Your first week with Growbot: a day-by-day plan

Why

The quickest way to get into trouble with any automation tool is to do too much on the first day. A good first week is quiet. You set Growbot up once, run one small batch, watch what happens in the Log, and let the scheduled unfollows do their job a week later. By day seven you know how your account responds, and you have a routine you can repeat every week.

This plan assumes one Instagram account and about 25 actions per day. If your account is well established you can move a little faster, but keep the order of the steps.

How to use it

Day 1: set up and protect what you have

1. Open Instagram and click the Growbot icon in your browser toolbar, or press Alt+G, to open the panel.
2. In Settings, open Growbot Account and click Sign In / Register. Scheduled actions are saved to your Growbot account, so the Actions Queue needs you signed in.
3. Protect the accounts you already follow. Go to your own Instagram profile, open the Load Accounts menu, uncheck Limit queue to so the whole list loads, and click Load Current Page's Following.
4. When the list finishes loading, open Select..., click Select All, then Add selected to whitelist, then Save whitelist. Growbot never unfollows anyone on your whitelist.
5. Check the settings in How to use Growbot safely: delays, active hours, and background tabs.

Day 1: schedule your first small batch

1. Find an account in your niche with an active audience, such as a creator like you or a business like yours. Open one of their recent posts.
2. Open Load Accounts, set Limit queue to about 100, and click Load Likers.
3. On the Filters tab, keep it simple for now: uncheck Has No Profile Picture to skip empty profiles. Then open Settings → Following Options and turn on Apply Filters Automatically While Following.
4. Open the Process Queue menu and choose Follow. Check Unfollow After and leave it at 7 Days.
5. Click Process Queue, then Schedule Actions. Set Actions per day to 25, leave Minimum seconds between actions at 300, and confirm.
6. Open the Actions Queue tab. Your follows are spread across today and the next few days, and each one has a matching unfollow a week later.

Days 2 to 6: watch, do not pile on

1. Keep an Instagram tab open during your active hours, or whenever you want actions to run if you leave active hours off. You can use Instagram normally in that tab while Growbot works.
2. Read the Log tab once a day. Follow lines are what you want. Skips are normal, and Growbot is skipping accounts explains each one. Rate limit lines mean wait before adding more.
3. If the first batch is nearly done and the Log is clean, load a second batch from a different post and schedule it at the same pace.

Day 7: the unfollows begin

1. The unfollows from day 1 start to run. When each one runs, Growbot checks your Unfollowing Options, so with Don't unfollow people who follow me checked (the default), only people who did not follow you back are unfollowed.
2. Compare the people who followed back with the number you followed. If one post or source did noticeably better, use more sources like it.
3. If the week ran without any restriction messages, raise Actions per day by about 10 for next week and repeat the routine.

Tips

• Do not skip the whitelist. It takes a minute, and it is the only way to be sure an unfollow never touches friends, clients, or accounts you followed years ago.
• Likers and commenters on a recent post are usually more active than an account's full follower list, which is why this plan starts there.
• If a batch does not fit into one day, that is fine. Scheduled actions carry over into the next day's window on their own.
• Write down which source you used for each batch. After a few weeks you will know which kinds of accounts actually follow you back.