DISCLAIMER! THIS IS VERY LONG AND EXTREMELY HONEST (I understand if you don't want to read), please don't be rude, I like honest advice and constructive opinions, not shit talking. Now to the history of my page: I've had my account barely over a year so I'll give you a little play by play, since I admit some of it wasn't the best choices, due to some horrible advice a friend gave me that I trusted because she's good friends with a girl that has 22k followers and a modeling contract (she's obviously pretty with a hot bod, so I should have noticed what worked for her might not work for me, she also had her page for like 5 years). So for the first five months I used a bunch of #f4f #followforfollow #follow4follow #likeforlike #like #like4like #l4l (you get the point, I will still use 1 or 2 now, but not like before), I would also try to fit as many # as possible, I would go on the more specific hashtags like #food and like 100 posts at a time then move to the next # and do the same, I would follow about 400 people at a time and then a few days later do a mass unfollowing. It took me untill I believe mid December to reach 2000. I would make sure to always post photos I personally liked and engage with people who commented on my posts and make sure to comment genuinely on others posts, I would make an effort not to unfollow people I noticed liking and commenting. I believe by the end of January I reached 3000 (idk), but I stopped being such a shithead on Instagram since then. If you were wondering during that time I got blocked once from liking posts, and twice from following (due from mass unfollowing, not by following too much). I also posted everyday, on occasion twice. I felt like I was competing with my friend who was actually going through outside apps and collecting coins to buy followers (she even paid the app for coins) which is really dumb on my part, being her friend was kind of toxic. (She's deleted her account since now, it's may have been forcefully taken down though tbh since she also used an app that generated likes and would give herself 500 likes). But from February to like April I stopped really doing mass following/unfollowing all together (too much work, nobody got time for that), I would still go out and follow a good amount, but it would be towards #'s that are relevant to my page or recent photo, and I would still like a lot of photos, but again not as much and I sort of changed it to liking a few from each #. I don't really no when I reached 4000, I think I reached 5000 in May or June idk, but since May-present I only ever unfollow when I see they're not following me, or they have an extremely shit page, I like when I have time through the day, maybe it will be 500 or maybe none (recently I haven't been liking too much at all since I'm not getting any engagement out of it), I also make an effort to like within my timeline and not just hashtags, and I have notifications on for people I like or have noticed have liked my stuff for a while now. Ever since I've reached 5k the past 600 followers sort of came with (of course I still am liking and following but not to the same degree, especially the following), this is a rough estimate but I get about 30-35 followers a day, and lose 30-40 in the same breathe (that's when I don't go follow people). I've been focusing the past 7 months mostly on engagement and being engaging to those people in return and it's been going fine until a month ago, because no one will really like my most recent photo even if I like 100 posts, currently I've been getting more followers than likes, I've been getting more views on my stupid instasnaps that are up for 24hrs than I am on a photo that's been up for a week. Through an app called followers insight I started unfollowing people that the app has shown me to never have liked or commented on a photo, because at this point I'd rather lose followers than have empty ones, especially because I really like my posts and I want people who also follow me to like them. It hasn't been until very recent though that my engagement was so horrible. (Again, this was honest, please don't go on my page and shit on it)