How I grew from 368 to 11.3k followers on Instagram in 8 days for free

mmarco

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On Sunday Nov 5th, I had 368 Instagram followers.

On Tuesday Nov 7th, I had 3,092 followers.

On November 11th and I hit 10k followers.

As of today November 13th, I have 11.3k.

No advertising. No influencer partnerships. Just funny viral content.

I’m gonna tell you how you can copy my strategy:

I had been failing to grow my Instagram for 6+ months.

Then, I had an idea for a new type of content. It’s a stupid simple idea. It’s quick 7-second videos of me reading books with weird titles on the subway in the style of a Snapchat snipe video.

3 weeks ago, I started posting daily videos. When I posted the first 5 videos, my account still had my real name iamjasonlevin. But I saw the videos were gaining traction so I doubled down on what was working and "committed to the bit"

COMMIT TO THE BIT

A “bit” is an idea for a joke in stand-up comedy speak. So “committing to the bit” is the idea of committing to a joke and going all-in balls-to-the-wall. On Saturday, I committed to the bit and changed my username to subway.reader.

The hypothesis was that this would lead people who see my Reels to go click on my profile to see what other weird book videos I’ve posted. If they liked the videos and vibe, then maybe they’d press follow.

Well, the hypothesis proved correct.

Follower growth went on hyperdrive. I thought it’d blow up, but I didn’t know it’d be this crazy. The original video of me reading How to Win Friends and Influence People has 12.6 million views, the video of me reading a guide on cunninglingus has 6.1 million views, and the video me reading How to Live With a Small P*nis has 18 million views!!!

HERE'S HOW TO STEAL MY STRATEGY:

Well, you can commit to the bit too. I’m not the first guy to think of “committing to the bit”. You just need to think of a good bit—then commit to it.

Remember Dude With A Sign?

Dude With A Sign blew up his Instagram to 8 million followers because he committed to the bit and got tons of brand deals and press.

Wait, he got famous from holding signs? No he got rich and famous because he committed to the bit repeatedly.

SO HOW DO YOU PICK A BIT?

Pick something weird, cheap, and easy.

Holding up a sign and taking videos in a subway are all weird, cheap, and easy. You want something weird, cheap, and easy you can post everyday so people see you again and again.

Pick a bit then commit to posting it every day.

As Alex Hormozi says, “A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius.”

Be a focused fool like me! Commit to the bit everyday.

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If you enjoyed this case study, you can find more of my work in my weekly newsletter to 10,000+ marketers, founders, and creators.
 
@mmarco How many of those viewers are converting to anything you’re trying to monetise with or promote? I found those types of videos get a lot of views but very little conversion to anything unless you’re integrating your product into them
 
@hiccup Short answer: I sell my book in my bio

Long answer: I help brands grow on Twitter/LinkedIn so now that I've proven I can do it on Instagram, I can start experimenting with offering that as a service. So going viral, getting 40 million + views, etc. is huge for getting new clients. Will be worth hundreds of thousands over the next few years.
 
@mmarco How many more sales did you see for your book? I know people with hundreds of millions of views on Instagram / YouTube etc making similar entertainment content and some make $3k a month because their audience doesn’t convert.

If you saw a large increase then that’s great and you can sell that as a service to brands, otherwise you’ll get them views and little sales
 
@hiccup 100s! It’s been week 1 of growth though. It’s gonna take months of people seeing me again and again and new ideas.

It took me months/years to turn Twitter into a high revenue generating channel. I’m playing the long game.
 
@mmarco So let’s say 300 sales at $16 so $4800 revenue from 40M views on Instagram?

Honestly that still seems too high based on what I’ve seen Instagram meme pages and short form content creators make selling random products.

But I took a look at your account and you have 4 videos that really blew up out of all of your content so it’s not really anything proven sustainable yet as most new vids hit a few thousand views for you.

Building that up so that each video gets a large recurring audience is way more valuable than a couple super viral videos, and a lot harder long term.

Just seems like you got a couple big videos and are now selling people on starting their own page or running businesses pages
 
@hiccup All he's doing is sharing how the process worked for him after failing at other strategies. He's not the apex predator of viral content, just someone who figured out something and sharing it. Hes not selling a course or shilling his book, just trying to inspire people. He's still on only 10k followers and is probably just giddy about his success. Stop with your glass half full ways.
 
@hiccup I just wrote a case study of what happened and how I did it. That’s it haha.

I’m not saying it’s the best strategy or trying to sell anything. It’s just what worked for me.
 

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