
Once we had built this big audience, we thought we had another obvious opportunity. We had 25,000 followers, so surely we could create digital products and sell them to this audience.
We did. And basically nothing happened.
Crickets. We sold some products but to only to people who already knew me.
In hindsight, the reason was obvious. A large proportion of the audience was not made up of our ideal clients. Some people had followed because of broad engagement content. Some had found us through trending Reels. Some liked the content but were never realistically going to buy anything from us.
We had built a big audience, but we hadn’t built the right audience.
That was probably the moment it really clicked for me that audience size and audience quality are two very different things.
Now I have around 350 followers
Eighth Era is brand new and after losing the previous account (and potential threatened legal action) I am building MY audience again from scratch. Right now, I have around 350 followers. Small compared to 25K, but I am SO happy right now. I have over 300 amazing humans following my brand new account and engagement has never been better.
I am posting much more aligned content. I am talking about the things I actually want to talk about. I am not posting three times a day. I am not putting random engagement content on the grid because I know it might get comments. I am not chasing every trending audio just because it is trending.
And guess what? I currently have five discovery calls booked, all with people who feel like genuinely exciting potential clients, and I have already signed one new client who is basically my definition of a dream client.
So if we do the very unofficial maths, it looks like this:
25,000 followers, posting three times a day, $300+ in ads, a ridiculous amount of work, close to burn out = one red-flag client.
350 followers, aligned organic content and a much more intentional strategy = one dream client, plus five discovery calls with ideal clients.
The math isn’t mathing.
What I would do again?
There are definitely things I would repeat…
I would run lead ads again because the leads were good.
I would run engagement ads behind content that is already performing because that was relatively low cost and effective.
I would still use Reels where they make sense, but not at the cost of my sanity - carousels work just as well and bring in more of the right clients.
What I would not do is make follower growth the main goal.
I would not post three times a day just to keep feeding the machine, and I would not create content with no connection to the business simply because I know it might perform.
The question I care about now is not “How do I get more followers?” It is “How do I get more of the right people to find me?” Those are two completely different strategies.
And honestly, I’d be reluctant to work with someone who was purely interested in chasing the follower numbers.
I still want to grow this account
Sure, I’d love Eighth Era to have 25,000 followers one day. I’m not pretending I don’t care about growth. I just want those 25,000 people to actually be interested in the work, the ideas and the offers. The follower count should be a by-product of creating good content, building an engaged audience and becoming known for something useful. Not the goal in itself.
Right now, I am still building this. I am still testing what works, and once the offers are properly in place I may start running ads again. I will share what happens, what brings in leads, what gets reach, what completely flops and what actually turns into clients.
Because I think that is a much more useful conversation than another post telling you how to get to 10K followers.
