anyone else find gaining followers on instagram harder than the guides suggest?

the guides also leave out that a lot of the early numbers in those success stories came from giveaways and follow-for-follow. you get followers who never look at a post again. slower and real is the account you'd rather have a year later.

yes, and mostly because the guides are written by people who already had an audience when they started. what changed it for us was the profile rather than the posting - if someone lands on the grid from a reel and cannot tell in two seconds what the account is for, they watch and leave. growth comes off the back of reach from non-followers, so the reel that travels is doing the work and the hashtags are not.