I don't have much of a following. I get these DMs constantly. I cannot stress enough how far you should stay away from these things. Something I remember saying a while back is that you can't hack your way into success. There's no growth hack here that's going to get you to 250,000 followers. Even if you could find a way to get to 250,000 followers, using growth companies or using different tactics, that's not going to be an audience that's engaged in what you do.

That's not going to be an audience that cares about what you have to say. Thus, to advertisers such as myself, that audience is useless. You having 30,000 followers who are obsessed with you or 5,000 followers who are obsessed with you, is better than having 15,000 followers who don't know who the hell you are. I understand the temptation and I understand the frustration of how hard it is to grow in this space right now, and how hard it is to grow on Instagram right now, but these companies are selling you snake oil.

Again, even if they get you're following up 30 %, that 30% is going to be essentially meaningless to brands because those people probably aren't going to view your posts. You're not going to have the reach numbers to support your following. We are eventually going to move to a model where we are paying on true real impressions, not your following account. I think in the next six to 12 months, we will essentially start to ignore following accounts completely. They will be essentially meaningless to us. The only thing I will care about and, by proxy are hundreds of clients who care about, is how many of those people are you actually reaching. If you're padding your following number but you're not growing your reach number, then those followers will be meaningless anyway. I would stay away from them. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Keep working. Be consistent. Take the take the long-term view. Think about where you want to be a year, two years from now. Don't let companies trying to sell you short-term gains, throw you off track.