What I Learned Growing to 20,000 Followers in a Year - Kido The One

I started the year with ~2500 followers and my goal for the year was 10k followers. I exceeded that goal and finished the year with 21k+ followers. An 8X+ increase in follower count on Instagram specifically. 

Starting Point - 23 December 2024:



One Year Later - 22 December 2025

Here’s how I did it and what I learnt distilled into 7 key takeaways:

How I did it:
I posted on average 100+ times a month (over 1200 times for the year). I didn't spend a single dollar on ads. I had one clip get 800k+ views, another clip get 220k+ views, another clip get 189k+ views and a fourth clip get 60k+ views. The 800k+ view clip got me 7500 followers by itself and it was a slow burn over multiple months. Of the four clips with the most views mentioned previously, all were filmed with an iPhone and edited on CapCut. The edits did not take a long time and there was no color grading.

I did a bunch of talking head clips where I just spoke to the front camera and these were my generally worst performing clips. The upside of these talking head clips were that they definitely were key building blocks for the relationship with my audience. Even if they only got a few thousand views, often any followers that found me organically through a talking head clip, was a quality follower rather than a passive viewer. For this reason alone I’ll continue to make more talking head clips.

My single winning format for 2025 content was ‘Day in the Life’ clips. These were 1-3 second cut clips in quick succession. None of my viral clips cost me any $ to create. I did not use trending audios all year except for one post in December (didn’t go viral with this one). My workflow was a simple text hook in the start of each clip because I guessed that the algorithm was pulling from the first few frames, but that could be complete BS. I didn't start a new seperate account, I just used my old personal account that I've always used and simply started posting more. I lost lots of followers along the journey and gained back even more new ones.

What I learnt:
1) The very first key I learnt that not only is volume of content important but that it compounds heavily. Something I hadn’t quite consciously thought of prior to doing this was how you can have multiple pieces of content scale your followers at the same time. This might be obvious to some but wasn’t something I consciously thought about in the past. You can essentially have 5 different pieces of content all getting you followers at the same time and not a single one of them needs to be viral. Having 5-10 pieces of content all getting views and followers at the same time was a key engine for growth all year, even if one post only got one follower. I used Instagram Trial Reels to A/B test multiple reels at the same time and this also allowed me to reach people that did not follow me yet. Major key.

The second key I learnt was that taking complete responsibility made me incredibly productive. I didn’t blame the algorithm if a post flopped, I just moved onto the next one. Sometimes the post that flopped would get views later but by that time I had already posted a bunch more. Using sheer volume and then tweaking based on feedback, I was able to keep going and keep posting. If something didn’t work, I would adjust and try something else. This was very key because I didn’t just stick to the same content all year, I tried different things and different formats. 

The third key I learnt was that nobody really cares. This understanding ultimately freed me to do whatever I wanted creatively. Now I’m not really concerned with who is watching or who isn’t watching, I’m just posting and sharing the journey. Ultimately if you get in your own head too much you may never post. You definitely learn more from publishing than you ever will from planning. So this year I didn’t plan a lot but I did publish a lot and the results speak for themselves. The best feedback you can get from reality because if it never goes out, you’ll never know.

The fourth key I learnt was how much energy creating content takes. Health wise I am definitely in the worst place I’ve ever been and yet I have the most energy and have been extremely productive. This probably sounds funny but makes perfect sense to me. My focus for the next year is to make my health more of a priority and learn to balance that with the content, music and business a lot better. Now that I understand where content fits into the strategy, I feel like this will only amplify the other parts of my life in a good way (my business gets more sales, my music gets more listens and I’m also motivated to be healthier).

This year I was very unapologetic with cutting people off that didn’t add to my energy or didn’t execute on their ideas. As a result my network re-calibrated itself for people with skin in the game and actually ‘doing the thing’ and this made it very easy to be focused on what I’m doing also. I effectively ignored all outside noise to make it happen and just focused solely on what I’m doing. There was a couple times I wasn’t sure if I should post something but I did it anyway knowing that if it helped only one person, or one previous version of me, then it was valuable. I definitely watched far less content from other people than I ever have and was more signal-heavy with the content I did watch, intentional consumption.

The fifth key I learnt was how much of an unfair advantage you gain socially when you do not have to introduce yourself because of your content. I had somebody recognise me from my content in public and because the content I’m making is specific, the recognition came from somebody who had actually watched and engaged with the ideas rather than just a passive viewer. It was good because the content is very much me and so they weren’t just engaging with a mirage, they were engaging with me as a human. This is a very big benefit of making content as yourself rather than pretending to be something else.

The sixth key I learnt was that my voice is valuable. That people do want to hear from me and what I’m doing. I already knew I had things worth sharing but I didn’t truly know until I had the feedback of people saying that something I had said had helped them or was helpful. Learning this made publishing more inevitable.

The seventh key I learnt was that haters don’t really exist to me. This is a funny one because obviously with the growth of the following there was quite a few interesting comments left on videos but I remained unaffected mainly because I realised they were shadow boxing with themselves and who they thought I was if they were trying to get at me.

Ultimately, If somebody is in a place where they see one video and are offended, they are purely in a reactive state. Often there would be comments that would clearly show they had never seen any other videos I had made and I either didn’t respond or simply said ‘Thank you!’ or ‘You’re right!’. Ultimately these three responses I used as defaults. A default response with little to no mental energy invested allowed me to keep moving with urgency rather than getting bogged down. I didn’t place much value on somebody commenting something negative and truthfully, not a whole lot of value on anything positive either. Not to say I didn’t appreciate the kind words but more so from a level-headed perspective of understanding that I am who I am regardless of what goes on, on a digital screen. Ultimately both the good and the bad are noise and the only thing that really matters is what I think, what I’m doing and who I am becoming.

Final notes: What would I do differently if I started again? I would do the same thing with heavier velocity. Way more input volume. Instead of posting 100 times a month, posting 200+ times a month. As much as possible volume without completely compromising quality. I think especially in your first year of deciding to get after it, you’re not the best judge of your own work and so focusing on the creativity output rather than being your own critic is important. I think if you want to replicate my results you should focus more on constant experimentation with volume, rather than the nitty gritty specifics of what I did. You need to find out what works for you the same way I found out what works for me. Volume + experimenting worked for me. Lower volume and a fixed format might work for you. Either way, there is no social media experts and we're all just making it up as we go along. I think if you consistently get better, consistently improve and continuously experiment with different formats, you’ll eventually hit one that pops and then be able to ride that wave until you need to find a new wave to ride. 

In terms of the nitty gritty for short form specifically, I think you can make clips with no speaking and no music and they perform well (think ASMR/room sound only). Visually, I always treated the first 3 seconds as very important and high priority, meaning I was either in the frame already or entering the frame. I noticed this '3 second literacy' was very important for the performance of the video.

 I made sure the starting frame was bright and the text hook was basic and clear. I also used my own music (not trending) for my clips and had clips perform well. I didn't have to use trending audio to scale my following or follow any pre-existing trends beyond doing my 'day in the life' format which is a commonly understood format. I didn't use any flashy text on screen or shake effects or really any over the top editing, just simple cuts. I also always did my text hook in-app NOT in my editing app. I would do the edit first, then just before publishing, set a text hook at the start using the in-app text editor. My logic was the app I was posting on was referencing this text to decide where to push the video (as mentioned before, could be complete BS but this is what I did). I edited 98% of my clips on my phone and I filmed 100% of my best performing clips by myself using a tripod and my phone.

Now for a note on luck.

In terms of luck versus responsibility, I got lucky with the 800k+ view clip. That could’ve easily paused at 200k+ views but for whatever reason it kept going and kept getting followers for months after I posted it. Without that clip I’m down to around 13k followers but even then, that exceeded my goal of 10k followers. Luck definitely didn’t replace the work but it did reward it. I think I got lucky also in that the work I’ve been doing selling on eBay/vintage is unique in society and hasn't been shown so much in short form clips in the format I was doing of day in the life.

I think when it comes to creating content, it is much easier to be speaking from experience of having done something or be in the process of doing something rather than trying to ‘invent something out of a reality you’re not living’.

Being a business owner and making content was simply a matter of me just recording what I was already doing and then packaging it in a way that was interesting. The way you package can make something somewhat mundane to you, interesting to somebody else. I think I definitely underestimated how much attention me working in a shed on my business was capable of generating and its a testament to how powerful the internet is if you show up as you are where you’re currently at. I could’ve easily not posted all year because I didn’t feel like I was ‘enough for me’ but I decided to post anyway and turns out people love to see you in the building part of the journey, not just the ‘made it’ part of the journey.

My plans for next year to continue growing:
Just do more of what I’ve been doing, posting consistently and trying new things. I want to make more YouTube videos because I feel like the long form audience is definitely different to short form audience.

I don’t think I’m all that different from who I was at the start of the year, just more aware of how big the opportunity of content is and also what’s possible next.  I didn’t feel ‘ready’, I just started posting anyway and got ready in the process of posting. Definitely not magic, just reps and patience.

Kido - December 22 2025

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