Marketer to Instagram Influencer: The Josh Horton Story

Want to become an Instagram influencer?

Wondering how to maximize the exposure of your Instagram posts?

To explore how to become a full-time Instagram influencer, I interview Josh Horton.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Josh Horton, known online as Jugglin' Josh. He's a marketer turned influencer with more than a million followers across all of the social channels. He also holds 12 Guinness World Records, and he's been on The Ellen Show.

Josh explains how he uses various Instagram features to share content and grow his following.

You'll also learn how producing content for YouTube differs from Instagram.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Becoming an Instagram Influencer
Josh's Story

In 2011, Josh graduated from college and planned to be a professional juggler. After performing for several months, Josh joined a social media agency started by a friend of a family friend. Josh was the eighth hire, and he started out part-time, deleting spam and cusswords from Facebook pages.

When the company (McBeard Media, which later became part of Fullscreen Media) began to grow, they offered Josh a full-time job. Because he worked remotely, he could work full-time and continue performing on the side, juggling and traveling for shows.

After a couple of years, Josh was managing a team of coordinators, graphic designers, and video editors. He helped run day-to-day operations of multiple brand pages, including Sony Pictures. Every movie from Sony Pictures had its own Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and sometimes Snapchat account. He also helped create graphics and videos posted to other brand pages every day.

However, the deeper Josh fell into this job, the less he focused on juggling. In 2015, when Josh turned 25 years old, he realized he had no juggling gigs booked. Although juggling was a side hustle, it was also his passion. So within a month of his birthday, he quit his job.

Originally, he planned to focus on performing on stage at halftime shows and corporate and community events. But because he knew all this stuff about social media, he decided to also try growing an Instagram following. Josh focused on Instagram because he enjoyed that platform the most and figured it was the easiest place to grow a following.

Today, although Josh is still performing, his social media following has grown to a point where it makes him more money than his performances do.

Listen to the show to learn more about Josh's work at the social media agency.

How to Grow a Following on Instagram

When Josh quit his job, he had around 8,000 Instagram followers. Now, he has about 260,000. Josh began trying to grow his following soon after Instagram launched its video feature. From his agency work, Josh knew he needed to make something that was so good people would want to like, comment on, or share it.

Compelling Videos: To encourage engagement, Josh edited his juggling videos into polished content with music and transitions. With those videos, he gained followers organically. Then he found viral video accounts on Instagram, which have millions of followers and post other people's content. He gained a lot of followers when those accounts reposted videos of his trick shots.

Some of those accounts reposted his videos with permission, and others didn't get permission. As long as the accounts tagged Josh, he was okay with it.

Collaborations: Josh also started collaborating with other Instagram influencers to continue building his following. In fact, Josh keeps performing in part because his travels allow him to connect with other influencers.