Maximize Your Instagram Growth: Getting More of The Right Followers

Struggling to grow your Instagram following with people who actually care about your content? Wondering how to attract the right audience—without wasting time chasing trends that don’t convert?

In this article, you’ll discover proven strategies to attract highly engaged, aligned followers on Instagram—so you can build a loyal community that supports your goals and fuels real growth.

Why Marketers Need a Methodical Approach to Instagram Growth

Of late, people are less likely to follow too many accounts on Instagram. When they encounter an account that delivers random posting or content without a clear plan, they pick up on the inconsistency and are left feeling uncertain about the value of the account. This uncertainty prevents them from committing to following your account.

A strategic approach solves this problem by creating predictable, reliable content that helps people understand exactly what they can expect from your account. When people know what they're signing up for, they're much more likely to hit that follow button and stay engaged with your content over time.

The key is implementing a systematic method that gives potential followers confidence that you'll consistently create good, funny, or relatable content they'll want to see in their feed. This strategic foundation sets the stage for sustainable Instagram growth that attracts the right audience for your brand or business.

The GROWS Method: Five Pillars of Strategic Instagram Content

Lucas O’Keefe developed the GROWS method that provides a framework for creating Instagram content that consistently attracts and retains the right followers. 

The key to success lies not in implementing all five types, but in selecting two or three that align with your strengths and audience needs.

The reason for this selective approach is twofold. First, trying to create all five types of content can lead to burnout, even with a team supporting you. Second, your audience needs consistency to develop a clear sense of your account's identity. When you focus on fewer content types but execute them well, your audience knows what to expect and can form a stronger connection with your brand.

As you explore each pillar, consider which two or three resonate most strongly with your communication style, industry, and available resources. The more consistently you show up with your chosen content types, the more likely visitors will recognize your value and hit that follow button.

#1: Guide: Become The Authority Your Instagram Audience Trusts

The first pillar of Lucas's GROWS method focuses on creating educational material that positions you as a reliable source of valuable information in your industry. This type of content inclludes how-to tutorials and step-by-step guides that show someone how to accomplish something specific.

The great news is there's an endless amount of tutorials, workflows or processes that you can turn into bite-sized content.

All guide content should be strategically aligned with your overall brand and target audience so that you're maintaining a focused approach that consistently serves them. The goal is for visitors to recognize the value you provide and follow you because they want the bite-sized chunks of knowledge that contribute to your expertise.

The Strategic Value of Guide Content

When you demonstrate your insights and wisdom to other people, it accomplishes several important marketing objectives. First, it proves that you know what you're talking about. Instead of prospects simply visiting a website and seeing a portfolio of logos, they witness the craftsmanship and expertise that goes behind your work.

This approach establishes know, like, and trust much more effectively than static portfolios. Additionally, if someone does learn to become better at their craft as a result of following your content, they might attribute their improvement to you down the road. They might say, “I learned all this from Lucas O'Keefe,” which becomes another form of branding and marketing.

You don't have to show everything that goes into your process—just enough to demonstrate your expertise while maintaining the value of your full services. This strategic sharing builds authority while creating natural pathways for people to want to work with you directly.

How to Create Guide Content for Instagram

When creating guide content for Instagram, you have two primary format options that work exceptionally well for educational material.

The first option is tutorial reels. For example, if you're a logo designer, you might create a reel titled 3 Quick Steps to Design Your Own Logo. In this format, you break down three important steps that someone hoping to design their own logo can follow.

The second and often more effective option is swipeable carousel posts that function like mini ebooks. Lucas personally favors this format and credits it with growing his account to its current size. Rather than thinking of carousels as typical photo dumps with random images, you design each slide of the carousel using tools like Canva, Adobe Express, Photoshop, or Illustrator.

For instance, Lucas recently posted How to Find Your Niche on Instagram as the first slide of a carousel. As someone swipes through the remaining slides, they receive his detailed, multi-step process to find their niche on Instagram.

#2: Relate: Show The Human Behind Your Brand

In an era where AI tools can generate endless content and ideas, success increasingly comes down to who is behind the content rather than just what that person is talking about. Relatable content reveals the human behind your brand or business.

While educational content provides value through teaching, relatable content provides value through connection, humor, and shared experiences. This type of content can include funny reels that make people want to share them, memes presented as single images or carousel collections, and anything that shows you're human and understand the same problems or issues in your industry as the customers you're trying to reach.

The Strategic Value of Relatable Content

Relatable content serves multiple strategic purposes beyond entertainment. First, it humanizes your brand, especially important for businesses that might otherwise feel corporate or distant. Instead of constantly trying to sell people, you demonstrate that you “get it” just as much as your audience does within your shared industry.

Second, relatable content often performs better in terms of shares and saves because it gives people something they want to pass along to others. When someone sees a post that perfectly captures their experience, their immediate instinct is often to share it with someone who will have the same reaction.

Finally, this type of content helps balance out more serious or educational posts in your content mix. If you're constantly educating or teaching, occasionally making your audience laugh provides variety and keeps them engaged with your account over time.

How to Create Relate Content for Instagram

The most effective relatable content brings together cultural moments with industry-specific experiences. You take something happening in wider pop culture and combine it with challenges or situations your target audience faces regularly. There's more overlap between these interests than people typically realize.

For example, you might use a still frame image or GIF from the popular show Severance, which features workers who don't understand the purpose of their work. You could pair this with text that reads, “Marketers trying to figure out the latest Instagram algorithm.” This combination works because people who watch the show will recognize the reference while also relating to the stress of keeping up with algorithm changes.

This type of content resonates because your audience thinks, “My favorite brand just used my favorite show to communicate an aspect of my industry that is stressing me out. I am stressed out about the algorithm, so I'm going to share this post to my friend in my industry who also watches Severance.” 

Not all relatable content needs to reference popular culture. You can create highly effective relatable content by focusing on timeless challenges and experiences within your specific industry.

Currently, many creators are using ChatGPT's new image model to generate completely original four-panel comics that address common frustrations, shared experiences, or inside jokes within your field. This creates branded, relatable content that connects with your audience without relying on cultural references that might become outdated. 

These aren't references to existing cartoons or shows—they're unique illustrations created specifically to share a marketing message. This approach gives you the freedom to make relatable content about whatever you want in your industry while maintaining a consistent visual style.

#3: Observe: Become The Go-To Source For Industry News

This content type involves looking at what news is emerging in your industry, identifying important trends, and acting quickly to be among the first sources of information about these changes. Lucas particularly loves this type of content and uses it as one of his main pillars but cautions that is comes with two limiting considerations.

First, this pillar requires significant dedication and resources. If you're reporting on something eight to twelve hours later, let alone twenty-four hours or more, you're probably too late because people will have already seen the news from someone who does a better job with reactive content.

Second, the viability of observational content depends heavily on your industry's pace of change and your access to information networks. Lucas feels fortunate to work in the Instagram and social media space, which changes rapidly and has frequent new features and updates. However, in slower-moving industries or industries where you don't have access to news networks that can inform you quickly, this pillar might not be the ideal focus.

If immediate news reporting doesn't fit your resources or industry, you can still create valuable observational content using alternative approaches. Instead of being the first to report news, you can focus on being the best at interpreting it or being the funniest.

The Strategic Value of Observational Content

This speed creates several advantages: it positions you as a trusted source, builds reliability with your audience, and can even lead people to turn on post notifications because they know you share timely and urgent information.

How to Create Observe Content for Instagram

The most sustainable approach to observational content often involves creating predictable, recurring formats. You might establish a weekly series like “What You Missed in Social Media This Week” or monthly roundups that collect the most important industry developments.

Instagram's official @creators account provides an excellent example of this approach. They regularly publish monthly creator digests covering what happened on Instagram, and they also share weekly trending content roundups. This systematic approach provides value while being manageable for the content creator.

This type of content also repurposes well across other marketing channels. Your weekly recap can easily become content for your newsletter, serve as the foundation for a longer YouTube video, or provide material for other marketing activities. The systematic approach creates multiple content opportunities from a single research and creation effort.

#4: Win: Deliver Quick Value That Gets Shared

Quick win content provides immediate, actionable value to your audience. This content type focuses on delivering the fastest possible outcome or value you can give to someone, condensed into highly visual, easily consumable formats.

While everything feels fast on social media, quick win content takes speed to another level. Unlike the Guide content, which might feel too lengthy for today's attention spans, quick win content delivers value almost instantly through visual checklists or infographics presented as single images rather than carousels or reels.

Creating effective quick win content presents a unique challenge: you must distill comprehensive information into a single, visually appealing image. This constraint often feels restrictive to creators who want to provide detailed explanations and thorough guidance.

Lucas shares his own experience with this challenge stating that a single image Win post will often outperform a comprehensive carousel Grow post often. He recently posted a single image explaining how to manage Instagram in an hour a day, presented as a pie chart breaking down the time allocation. The post generated 500,000 views because it provided immediate, actionable value in an easily digestible format.

The Strategic Value of Win Content

Quick win content works because it allows someone to look at a single post, scan it quickly, and immediately extract value. The goal is creating something so consumable and valuable that people will not only save it but also share it with their network. This sharing behavior happens because the content provides immediate utility while being easy to digest and understand.

How to Create Win Content for Instagram

The key is creating content that functions almost like a shopping list—something practical that viewers can immediately understand and potentially act upon. These visual summaries work particularly well for health tips, productivity advice, quick reference guides, and industry-specific checklists.

While Lucas recommends static images for quick win content, creative adaptations can work effectively. Some creators have success with minimally animated reels where text appears on screen over B-roll footage of someone working at their computer. For example, they might create a nine-second reel titled “Here are my five techniques to stay more productive during my workday,” with techniques like the Pomodoro method appearing as text overlay.

However, Lucas notes this isn't his favorite type of content, suggesting that simpler static presentations often work better. The caption can provide additional detail or direct people to other content for more comprehensive information, but the visual should deliver immediate value on its own.

#5: Showcase: Reveal The Process Behind Your Work

Lucas designed the final content pillar to support artists, designers, photographers, and others who felt left behind by Instagram's shift toward Reels-heavy content. This content type addresses the challenge faced by visual creators who previously grew their audiences by posting photos of their finished work but struggled to adapt to Instagram's video-centric algorithm.

Showcase content maintains the core appeal of displaying your finished work while adapting to current platform preferences. The approach involves showing off your final piece—whether it's a photo, logo, artwork, or other creative output—but presenting it as an engaging video that also reveals the process behind creating it.

The Strategic Value of Showcase Content

This structure works because it provides multiple types of value: inspiration from seeing high-quality work, education from understanding the process, and entertainment from watching the transformation unfold.

How to Create Showcase Content for Instagram

Most showcase content appears as time-lapse videos, condensing lengthy creative processes into short, engaging segments. A one-hour art session might become a sixty-second video, or an entire photoshoot setup might be compressed into a quick reveal of technique and final result.

These videos often work well without voiceover, relying instead on music and visual storytelling. The format naturally incorporates ASMR elements—viewers can hear the pencil on paper, the brush strokes, or other satisfying sounds that accompany the creative process. This sensory component adds another layer of engagement beyond the visual transformation.

Text hooks play a crucial role in showcase content success. Phrases like “Watch me turn this pine cone into X, Y, Z” immediately establish intrigue and promise a surprising transformation, driving viewers to watch the complete video.

How to Combine GROW Content Pillars to Develop a Consistent an Instagram Content Strategy

The true power of Lucas's GROWS method emerges when you combine different content types rather than relying on just one approach. The strategy involves identifying two to three pillars that work best for your brand, communication style, and resources, then focusing on those consistently.

When selecting your content pillars, consider both the time investment required and the complementary value each type provides. Some content types, like educational carousels and showcase time-lapses, require significant time and effort to create well. If you choose one of these as a primary pillar, you'll want to pair it with faster-to-create content types like relatable memes or quick win infographics.

Lucas particularly likes pairing educational content with relatable content. This combination balances the serious, value-driven content with lighter, more human moments that help your audience connect with you personally.

Similarly, if you're creating showcase content that might be primarily visual with music overlays, adding relatable content helps “put the human back into it.” This balance ensures your audience sees both your professional skills and your personality.

Another particularly effective pairing combines educational guide content with observational industry news content. This combination positions you as both a teacher and a trusted source for current information in your field.

For example, you might regularly teach people how to use various marketing techniques while also providing quick commentary on new platform features or algorithm changes. The educational content builds long-term authority while the observational content keeps people coming back for timely information.

This pairing works especially well because observational content often naturally leads to educational content. When a new feature launches, your audience will want to know not just that it exists, but how to use it effectively. You can address immediate news with quick observational posts, then follow up with detailed educational content that provides deeper value.

Alternatively, quick win content works exceptionally well as an extension of your guide content. If you're regularly creating detailed educational posts, you can repurpose that information into simplified checklists or visual summaries. This approach allows you to create multiple pieces of content from the same core information while serving different audience preferences and consumption patterns.

For example, you might create a comprehensive carousel about Instagram engagement strategies, then distill the key points into a single-image checklist. Both pieces serve your audience, but the quick win version might reach people who wouldn't engage with longer-form content while still providing genuine value.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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✋🏽 If you enjoyed this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.

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