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How to Grow a New IG Account
Here's why it's so hard (and what you can do about it)...
Chris Laub
October 11, 2024
1,015 Words | 4 Min 14 Sec Read
Welcome to another issue of Passionate Income.
Today we’ll be discussing how to grow a brand new account on IG.
In particular, why it's so hard to grow a new account and what you can do about it.
Let’s dive in.
I recently filmed this exclusive training on How To Make $20k Month Without Showing Yourself or Selling Your Products (using Instagram)
After I released this training, it got over 10,000 views and I received 200+ personal messages.
Nothing held back, this is the framework I and 100+ of my clients used.
Want to grow an Instagram page, but feel like your progress is painfully slow in the beginning?
If so, today’s issue is a must-read.
As someone who grew a page to 1 million followers, and has coached dozens of people on how to grow their own faceless pages, one of the biggest questions I get is how to get started.
In particular, how to deal with those first couple of months when it feels like you’re doing a ton of work but not seeing any results.
Unfortunately, there’s no hack or magic button you can push to explode your followers overnight.
However, there is some good news.
See, there’s a reason IG doesn’t let brand-new accounts go viral right away. And once you understand their logic, it actually makes a lot of sense.
What you have to understand about social media platforms is they value User Experience above everything else.
Why?
Because if users have an unpleasant experience every time they open the app, they’ll abandon the platform. And as you can imagine, the more people that abandon the platform, the less revenue the company makes.
Given we’re talking about for-profit companies that need to deliver results to shareholders, having users abandon the platform is arguably the worst possible thing that could happen.
And because of that, social media companies go to great lengths to ensure users have a positive experience on their apps.
One of the more commonly understood ways they achieve this is through censorship and moderation. But that’s not the only way they protect users from harmful content.
In addition to censorship, they also prevent brand-new accounts from going viral. Why?
First, letting new accounts go viral opens the platform up to spammers.
From casino links to cheap Viagra, allowing brand-new accounts to go viral would allow spammers to use their bio links to direct users to shady offers.
The same goes for hackers using their bio link to point to a malware site.
Second, allowing new accounts to go viral opens the platform to international conspirators.
From election interference to propaganda, if brand-new accounts could go viral right away, bad actors from Russia, China, or North Korea could easily manipulate the platform to spread messages of hate or misinformation.
So, what does Instagram do?
They put brand-new accounts in a temporary "sandbox."
This concept was first invented by Google, which realized spammers were using brand-new domains to push low-quality and malicious links to the top of search results.
Since Google is also driven by user experience, this posed a threat to their business model. At the same time, Google didn’t want to make it impossible for legitimate websites to rank just because they were new.
So, to address this, they invented the Sandbox.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, the Google Sandbox is an invisible restriction that prevents brand-new websites from ranking at the top of search results for high-value, high volume search terms.
Instead, they force business owners to prove their legitimacy by working to make their website a valuable resource over time.
Although Google is secretive about how their algorithm works, industry veterans have noticed it takes a minimum of 9 to 12 months before a new website is allowed to rank at the top of the results.
More important, the sandbox was wildly successful in preventing spam. And because of that, it is still in place today.
So, after seeing the success of Google’s sandbox program, social media companies quickly adopted their own version.
While we don’t know exactly how it works, I've seen time and time again how Instagram throttles brand-new accounts in the beginning.
Then, after 6 to 8 weeks of consistent posting, Instagram lifts the brakes and allows the account to go viral.
Which is why it’s so hard to grow on Instagram in the beginning:
You can be doing everything right, but if your account is being throttled, there’s literally nothing you can do until Instagram lifts the restriction.
The good news is that once you understand this, you can approach the process of building an Instagram page with the knowledge that any slow growth you experience isn’t your fault.
It’s just Instagram using the algo to protect its users.
Admittedly, understanding this doesn’t make those first two months any easier.
No matter what, you still have to do the work in the face of painfully slow growth. Fortunately, if you stick to the process, you will eventually get past Instagram’s restrictions.
At which point it becomes dramatically easier to attract followers.
Many of my students only attract a couple hundred / thousand followers during their first two months, but add 10,000+ in as little as seven days once the restrictions are lifted.
So if you’re planning on launching a brand-new IG account, understand it’s unlikely you will grow much during your first 45-60 days.
Sadly, most people can't handle putting in effort for that long without seeing serious results.
But if you can hack it, the rewards can be juicy.
💡 Takeaway: Big tech platforms throttle brand new accounts to prevent bad actors from spreading spam, propaganda, affiliate links, etc. And because of that, it will likely take 45-60 days for you to achieve significant growth.
🎁 Resources:
FREE COURSE: Build a Faceless IG Page (from a guy with 10M+ followers)
