How To Grow Your Instagram With the 80/20 Rule

Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule suggests that 20% of your activities contribute to 80% of your results.

You’ve probably heard of it before. It’s a trendy productivity/management principle. It states that identifying the tasks that drive the best results should be your priority if you want to save time while still getting the best results possible.

When it comes to Instagram strategies and growth, I usually hear people saying that they don’t have time to spend on Instagram at all, and that is typically the reason why they end up using automation tools and engagement bots.

While these automation methods allow you to assure a rapid growth of your account without spending a minute a day on the app, it’s not the best way to get qualified followers that will turn into fans, and into potential clients.

What Is Your Goal With Instagram?

For most people, it would be used as a marketing tool: using Instagram to drive traffic to your website or your business.

Instagram is a fantastic tool for that right now. It is highly popular and the engagement rate is usually high.

And, due to the “discover” section of the app, the hashtags, the search by name and location, if your search engine optimization game is strong, you can really drive a ton of traffic to your profile and therefore to your website.

The core idea here is to get qualified followers. People that will be genuinely interested in your niche, business, or content and that will eventually be converted into customers.

If a million people follow you, but none of them are qualified enough to make a purchase, you will not be making any money with your business nor your Instagram page.

However, if a thousand people follow you and, let’s say, 2% of these followers are highly engaged, you have 20 potential customers! Which can be enough to make a living depending on your business model.

By using a bot, you are getting followers, that is for sure. However, most of these people will start following you only because you started following them or because you spammed them with 15 likes on their latest posts.

Bots are a great way to raise awareness. These people do end up going to your profile, and they end up following you, so they are showing a little interest in your content. But their engagement is not deep enough for it to be your only source of business.

Bots are a great way to build numbers but they’re not a sustainable way to grow an audience.

If You Want to Build an Audience, Focus on What Matters

If you think Instagram takes a lot of time and you’re tempted to use a bot to get fast and quick results, maybe you need to read this.

Let’s follow the Pareto Principle. Let’s focus on the things that matter on Instagram and cut all the rest. That way, you’ll get the best results in a small amount of time because, again, 20% of your efforts contribute to 80% of the results.

So let’s focus on this 80 % and let’s spend as little time as possible on the app while still building a sustainable audience. An audience that will end up buying your products and investing in your brand.

This method requires 15 minutes of your day. You can do it for longer for better results if you want.

If you are not willing to spend 15 minutes on Instagram every day, then maybe you should consider a different source of traffic for your brand. Instagram takes time and effort to grow.

1. Do not spend time liking the content of people you follow

Okay, that’s not very nice for your friends, but liking doesn’t do much. We’re here to save time and get the most results.

2. Go to the discover section of the app and look for posts that are relevant to your niche

You can search by location, hashtags, recommended accounts, or influencers.

Use any tool you need to find a bunch of posts which are relevant to your business.

Try to think about the content your audience must be looking at, and interacting with, on the platform.

3. Comment on these posts

If you don’t struggle with inspiration and can come up with relevant and kind comments to write quickly, go and start chain-commenting.

Comment for 15 minutes straight. That should represent something like 30 to 50 comments in those 15 minutes. That’s like 200 to 350 comments per week. When you comment on someone’s content, there is a higher chance of this person checking out your profile page and following you.

If you have more trouble thinking of what to write, then maybe push the 80/20 rule a little further and only comment on posts that have a strong engagement rate.

Once you have spotted these pieces of content, read the caption carefully and leave a relevant comment (either answer the question the person is asking or add value to them by giving them a different perspective about what they’re saying).

Try to show as much as you can that you spent time reading their caption and that you care about their content.

Higher engagement accounts usually care about their community and interactions. They are more likely to see your comment. Their audience may also engage with your comment, which will lead to more communications and more awareness for you and your brand.

This Method Increases Profile Views and Followers

If you follow this method, you can expect a way higher number of profile views. And you can expect significant growth in followers.

It probably would not be as spectacular as using a bot, but these people will follow you and interact with you in the future, which is what you are looking for if you are taking Instagram as a serious traffic source for your business.

This is the quickest way to grow your Instagram audience organically.

You can spend as much time as you want each day doing it, but keep in mind that it’s all a matter of consistency. Do it for 15 minutes every single day instead of for one hour once a week.

Make it part of your routine, maybe in the evening after an exhausting workday. Writing comments doesn’t take a lot of brain energy, but they are highly efficient and strongly underrated for getting engaged followers.

Remember, sometimes it’s not all about the numbers. Sometimes you have to go beyond that superficial vision and start caring about more down to earth business metrics.

Followers won’t make you a living. A highly engaged, even small, audience can sustain your financial needs.