How I Grew Instagram from 150K to 800K Followers in 5 Months

5 months ago, I was sitting at 180,000 followers. Today, we are at 800,000 followers on Instagram in literally 5

months. Today, I'm going to be breaking down the exact strategy. This is not going to be another cute algorithm

growth video that you're going to be watching. This is actual content strategies that will work no matter what

time, what generation we're in that will help you truly grow your social media platforms to levels you never even

imagined. It was proper branding things that I did to explode and position my social media in way where people cannot

stop watching what I'm doing. And here's what nobody talks about. What got you to your first thousand followers, 100,000

followers, 20,000 followers is not the same thing that is going to get you to the 500,000 followers, 800 or even a

million followers. So, if you are stuck at a certain follower or on social media and you want a breakthrough on how can I

build this consistently in a way that will help me in any business I am in, keep watching because I will be breaking

it all down. So, let me be completely honest. I was stuck at 150 to 180,000 for 5 years. I was building that for 5

years. It's crazy how when you actually learn or when I actually learned the right way to brand and post and what

people want to see, the psychology of why people buy and follow, I literally almost 6x 6 7xed my followers in less

than 5 months. So the first content changes that I've done which is I opened my mouth. When you open your mouth and

you start speaking on your social media, not just showing the behind the scenes, the nice B-roll, people will trust a

voice. People don't follow aesthetic. People follow voices transformations, someone that they can connect to with

your voice. And especially as a woman, we're so used to just looking pretty, taking the cute picture with a cute

little dress. And as soon as I opened my mouth and I spoke my truth over and over and over again, I was an idol where more

women was like, "Wow, I want to be like her. She is saying things that I relate to, that I feel." And that automatically

gave me the biggest leverage over so many women on social media that don't speak, that just look cute, that just

have the perfect makeup and outfit, but nothing else to offer. But that also did not matter until I knew who I was

speaking to. Until I started speaking to a specific person. I've always wanted to be, you know, everything to everyone. I

wanted to do makeup, travel, vlogging, speaking, motivation, trading, investing, everything in between where I

was not speaking to one type of woman. I understood that my content, anyone's content to blow up and for you to be the

most powerful in your niche to whoever you're speaking to, your message has to be so specific that any woman or man

that listens to it, they're like, "Oh my god, she is literally speaking to me. It has to be so specific." Like I am

speaking to the women that want to make a million dollars through branding on Instagram and want to be powerful and

don't want to only have the soft life but want to have generational wealth. You see what I mean? It's very specific

to a specific woman. When she sees my content, she's like, "This is my twin. This is my best friend." And I've got

that comment so many times where women are like, "We are literally best friends. You just don't know it yet."

And that's the vibe. That's how specific you want to be and consistent with who you're talking to all the time. But then

I also realized that people are cold and they don't give second chances and they don't give you even enough time to give

you another chance. So what is very important on social media because we're over stimulated every single day with so

much content every platform so many people you need to get someone's attention in the first 3 seconds they

land their eyes on you and this is if you don't take anything from this video please take this the hook I used to

spend no time on the hooks and I would just brush it off and I would spend the most amount of time on my actual videos

what I'm saying the tell you, but none of that cares because people will not give you the chance to watch the video

till the end unless you hook them in the beginning. So, the first 3 seconds I started spending literally 90% of my

time on the first 3 seconds and the rest does not matter. I even watched my analytics the other day and I realized

people liked my videos the first 3 seconds they watched it. That was like the the highest time they they liked my

video. That just shows what did I say in the first three seconds? Just the hook. I captured them. They like that's it.

That's that's all I had to do to like not even listen to the full video. So, make sure the first five words that come

out of your mouth are triggering, are controversial, or are bold or are such a relatable truth that so many women, men,

people are like, "Oh my god, you said something that I've always wanted to say." And when I started doing that, I

kid you not, my views are always so high. The sharability rate is so high. The comments is so high. The people that

love myself, it has increased in ways that I've never even imagined my content being this high. Now, not only uh a

verbal hook is important, a visual hook is also very important, right? How you look or what is the wording that you put

on the screen. So sometimes when I'm also saying the hook, I also like writing it so people have the visual

hook and the sound hook because most people listen to videos actually on mute, especially on Instagram. So make

sure you write it out so they see it and now they are forced to actually watch and like what you're about to say

because what's the point of this amazing value if they're not even going to watch it? Because our attention spam is

literally worse than a golden fish these days. We just keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, trying to find that like

adrenaline. And you can only get that if you catch them within the first 3 seconds. So, make sure you spend the

most time on the hook. Just like I spend the most time right now talking about the hook. Now, what I also realized is

the most powerful metric on social media is not the like button. It's the sharability button. That's what gets you

more followers and more viewers to your reals, to your Tik Toks, and all other platforms. So, when I'm crafting my

content, when I'm planning my content, my number one question is, if someone saw this, would they share it not only

to their friends, but would they share it on their stories? Would they post it in their group chats? If someone posts

your real, your video on their story, you don't only get them as a viewer, you get all the people that already watch

their stuff as viewers. And that's how you get so many new followers. Now, what makes people actually share a video?

Number one, you shared something so relatable that they're like, "Oh my god, she said it better than I could ever say

it, so I have to share." That's number one. Number two, they're sharing it because sharing that content makes them

look smarter than they are. Words that they're like, "Oh my god, that's my values. These are my visions. I'm going

to share hers because that's literally me." Like, she said it better than I could ever say it. Number four, if it's

something controversial or a bold opinion about them values, mainly if they can relate to it or if it makes

them look smarter than they are. That's why people share stuff. So, make sure when you're crafting your content, you

make it sharable and that's the fastest way to grow on social media. Now, let's be honest, people get bored. So, one

thing I've done is I kept my people on edge. I've always believed that people don't only want to be educated. They

don't only want to be entertained. They don't only want to be inspired. They want all three from one same creator. So

if you are in the education space and you are educating people, make sure you first of all entertain them, then you

educate them, then you inspire them. That's how you're going to have people's attention all the time because they're

like, "I have no idea what I'm getting into watching their content today." And then boom, you're educating them. Boom,

it's a funny thing. And they fall in love with someone that can deliver all three. If you only do educational,

you're going to be pretty boring after a while. If you only do entertainment, you're going to be looked at as a clown

after and no one's going to pay you. And if you only do inspirational content, you're going to just be looked at a

motivational speaker or someone that just flexes on people. And you don't want none of these. You want the three

combined keep people on edge. Now let's talk about the psychology on why people trusted me to pay me a lot of money for

my business to even explode when I also grew my following. I was not only giving motivational speeches. I did not only

say believe in yourself. Hard work pays off. Keep God first. These things are cool and we hear them and see them all

the time. But the most important thing that I focused on that made people want to pay me the big bucks is I started

giving perspective shifts, aha moments. So if I'm saying something very inspiring, very educational, I need to

say it, but then make sure convince you on why this is the right way for you to think. A perspective you've never

thought about. an aha moment like, "Oh my god, I've never thought about it this way." And that's how people will start

looking up to you and trusting you to pay you whatever services you're offering. And another thing that I did

not think it was very important until I realized it is very important is I stayed visually consistent. What does

that mean? It means that I don't have to change my hair color every single day so people don't get bored of me. I don't

have to change my makeup style, my colors that I'm wearing, the the the background. I used to always choose

different backgrounds to record my content. And I thought that will keep people excited to watch my content. In

reality, that actually made people not even recognize me. Sometimes they watch a video of me while my hair was blonde,

but the next day my hair is darker and they're like, "Wait, is that the same person?" You need as a woman especially,

to keep a similar look. This is my signature look. You'll see me in a lot of the videos, in 99% of the videos,

side, similar makeup, similar neutral colors that I like to keep, similar backgrounds throughout my videos. So,

that's my signature look that people expect me with. When they see me, they actually recognize me instead of

thinking I'm a different person. So remember, especially as a woman, I know we can transform so much with hair,

makeup. Have a signature look that you post and you show up with so people actually can remember you and recognize

you. Another important thing that I did was I positioned myself as a leader, not as a content creator. I know as women,

we love to fit in. We love to just blend in and not take up too much space. But that is probably the number one reason

why you're stuck and you're not growing as fast as you want to grow. When you are a leader, you're not speaking at

people like you should do this, you should do that. That's a manager. As a leader, I'm speaking with people. I am

the voice for all the women that's they're standing beside me and I'm speaking our truth for us. Hence why

more women are like, "Oh my god, I want to work with her. She is so humble, so down to earth. She's like literally for

us. She's with us." And that is power where more of your audience will trust you because you're leading the wave. And

people follow leaders, not other followers. And alongside being a leader, I actually took people on a journey. I

did not just show up perfect, polished, never shared a struggle in my life. And it's like, you know, I woke up and I'm

just naturally a good speaker, naturally successful. That is unrelatable. Stop trying to be perfect in every single

area, in every single post, because then people will look at you as in, "Wow, so perfect. I cannot relate. I cannot

trust. I cannot buy. I cannot work. I cannot look up to that person." You want to be the woman that leads, but also

takes people along the journey. Like, this is the project that we're working on. Here's the behind the scenes. Oh my

god, now we made our first sale. that inspires people more than just a perfect destination cuz that's not relatable.

And of course, I know as women, we tend to burn out. We have a lot on our plate. We have a lot of things that we're doing

every single day. So, I made sure I built systems that serve me and made this journey of me posting on social

media showing up very easy, very smooth, and very strategic. So, one thing that I got so good at is batching content. I

don't like to get ready every single day. I don't know about the ladies, but for me, I like just me being in my

natural state. And of course, being on cameras, you want to look very nice, put together. So, I made sure two to three

days of the week I am recording for the whole entire week. Sometimes for entire two weeks, depending on how good you get

at this, because it's work in progress. I started batching and recording probably 10 reels in one day. YouTube

videos, two to three sometimes YouTube videos in one day. Now, what takes the most time is really not the recording.

It's the planning the content and scripting and making sure the topics, the points, the the teachings that you

want to teach are on point. The planning takes more time than the actual recording. But once you're strategic,

you have systems, you have exact days, you plan the shoots, that all makes it so easy to be disciplined where you have

pieces of content to share every single day where people feel like you're giving so much away every single day and so

much of your time and value for free, but you're really not doing that. Now to make the batching even easier, you have

to understand a very important concept which is the content pillars and the content styles. What is content pillars?

Content pillars means when people come to my page or your page, what do they expect to see? What are three things

they are expecting you to talk about? So when you come to the Afnan Khalifa, you're going to see me heavily talking

about women. a lot about a woman, right? But what am I talking about women? Am I talking about makeup? No, I'm talking

about women in business, woman success. The second thing that you're going to see me talk a lot about is money. I love

money. You want to call me materialistic, you want to call me. But I know what life without money feels

like and an anxiety that you go through. And this is why I know it is so important to make a lot of money. And I

preach it every single day for the women. So I always end up attracting the women that are in business or want to be

in business or aspire to be in business but also want to make a lot of money that want to have the big success the

millions of dollars online that want to have the movie lifestyle the fairy tale life because that's what I talk about

all the time. And then the third thing that I always you will hear me talk about is branding. I fully fully fully

fully can assure you that the best way for a woman to make money is build a personal brand. It is the number one

reason how women will never go broke again if you build it the right way. So that's my third content pillar. So when

you go to my social media, you're going to see a mix of these three. I'm not suddenly talking about makeup or

cooking. That's not me. And I don't want to confuse people. People come to my page because they expect me to talk

about a certain topic and I talk about them in so many ways in different angles in all shapes and sizes. Now content

style, what is a content style? Content style is basically the style of content that you are posting with. So if you

guys have seen my social media, one of my favorite content style is the podcast content. So you will see me uh in a

podcast or podcast style. um where I'm speaking the perspective shifts, the aha moment. I am teaching about money,

business, uh women in general. So when you see it, you're like, "Oh, I know what I'm going to be talking about." The

second style of content is usually me in my home, right? And when you see me sitting on this couch, I usually am

preaching about branding, why women should have a brand or how to build a powerful brand. The third content style

that we are getting into right now, which is mini vlogs. You've probably seen it. A day in a life while shopping,

a day in a life Lamborghini edition, a day in a life Dubai. So, we're testing with that style, but we're also testing

with two other styles. One of them is just pictures, a bunch of pictures in us, and people love to see the behind

the scenes in a week. And another one is just the nice video with a lot of clips of us and then us saying something very

motivational in the video like writing it in the video. So we are testing it. And that brings me to my next point.

After you have your content pillars, after you have your content style, you want to test, try, look at weekly, by

the way, how many shares, how many likes, how many comments we're getting, what gave us the most follows, what are

the metrics, so we can understand what do people want to see more of, what is more effective, what is giving us the

highest maybe sales, the highest followers, because they're all different. But the more you analyze

weekly, the more you're going to start noticing a trend on what actually works for you. Now, let's talk about the

internal changes that I had to do to actually achieve everything that I achieved today. Number one is I showed

up like I already have a million followers when I did it. How? I sold certainty. If you see my social media,

you're going to see I am very certain about everything that I talk about, about everything that I preach. And

people, again, we said they follow leaders. They follow that certainty like, "Wow, she she's so certain. I did

not believe in whatever she's saying, but now after watching her, I believe in what she's saying because she's so

confident in everything she says, and she keep repeating it over and over and over again." So, you have to be certain.

Show up like you already have a million followers and you know what you're talking about and you can help a lot of

people with every knowledge that you know today. We also got to understand that with a lot of attention, a lot of

views, a lot of followers comes the responsibility. And sometimes that responsibility can make us feel like,

"Oh my god, I want everyone to like me. I stopped waiting for validation. I don't care how many follows I get from

this. I don't care how many likes. this is my value. This is what I truly believe in and I'm gonna always post it

because most of the time or sometimes I would say you're gonna get hate. That hate is not personal. People are maybe

attacking the message or attacking what they think of the message or what they think you said about the message, but

they're never really attacking you. So number one, you have to be okay with people misunderstanding your message,

people hating on your message, people disliking your message, and still stand on it like you're standing on business.

It's impossible to please everyone, guys. We are not God. I cannot please everyone, right? I am just me, little

human. And I will try my best to speak my truth and whoever aligns will come. And whoever doesn't, that is perfect. at

least I don't have people that follow me that don't, you know, fully align with what I always preach and talk about. And

you got to have the same mindset. Don't wait for validation. Don't wait for permission and expect hate if you want

to go viral and have so many people follow you. With all that comes, you know, the understanding that nothing

happens overnight. You know I I said it I grew so fast in 5 months but if you look at it from an outside perspective I

have been doing this game which is social media for six years. So I from day one understood that it's a long game

and that consistency is way more important than perfect. I just got to show up every single day and get better.

My best today will be better tomorrow. That's always always my mindset. And lastly, I treated social media like it's

literally my calling. It's not a it's not a chore. I just knew that God gave me the vision. God gave me the voice for

other women. Like someone had to speak for the girls. Someone had to teach the girls. And if that had to be me, and if

that is me, then I will take full ownership to always wake up the girls, inspire the girls, make the girls a lot

of money because that's what God put in my heart. And I enjoy it because it became more than, oh, I'm posting on

social media to get viral. It's more a purpose. How many women can I touch today to get them to start acting on

their full potential, to start acting like the billiondoll woman that she needs to be? and it just becomes really

like fulfilling and I really really really enjoy it now. So this is exactly how I grew from 150,000 followers to

800,000 followers in less than 5 months. And I want us to understand that this growth happened because I just stopped

playing small. I stopped speaking to everyone. I stopped filtering and decorating my values or my beliefs for

people. I just started stating them. I started showing up like a woman that people would love to follow and would

love to comment and share her stuff and pay her to teach them stuff and to take them to the next level. So if you're

stuck today, I need us to become a little bit bolder and take this a little bit more serious because building a

brand, building a social media following, not only a lot of following, but a social media following that people

trust, respect, that will be the way where you can be making millions of dollars very softly because you just

showed up. You understood what you had to do. You were consistent and it shows. So, if you're stuck today at a certain

followers, the answer isn't just to do more of what you're already doing. The answer is to level up your actual

content, your actual strategies, and implement everything that I talked about in this video. And if you want to get

the exact blueprint to building a powerful brand, to know exactly step by step how to grow very fast, how to make

a lot of money from social media, not little pennies. We're only making co money here. Make sure you check the link

down below uh to get access to one of my programs that will give you the exact blueprint on how to actually build a

millionoll brand that people are literally begging you to answer them so they can pay you. Hope this video helps

and I will see you guys in the next video. [Music]