When I started @gettinggrowth, I was super nervous. Putting yourself out there is like walking onto a big stage in front of strangers. Some will love you, some will hate you (the internet, duh!), and most won’t care.
Yet.
By 2020 the account had nearly 40,000 followers. A lot of advice on how to become famous on Instagram is still stuck in that era, and so was mine: the old version of this post told you to use all 30 hashtags and post two to three times a day.
Here’s what I’d do in 2026 instead, and how to turn the attention into something you own.
Key takeaways
- Pick one topic for one kind of person. Instagram can only recommend you to the right people if it knows what you’re about.
- Reels reach new people when viewers watch them to the end and send them to friends. Make every Reel worth sharing.
- Hashtags matter far less than they did: Instagram now allows up to five per post. Keywords in your name, bio and captions help people find you in search.
- Grow with other people. Collab posts reach your partner’s followers too, and a free resource by DM can turn comments into sign-ups. Send it to everyone who asks: Meta’s rules ban making people follow first.
- Fame on Instagram is rented. Move your followers to a newsletter so you can reach them whatever the algorithm does.
Decide what you want to be known for
I’m not going to ask why you want to be famous. That gets philosophical fast.
What matters is what you want to be famous for, and to whom: home cooks, indie game developers, runners training for their first marathon.
Start from what you’re good at and could talk about for years. Then narrow it to a promise someone would follow you for: not “fitness”, but “strength training for women over 40”; not “travel”, but “weekend trips from Berlin by train”.
A narrow promise feels small, but it’s how Instagram learns who to show your posts to, and it’s what makes people recommend you.
Your passion and your talent don’t have to match, either. If you love singing but can’t sing, an account about learning to sing from zero is a story people will follow.
Write down three or four content pillars, the topics you’ll come back to again and again. Every post should fit one of them.
How Instagram decides who sees your posts
There isn’t one Instagram algorithm: Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels each rank posts their own way.
For Reels, Instagram says it mainly predicts how likely you are to reshare a Reel, watch it all the way through, like it, and open its audio page (Instagram Ranking Explained (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
In your insights, watch three numbers.
- Watch time. Whether people watch your Reel to the end, or scroll past in the first seconds.
- Shares. How many viewers send the post to someone, in a DM or a Story. Every send puts you in front of a person who doesn’t follow you yet.
- Likes. Still counted. Compare all three per view: 50 shares from 1,000 views says more than 100 from 50,000.
Instagram also favors original content. When it finds the same video twice, it only recommends the original, and accounts that keep reposting other people’s posts can drop out of recommendations altogether (Instagram, April 2024 (opens in new tab)).
Make your own, or add something real when you build on someone else’s.
Make Reels people want to send to a friend
Reels are the easiest way to reach people who don’t follow you yet.
A Reel gets shared when it makes someone think of a friend. It’s useful, funny or true enough that they want to pass it on.
- Hook in the first two seconds. Say or show the payoff straight away: the result, the surprising fact, the question. Put it on screen as text too, because many people watch without sound.
- One idea per Reel. Three tips in one video is three chances to lose people. One tip done well is easier to watch to the end.
- Make it the right length for the idea. Reels can run up to 20 minutes, but Instagram won’t recommend one longer than 3 minutes to new audiences (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026). Most ideas are told best in under a minute anyway.
- Test with Trial Reels. Once your public professional account has 200 followers, you can share a Reel as a trial. It goes to people who don’t follow you, and your followers only see it if you share it to everyone later (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
- Use carousels for things people save. Step-by-step guides, checklists and before-and-afters do well as carousels, and saves tell Instagram a post is worth showing again.
Show your face
People follow people.
A face makes an account easier to remember and easier to trust. If you’d rather not be on camera, use your voice and your hands, so there’s still a person behind the account.
Get your first 1,000 followers
The first thousand are the hardest, because Instagram has little data yet on who likes your posts.
Once you pass 1,000, it starts to get fun. These help most on the way.
- Tell the people who already know you. Share the account with friends, family, colleagues and your other channels. It’s awkward. Do it anyway.
- Collaborate. Collab posts appear on every collaborator’s profile and in their followers’ feeds. Team up with accounts of a similar size in your niche, or a step ahead of you. Being friends with your competitors beats fighting them for followers (how to pitch a Collab post).
- Leave comments worth reading. Thoughtful comments on bigger accounts in your niche get read by their followers. Generic “Great post!” comments don’t. If a big account never replies, don’t take it personally. They have the same 24 hours as you.
- Go local. Tag real locations and talk to local accounts. Local followers are easier to win, and they often become your most loyal ones.
- Run a giveaway, done right. Give away something only your ideal followers want, and ask people to follow you and tag one friend who’d like it. Prizes everyone wants, like gift cards or phones, bring followers who leave the day the giveaway ends.
- Study accounts a few steps ahead. Look at which of their posts get shared and saved, and check the Meta Ad Library (opens in new tab) to see which posts they pay to promote: that’s what works for them.
Hashtags and search in 2026
I used to recommend using all 30 hashtags. When we tested fewer in 2020, engagement went down, so 30 it was.
That advice is dead now: you can use up to five hashtags on a post (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026). Pick a few that describe exactly what the post is about, and skip generic tags like #reels or #explore.
Search matters more than hashtags now. People search Instagram a lot like they search Google, by typing what they want.
So put your main keyword in your name field and bio (“Maya | Easy vegan dinners”), and use plain words in your captions that say what the post is about.
Make your profile work like a landing page
Every new visitor decides in a few seconds whether to follow you, so your profile has to tell them what they’ll get.
It matters, but don’t overthink it.
- Name field: your name plus your topic, so you show up in search.
- Bio: who you help, with what, and why to follow now. Keep it to two lines. Here’s how to write one.
- Link: one page with one next step, ideally your newsletter.
- Pinned posts: pin the three posts that best show what you’re about, such as your most shared Reel, your story and your best guide.
- Highlights: a few clearly named ones (Start here, Recipes, Results) for the questions new followers ask.
A perfectly matched color grid matters far less than it did, because most people find you through a single Reel.
A recognizable look still helps people remember you: the same fonts and style in your covers and text. If you’re lazy like me, make one cover template and reuse it.
Post consistently and let your insights guide you
Consistency beats volume. Three to five good posts a week, every week, does more than a burst of daily posting followed by silence.
Plan your pillars a week ahead and film most of next week’s content on the weekend, so you never open the app thinking “what the hell do I post today?”
Got a day job? Here’s a 40-minute daily routine.
Then use your own numbers, in Insights on your professional account. Look at which posts got the most shares and saves and which ones reached non-followers, and make more of those.
Your best posting times are in Insights too. They’re when your followers are online, and that beats any general “best time to post” list.
Shortcuts that backfire
Don’t do these
- Buying followers. It’s like faking your resume: you’ll get noticed, but you’ll never pass the interview. Fake followers never watch or share, so your posts look less interesting to Instagram and reach fewer real people. Brands spot them too.
- Engagement groups. Swapping likes and comments goes against Instagram’s guidelines and shows your posts to people who don’t care about your topic. Here’s why engagement groups backfire.
- Follow/unfollow and growth bots. They break Instagram’s terms and can get your account restricted.
- Reposting other people’s content. Accounts built on reposts get recommended less, and you risk copyright takedowns.
Growth tactics that work in 2026
So what does work?
These are the tactics I’d put my time into today. None of them need an ad budget, and all of them stay inside Instagram’s rules.
Collab with accounts bigger than yours
A Collab post is the closest thing Instagram has to borrowing someone’s audience.
You invite another account as a collaborator, and once they accept, the post shows on their profile and goes out to their followers too. You can add up to five collaborators to a post (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
When shoutouts were the trick, I never saw much come from them while an account was still small. A Collab works differently: it’s one post that both audiences see, with your name on it.
A bigger account doesn’t owe you anything, so pitch something they can’t make without you.
- Be the expert guest. Offer a short answer to a question their audience keeps asking, filmed on your side. They post the Reel with you as a collaborator.
- Two takes on one question. You both answer the same question in one Reel. Their followers get a second opinion and meet you in the same Reel.
- A carousel with their tip in it. Make the carousel, give one slide to their best tip with credit, and invite them as a collaborator.
- A Live together. An interview or a Q&A, announced in both accounts’ Stories. Afterward, cut the best minute into a Collab Reel.
Start with accounts a step or two ahead of you in your niche, and pitch one concrete idea with a date. A vague “let’s collab sometime?” is easy to ignore.
My guide to Instagram shoutouts has a five-part pitch you can copy.
Find your creator circle
A creator circle is a small group of people in your niche, roughly your size, who help each other grow. You swap feedback on hooks before you post, plan Collabs, recommend each other in Stories and newsletters, and pass on the brand deals that don’t fit you.
That’s allowed. Meta’s spam rules say outright that they don’t prohibit cross-promotion nobody was paid for (Community Standards (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Trading engagement is where it stops. If everyone in the group has to like and comment on every new post, it’s an engagement pod. Meta bans exchanging likes, shares and follows, and Instagram’s recommendation guidelines (opens in new tab) list “coordinated comment networks” among the things it avoids recommending.
My test: if the group would fall apart without the like-and-comment rule, it was never a circle. More in why engagement groups backfire.
Finding one is less formal than it sounds. Look at who keeps turning up in the same comment sections as you, or who took the same course or went to the same event, and DM the ones you’d actually like to work with.
Make posts people send and save
Instagram’s own advice for Reels is that relatable content gets shared. If people think “that’s literally me,” they’re more likely to like it or pass it on (Instagram’s creators site (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Reshares are also one of the main things Instagram predicts when it ranks Reels, and saves count in Explore. These formats give people a reason to do both.
- The moment everyone recognizes. The thing everyone in your niche does and nobody says out loud: the runner who buys new shoes instead of training, the freelancer answering emails at midnight. People send it to the friend who does exactly that.
- Carousels worth keeping. A carousel holds up to 20 photos and videos (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026), enough for a full checklist, a step-by-step or a before-and-after. Put the promise on the first slide and the payoff on the last.
- The template itself. Don’t describe your packing list, email script or weekly plan. Put it in the post, so people save it to use later.
- A clear opinion. Instagram suggests posts that start a conversation. A take your niche argues about does that without a “comment below”.
Since August 2025, people can also repost your Reels and posts. Instagram says a repost may be recommended to the reposter’s followers, even ones who don’t follow you (Instagram, August 2025 (opens in new tab)).
So check that reposts are on: in your profile menu, open Sharing and reuse and switch on Reposts on posts and reels (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Give away a free resource by DM
You’ve seen this one: “Comment GUIDE and I’ll send you the checklist.”
A tool like ManyChat watches for the keyword and sends the link as a private reply within seconds. The Reel gets comments, the viewer gets the checklist, and you get a conversation.
The resource matters more than the tool. Make it solve one problem from the Reel, fast: a checklist, a template, a script, a one-page guide. If it needs an hour before it’s useful, save it for your course.
Meta sets the limits for these messages: one automated private reply per comment, sent within 7 days of the comment, and it lands in message requests if the person doesn’t follow you. You can only keep writing if they answer, and then within 24 hours (Meta’s developer docs (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
The setup, step by step, is in Instagram for bloggers.
Don’t make the follow a condition
ManyChat’s “Grow followers from comments” template checks whether the person follows you. If they don’t, it asks them to follow before it sends the link, and its “Auto-DM links from comments” template has the same step as an option (ManyChat Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Meta’s rules don’t allow it. Its spam policy bans “like/share-gating”, which it defines as requiring likes, shares, follows or any other public-facing engagement to get access to content. It also bans making people engage before they can see content you promised (Community Standards (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Those standards cover Instagram, and apps built on Meta’s platform have to follow them too (Developer Policies (opens in new tab)).
That’s not a gray area. A template that does it doesn’t make it allowed, and it’s your account on the line.
| Move | Allowed? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Send the resource to everyone who comments the keyword | Yes | A private reply to someone who asked is what Meta’s messaging API is for |
| Let people DM you the keyword instead | Yes | Nobody has to engage in public to get it |
| Invite people to follow in the same DM | Yes | As long as the link doesn’t depend on it |
| Ask for an email and send the resource there | Yes | If they know they’re joining your newsletter |
| Check whether they follow and hold the link back until they do | No | Like/share-gating, and Meta’s rule names follows |
| “Follow me and comment GUIDE to get it” in your Reel | No | It says a follow is required to get promised content |
| “Share this to your Story to get it” | No | Share-gating. A thank-you DM after a share is fine |
| A welcome DM to new followers | As a welcome | Saying hi is fine. Promising the freebie for the follow is the same gate |
One message can do it all: “Here’s the checklist. I post a new one every Tuesday, so follow along if that’s useful.”
Say “comment GUIDE or DM me GUIDE” in the Reel, so a public comment is one way to ask, and a DM is another. ManyChat’s keyword trigger works on DMs as well (ManyChat Help Center (opens in new tab)).
ManyChat’s follower check can still be useful, as long as both sides get the link. Thank the people who already follow you, and invite everyone else.
ManyChat’s Follow to DM automation, which messages new followers, is a beta, and Meta decides which accounts get it. Meta also allows only one of these messages per person per week (ManyChat Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026). If you have it, use it to say hi and point to your best post.
The keyword automation also works with Collabs. If you publish a Collab post and run the automation on it, comments on both profiles trigger it, and only the account that published the post needs ManyChat (ManyChat Help Center (opens in new tab)). Agree whose freebie it is before you post.
ManyChat’s free plan covers 25 active contacts a month and four live automations, enough to test one keyword on one Reel (ManyChat Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026).
Small things that clearly help
- Reply to comments while the post is fresh. Instagram recommends liking or replying to comments on your Reels within the first couple of days (creators site (opens in new tab)). When I worked on other people’s accounts, I saw replying to comments and DMs boost engagement a lot, so I’d believe this one.
- Post clean files. Instagram says Reels with third-party watermarks may not be recommended to new audiences (creators site (opens in new tab)). Export a clean file from your editor before you post it.
- Let Google find you. If you’re 18 or older and your account is public and professional, Instagram lets search engines like Google and Bing index your public posts and Reels from 2020 on (Help Center (opens in new tab), checked October 2026). Start captions with plain words that say what the post is and who it’s for.
- Be easy to file under one topic. Since June 2026, people can open “Your Algorithm” and tell Instagram which topics they want more of across Feed, Reels and Explore, and recommended posts can carry a label like “From Running” (Instagram (opens in new tab), checked October 2026). I’d read that as one more reason to stick to one topic.
Turn attention into an audience you own
Instagram fame is rented.
One change to the algorithm, or a hacked account, and your reach is gone. The creators who last move their followers somewhere they control.
- A newsletter. Invite followers to a free guide or a weekly email. Every subscriber is someone you can reach without the algorithm. Instagram for bloggers shows how to move followers onto your list.
- Comment-to-DM automation. Ask viewers to comment a keyword, and send them your link by DM automatically, without a follow gate. When a Reel takes off, you get sign-ups on top of the views.
- Something to sell. Brand deals, affiliate links (see the affiliate program database), a course or a community. My guide to making money on Instagram compares all seven ways.
DM automation
Turn every comment into a subscriber
How comment-to-DM works, what to look for in a tool, and the messaging rules Meta sets for automated replies.
Your first 90 days
If I were starting a new account today, this is how I’d spend the first three months.
-
Week 1: set up
Choose your promise and pillars, switch to a professional account, and fix your name field, bio and link.
-
Weeks 2 to 4: find your format
Post three to five Reels a week, each one idea with a strong hook. Once you have 200 followers, try new formats as Trial Reels.
-
Weeks 5 to 8: double down
Check Insights for the posts with the most shares and saves, and make more like them. Start your first collab.
-
Weeks 9 to 12: start owning your audience
Launch a free guide or newsletter, add comment-to-DM automation, and pin your best three posts.
How to become famous on Instagram: frequently asked questions
How long does it take to become famous on Instagram?
For most accounts, months of consistent posting.
Some accounts go from zero to hero in a heartbeat with a single Reel; others take years. The ones that stay big kept posting in one niche long after the first spike.
How many followers do you need to be Instagram famous?
There’s no official number. In your niche, a few thousand engaged followers can make you a known name, and brands start paying creators with audiences of that size.
How many hashtags should I use on Instagram?
Up to five, which is Instagram’s limit per post (checked October 2026). Choose specific ones that describe the post, and put your main keywords in your name field, bio and caption, where Instagram search reads them.
Can you become famous on Instagram without showing your face?
Yes. Many faceless accounts grow with voice-overs, hands-on tutorials or animations.
A recognizable voice or style does the job a face would, so keep it consistent.
Is it worth buying Instagram followers?
No. Bought followers don’t watch, share or buy, so your posts reach fewer real people, and brands can see the fake followers in your audience data.
Can I make people follow me to get a freebie?
No. Meta’s spam rules ban gating content behind likes, shares or follows (checked October 2026).
Send the freebie to everyone who asks, and invite them to follow in the same message.
