This information is for educational purposes only. Ascend Viral recommends building authentic relationships on Instagram. Do not use these settings for automation tools or to spam others on Instagram.
For more information regarding Ascend Viral’s stance on fighting spam & promoting authentic activity on Instagram, please see our Ethical Commitment page. This section should only be used by those who are seeking to understand Instagram’s manual growth algorithm.
A practical guide on how to precisely warm up an account for follow / unfollow (also just called F/UF)
- Start with 30 actions per day.
- Increase with +30 every day until total actions = 300/day (Including both F/UF).
- Keep your actions randomized & spread your activity throughout the day. For example, you can do 35 follows at 9AM. Then 40 unfollows at 11AM. Then unfollow again at 12:30PM. And so on…
- Don’t do more than 60 actions in one go. This goes for both follow & unfollow.
- Give breaks & do warmups (watch stories, reels, etc.) between F/UF activity. We want to make sure Instagram sees our actions as human. Don’t be too “robotic”.
- Doing all the actions in one go and not randomizing (or not giving breaks between activity) can lead to action blocks. You may be able to follow 250 people the first day you create your Instagram account, but doing this number of actions over-and-over again will eventually lead to a block.
Activity limits on Instagram (this varies from account to account, but this is a general rule of thumb)
- Max follow actions/day = 200
- Max unfollow actions/day = 200
- Max actions/day = 300 (follow + unfollow)
How to detect or tell if your account has been soft blocked / limited
- Instagram gives you a prompt that says something like “We block certain activity. Try again later.” This message tends to change from user to user.
- If there’s no date on the prompt, this is known as soft block.
- What to do?
- Stop all activity immediately.
- Rest the account for a few hours.
- Try again.
- If you still see the same prompt. Rest the account for 24 hours. Do not post, like, or do any actions at all for the next 24 hours.
- Try again.
- If you still see the same prompt. Clear data & cache for your app. Uninstall & reinstall Instagram.
- Try again.
- If nothing above works, and you’re still seeing the prompt. You will need to reset your Instagram password and rest your account for a whole week.
- Whenever Instagram soft blocks your account, it’s a good idea to decrease your daily activity. Also, it’s a good idea to mix up your activity schedule.
Typical follow / unfollow cycle (how many days you follow, how many days you unfollow, how many days you do both, etc)
- During the first 3 days of warm-up, stick to 1 type of action (Follow or unfollow).
- From Day 4, you can do both actions every day.
- This helps keep your activity more random.
- Also keep the number of daily follow & daily unfollow actions random. (Do not do the same number of actions every day.)
- Take a rest day every few days. Do not do follow/unfollow actions on a rest day.
Example Warm Up Structure:
| Day | Follow | Unfollow | Total |
| 1 | 30 | 30 | |
| 2 | 60 | 60 | |
| 3 | 90 | 90 | |
| 4 | 60 | 30 | 90 |
| 5 | rest day | ||
| 6 | 90 | 30 | 120 |
| 7 | 60 | 90 | 150 |
| 8 | 120 | 60 | 180 |
| 9 | 90 | 120 | 210 |
| 10 | 150 | 90 | 240 |
| 11 | rest day | ||
| 12 | 150 | 120 | 270 |
| 13 | 140 | 160 | 300 |
| 14 | 180 | 120 | 300 |
| 15 | 200 | 100 | 300 |
| 16 | rest day |
How to perform comments in addition to follow/unfollow activity
- You can do 25 comments per day while also performing follow/unfollow activity. Max 50 comments per day when not doing anything else.
- Again, you’d need to warm up your account for comments. Start with 5 comments per day. And increase by 2-4 comments every day until you reach max.
- Make sure your comments are highly specific & unique.
- Comments like “Good picture!”, “Great post!” just don’t work when it comes to Instagram. You need to be creative. Some ideas to write good comments:
- Compliment something specific in the post
- Ask a question directly related to the topic in the post
- Give your two cents on the post
- Comments work better when the post is fresh. People usually reply to comments after the first 30 minutes of posting. If you comment after a few hours, the chances of the post owner seeing your comment reduce drastically.
Warm up cycle for comments along with follow/unfollow activity:
| Day | Follow | Unfollow | Total | Comments | Likes |
| 1 | 30 | 30 | 3 | 30 | |
| 2 | 30 | 30 | 5 | 45 | |
| 3 | 60 | 60 | 8 | 60 | |
| 4 | 50 | 40 | 90 | 10 | 75 |
| 5 | rest day | ||||
| 6 | 40 | 50 | 90 | 12 | 75 |
| 7 | 80 | 40 | 120 | 15 | 90 |
| 8 | 40 | 80 | 120 | 17 | 105 |
| 9 | 60 | 90 | 150 | 19 | 120 |
| 10 | 90 | 60 | 150 | 22 | 135 |
| 11 | rest day | ||||
| 12 | 100 | 50 | 150 | 23 | 135 |
| 13 | 50 | 100 | 150 | 25 | 150 |
| 14 | 110 | 70 | 180 | 25 | 135 |
| 15 | 70 | 110 | 180 | 25 | 150 |
| 16 | rest day | ||||
| 17 | 120 | 60 | 180 | 25 | 150 |
| 18 | 60 | 120 | 180 | 25 | 135 |
| 19 | 120 | 90 | 210 | 25 | 150 |
| 20 | 90 | 120 | 210 | 25 | 135 |
| 21 | rest day |
Warm up cycle for just likes & comments:
| Day | Comments | Likes |
| 1 | 3 | 30 |
| 2 | 5 | 50 |
| 3 | 8 | 70 |
| 4 | 10 | 90 |
| 5 | rest day | |
| 6 | 12 | 90 |
| 7 | 15 | 110 |
| 8 | 17 | 130 |
| 9 | 19 | 150 |
| 10 | 22 | 170 |
| 11 | rest day | |
| 12 | 23 | 170 |
| 13 | 25 | 190 |
| 14 | 23 | 210 |
| 15 | 25 | 190 |
| 16 | rest day | |
| 17 | 25 | 210 |
| 18 | 23 | 190 |
| 19 | 25 | 210 |
| 20 | 23 | 190 |
| 21 | rest day |
- Wondering how to find source accounts (accounts where you find more accounts to F/UF)? Here’s three different places to consider:
- Look at the “top posts” section on the hashtags in your niche. Look at different hashtags of various sizes.
- When you find an account that you like, look at the “suggested users” tab on their profile.
- Find reposts accounts in your niche who give credits to owners. Look through their profile until you find a post that matches your content. Go to the content owner’s profile and check if they pass the filters below.
- Features of a top-tier source account:
- Has less than 50K followers.
- Their niche + content, matches yours.
- They have the audience that you want (see their likers, commentors profile, etc)
- If you want to target female accounts, find sources who post content targeted towards women.
- If you want to target users from a certain location, find sources that belong to your target locations.