How to find the right accounts to follow

Why

Following people who have no reason to care about your account uses up your daily limit and brings in followers who never engage. The people most likely to follow you back are already interested in what you post, and they are not hard to find: they are liking, commenting on, and posting about the same things you do.

Growbot can load accounts from several places. Each one gives you a different kind of audience, so the right choice depends on what you are trying to build.

How to use it

Pick a source

• Likers of a recent post: open the post, then Load Accounts → Load Likers. These people were active on Instagram very recently and care about the topic. A good default for most accounts.
• Commenters: Load Commenters on the same post. The most engaged group. The lists are smaller, but people who comment tend to notice who follows them.
• Hashtag posters: in the Media Queue, use Load Media → Load Posts from #hashtag, then Load Posters to Accounts Queue. These are people creating content about a topic. Specific hashtags work much better than huge generic ones.
• Location posters: open a location page on Instagram, then use Load Posts from Location Page in the Media Queue and Load Posters to Accounts Queue. The best source for local businesses.
• A similar account's followers: Load Current Page's Followers on their profile. The biggest pool, but any large follower list includes many inactive accounts, so filter more strictly.

Filter out accounts that will not follow back

A few settings on the Filters tab remove most of the waste:

1. Uncheck Has No Profile Picture. Empty profiles are often abandoned or fake.
2. Set Following to a sensible range, for example 100 to 3,000. People who follow very few accounts rarely follow back, and accounts following many thousands are often bots or follow-for-follow accounts.
3. Use Follow Ratio to skip large accounts that will not notice you. The follow ratio guide in Related guides has suggested ranges.
4. For a local audience, try Bio Has Text with your city or neighborhood.
5. Turn on Apply Filters Automatically While Following in Settings → Following Options, so Growbot checks each account as it goes instead of loading data for the whole queue at once.

Recipes by goal

• Local business: posters from location pages in your area, Bio Has Text set to your city, and Like 1 Pic(s) After Follow in the Process Queue menu so each follow comes with a small, friendly signal.
• Creator in a niche: likers and commenters from the last few posts of two or three creators your audience also follows, with Following between 100 and 3,000.
• Shop or brand: commenters on posts from accounts your customers already follow, with Business Accounts unchecked if you want to reach individuals rather than other businesses.

Compare sources after a week

1. Schedule two sources side by side at the same volume, for example likers from one creator and posters from one hashtag. Click Save Queue on each batch before you schedule it. Growbot downloads a copy of the queue as a file, so name the files after their source.
2. A week later, open one batch with Load Accounts → Load Queue → Load queue from file, then run Process Queue → Get More Data. The Follows Me column shows who followed you back. Repeat for the other batch.
3. Move more of your daily volume to whichever source worked better.

Tips

• Fresh beats big. A post from this week gives you people who are active right now, while a follower list built up over years includes many who have left Instagram.
• Stay in your niche. Following people outside it can bring a quick follow back, but those followers rarely engage with your posts.
• Rotate sources across the week rather than working through one huge list. It keeps your queues fresh and your results easier to compare.
• Get More Data makes one Instagram request per account, so run it on saved batches of a few hundred, not thousands at once.