How to get more followers on Instagram: A guide

We wake up and drop off to the harsh digital glare, regaining consciousness as we scramble for the charger.

But why are we so fixated by this little glowing box? Because every time our phone lights up it trips our ego. Plus, flurries of urgent tweets distract from a whole lot of waiting: waiting at the dentists; waiting at the bus stop; waiting for your date to arrive; or waiting for your boyfriend to leave you. 

The more observant will also notice that social media is the chosen tool of businesses, celebrities, models, magazines, brands and products alike. So far, so good. But what if your social media page isn’t the whirring hive of likes, tweets and pokes that you would want it to be? Well here are some seriously slimy tips to get you on your way into the Ks. This is how to climb the greasy social media pole. 

#Trick #1 – “The Socialmedia-ite”

Find a friend or a friend of a friend’s friend with far more followers than you and worm your way into one of their Instagram photos. This requires you base all your social interactions from this point on with the ultimate end game of getting tagged in a photo. Admittedly, it isn’t a particularly honest social engagement, but aren’t we all just narcissistic sociopaths? The plan: Go over, crack a few jokes, subtly whip out Snapchat, take a selfie, save it to your photos, airdrop it to your new bestie, steal their phone, post it, smash their phone on the floor and dust off your shoulders as you saunter into social media stardom.

General life tip: If they don’t tag, they’re not a real friend.

https://www.instagram.com/p/_CTOtejo1-/?taken-by=kendalljenner

Just the 1.9 million likes 

#Trick #2 – “The Tease”

The classic follow/unfollow, but with a fresh twist. In essence, find pages like your own with more followers than you, go on a similar style picture to what you yourself would post, find out who liked this photo and get following them. By doing this, you’ve targeted your exact market and you know that they are active, liking users. If you do your research correctly, this technique is guaranteed results. Be warned, it will consume literally hours of your time. I’ve heard that a significant clothes brand used this technique to reach 20K in six months and has built a successful business platform off it.

In a sense this is a more honest technique since it is simply showing users pages that you think they might appreciate – in a vaguely democratic way. But, like most political manoeuvres it has been conducted under false pretences, because you know that two days later you are going to heartlessly unfollow their shitty self indulgent social media vomit. You’ve taken them out for seafood dinner and never called them again. Whammy.

#Trick #3 – “The RentAFriend.Com”

Sad, lonely, rich people used to be able to rent their companions online for the day, but now who cares about actual human relationships. Now you can buy followers – who sound far more loyal and easy to domineer than friends. The exact cost of a single follower is undetermined, since it is immoral and wrong to put a price on a person. But it is done frequently, with limited success; the unfortunate downside being that everyone knows you’ve done it. When you have 30K followers and 17 likes, this might suggest that you’ve previously attracted the 29,000 people that have left Instagram/Twitter in the past few days, but the more likely story is that you’ve bought your followers like the insincere, fame-hungry, Twit-whore you are.

However, there’s a solution: you can now buy likes. Simply paint away the insincerity by throwing cash at the problem.

#Trick #4 – “The Professional”

For small businesses, getting professional big dogs may be a legitimate option in order to expand on ‘social’. Others, may have to call in slightly smaller dogs. A friend was contacted recently by @LuxuryNRichness to act as a third party social media manager, promising to “Work in | Natural way .. | Will | Add followers | Slowly like | 50-100-60-124-222-34 to make it | better | it can be fast also… Custom comments | are also available ..”

Judging by their gut-wrenching use of ellipses, line breaks and syntax, this process will be in no way ‘natural’ one, and will probably involve handing over cash. It also appears that this service is offering the opportunity for you to write your own public response to your pictures. The comedy potential in that is limitless. Simultaneously, the potential for delusional, sad egomaniacs to capitalise is just as strong.

As with all of these horrendously contrived and worryingly expensive social climbing methods, they do actually work… to make you look like a complete bell-end.

Check out Harvey’s filthy social media work on Instagram here and on Twitter here.