How To Grow On Instagram – Case Study with viral influencer Gina Petonito

When I first started working with Gina Petonito, she was posting consistently on Instagram but struggling to gain traction. In just a short span, she skyrocketed from a few hundred followers to over 10,000 followers, with viral reels amassing millions of views.

In this case study, I’ll take you through the process we followed, the strategies we implemented, and the lessons we learned along the way.

How to Get More Views and Followers on Instagram

Four months ago I started working with Gina on her social media strategy for Instagram. When we first connected, she had a few hundred followers. Today, her account has exploded to over 10,000 followers. She has reels with thousands of views, one with 300,000+ views, and on her other account, she even has a reel with over two million views.

Yes, two million!

Everything just clicked for her, and in a matter of weeks, she went from getting a few hundred views to reaching millions.

So I asked her if she’d be willing to share her success in a case study with me. What changed? How did she do it?

Gina told me jokingly, “It’s still a mystery to me 😝”

Originally, she started by:

• Posting two or three reels a week.
• Making sure to post stories every day.
• At one point, she was posting reels every single day, but she eventually burned out.

But the real turning point? She asked for help.

How to Implement Feedback & Critique

That’s when we started working together. She listened to my advice, but applying it wasn’t easy. Taking critique wasn’t the hard part—she was used to that. The challenge was implementing the feedback.

I asked her if she remembered some of the things that were difficult to apply despite understanding them.

Gina shared a few major takeaways from our coaching sessions:

• Pacing Issues: I kept emphasizing that her pacing needed improvement. I also told her that her videos looked like they came straight from “Instagram Marketing School”—structured, but lacking authenticity.
• Authentic Storytelling: She started focusing on being a natural storyteller rather than just following marketing formulas. I encouraged her to share stories the way she naturally tells them in conversation. Which is easier said than done but the key was that Gina allowed herself to be coached through this learning process.

Every week, we worked on something new. Step by step, she adjusted her content. Then, finally, she hit on what she calls the “secret sauce.” That’s when her reels started blowing up.

The First Time Going Viral

Then, I asked Gina about the moment she realized she had a viral hit.

She recalled that she decided to create a fun, lighthearted reel using her phrase “I’ve seen the light” with a small lightbulb sticker. Without overthinking it, she simply posted, and suddenly, the views started skyrocketing. That reel now has over 156,000+ views.

What made this reel different?

• Authenticity: It was just Gina being herself, telling a story naturally.
• Engagement: People resonated with it and started commenting and sharing.
• Using Personal Phrases: She incorporated catchphrases from our conversations, like “Oh my God, I’ve seen the light!” I had suggested using these in her reels to add personality and relatability.

Growing a Membership Site With Traffic from Instagram

Gina’s ultimate goal with Instagram is to grow her membership site. When we started working on her Instagram together, she was just about to start her membership site on Skool. Now, her community has 200+ registered members and keeps growing every week.

She explained, “I post a story and invite them to the group, and they come.”

When it comes to social media marketing, these are the key pillars of social media growth:

• Creating good content
• Engagement
• Outreach
• DMs
• Consistency

In Gina’s case, I asked her to rate these pillars. She admitted that she struggled with engagement at first but realized that quality content is the foundation.

She knew that engagement is crucial for the algorithm, but without quality content, there’s no audience or engagement. That’s what she had been working on for years.

She also shared the challenge of managing engagement at scale. One of her videos had 300,000+ views, and she tried to respond to every single comment, but it became overwhelming. Eventually, she had to turn off the comments on that reel.

Another lesson Gina embraced was understanding that the market determines what works.

• She kept plugging away until she saw what the market wanted.
• An then she replicated it.

She reflected on how some of her most successful content didn’t take long to create. Some videos took forever, and she ended up scrapping them. But that viral reel? Just two or three takes, and it was done.

From my perspective, what stood out about Gina’s journey was her willingness to:

• Not give up
• Ask for help
• Implement strategies that initially felt “wrong“

Showing ourselves on social media is uncomfortable for most of us. Very rarely does a person truly enjoy exposing themselves like this. And so it is normal to struggle with internal and emotional resistance, making some of the steps feel “wrong” even though we know it’s right.

There is no online course or book that can teach you this, you need to be supported by a person who has your best interest at heart to keep going when your subconscious pulls all the strings to try and stop you.

We tweaked many things in Gina’s content, adjusting routines that didn’t feel right at first. But she tested them, adapted them, and made them work for herself.

And that’s why she absolutely deserves her success. She cracked the code for herself, and I believe there’s so much more to come!

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Where to Follow Gina:

If you want to follow Gina and learn more about her journey, you can find her on social media under her name:

• Instagram: GinaPetonito
• YouTube: Gina Petonito
• Facebook: Gina Petonito
• Medium: Gina Petonito

Congratulations again, Gina!

My Three Takeaways

1. Gina’s success skyrocketed when she shifted from structured marketing techniques to natural storytelling. Her audience connected more with her personality than with polished, formulaic content.
2. Engagement and growth only happen when the foundation—high-quality, relatable content—is strong. Without it, interactions remain low.
3. Applying feedback was challenging, but testing and tweaking different approaches helped Gina find the formula that worked for her.

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