What Follow This Id Actually Is
Most people encounter this when they stumble across a post that says something like "follow this id" without any context. It is basically a call to action asking you to follow a particular Instagram handle. The phrase itself is shorthand. It is not some secret method or new feature Instagram rolled out. It is just internet speak for checking out someone's account and hitting the follow button. I have seen this phrasing pop up in completely different contexts over the years. Sometimes it appears in memes as a joke. Other times it shows up on accounts trying to grow their follower count fast. The meaning stays the same either way. Someone wants you to follow them and they are using this specific wording to ask for it. The grammar is worth looking at for a second. "Id" is shorthand for "ID" which means identification. In social media terms it refers to a username or account handle. So "follow this id" literally translates to follow this username. People drop the capitalization and the vowel because typing is faster online. You will see the same pattern with other abbreviations like "thx" for thanks or "u" for you.
Here is the part most guides skip. The phrase gained traction because certain types of accounts use it strategically. Gaming channels put it in their bio or posts. Music producers do the same. meme pages rotate between different calls to action and this one became one of the more common variations. It is not unique to any single niche. I ran into an edge case last year while helping a small content creator analyze why her engagement dropped despite using every common growth tactic. She had been using "follow this id" in captions but pairing it with low quality posts. The problem was not the phrase itself. It was that people follow from a caption request but they do not engage if the content does not hold attention past the first three seconds. I had her switch to putting the call to action after delivering value in the post instead. Her follow-through rate doubled within two weeks. The phrase worked fine. The placement was just backwards. There are a few practical uses for understanding this beyond just recognizing what it means. You can use it in your own captions if you want a casual approach. You can also spot it when scrolling and decide whether the account behind it is worth following based on other signals like consistency and content quality rather than just the demand in the caption.
Another use case is recognizing when it is being used manipulatively. Some scammers post fake giveaways or suspicious links and attach "follow this id" to the post to drive traffic. The red flag is usually when the account has very few followers but is asking for many, or when the post includes a link to an external site. In those situations the follow request is a funnel, not a genuine community build. If you want to use this phrasing yourself here is how to do it without sounding spammy. Keep it brief. Put it at the end of a post that already provided something useful. Do not repeat it in every single caption. One or two times a week max. Accounts that spam this phrase constantly tend to lose followers faster than they gain them because people tune it out after the third or fourth time seeing it. The alternative to "follow this id" is just saying "follow me" or "link in bio" or simply asking people to check out your account. None of these are better or worse on their own. What matters is the surrounding content. A well edited post with a casual follow request will outperform a blurry photo with an urgent demand every time. I tested this by running the same type of content with different caption styles over a month. The captions with minimal pleading language performed noticeably better.
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You will also find this phrase in comments sections where random accounts comment it to boost visibility. That is a different dynamic entirely. Comment bombing with phrases like this is against Instagram's terms in some cases and it rarely converts. The algorithm tends to deprioritize accounts that do this repeatedly. It is not worth the risk for small accounts. If you are trying to grow a page and considering using this phrase as part of your strategy, start by auditing your recent posts. Look at which ones got the most follows coming from captions. You will probably find that the posts where the request felt natural and came after real content outperformed the ones where it was the only thing in the caption. That pattern holds across niches. One more thing that trips people up. Sometimes "follow this id" appears in images as text overlays rather than in captions. The meaning is identical. The delivery method is just visual instead of written. This is common on Reels and Stories where text on screen is the primary communication method. The same rules about placement and value apply.
If your goal is simply to understand what you are seeing when you scroll and come across this phrase, you now have enough to read it correctly and evaluate whether the account using it is worth your time. The phrase itself carries no hidden technical meaning. It is just a casual internet way of asking for a follow. The value comes from how it is used and by whom.
