If you’re looking to grow your Instagram community, you’ll need to focus on followers who are passionate about you or your brand. With over 1.4 billion active users on the platform, you’re sure to find plenty of people who fit the bill. If you’re consistent with quality content it’s likely your following will continue to grow.
In this guide, we will show you 15 organic ways to grow your profile using effective strategies that will amplify your follower count and increase your engagement.
How to Get More Followers on Instagram: 15 Growth Tactics
There are plenty of effective ways to gain followers who genuinely want to follow you rather than simply buying followers to reach your target count. Here are 15 ways to grow a solid community.
Boost Your Instagram Account’s Performance
If you’re looking to increase your Instagram following, optimizing your account is a great place to start. Think of your bio as your homepage and include all the details about your brand. You can also insert a link in your bio to direct users to specific content, products, or campaigns you want to promote further.
By taking these simple steps, you’ll be on your way to gaining more followers and growing your brand on Instagram.
If you have a lengthy brand name, try to make your username more searchable and recognizable. You can do this by using fewer numbers and special characters. This will help create a more cohesive profile.
Produce Amazing Content
If you’re looking to get more followers on Instagram, you need an eye-catching profile that will make users want to see more. Aesthetics are essential for your feed, but engaging captions are what will attract users and keep them following your brand.
Here’s how to make your content more appealing to users:
- Make your captions engaging by starting with a strong opening line that will make your followers want to read more.
- Engage with your users by asking them questions and leaving comments. Show that you care about what they have to say, and create a dialogue to build a better user experience.
- Your content is the key to your online success. Make sure it’s engaging by using emojis! They’ll make your content friendly and approachable, which is essential to drawing in readers and keeping their attention.
- Try out short and long captions to see which works better for you.
What types of content are people interested in sharing? What expert insights or infographics can you give that will entice users to share in their blogs to expand your reach? Analyzing your competitors is a good start if you don’t know what content strategy works.
Maximize the Power of Hashtags
You can do a few things to get more Instagram followers, and using hashtags is one of the most effective. Hashtags help people discover your photos, and using popular ones can help you reach new users. However, using relevant hashtags for your target audience is also essential.
Make your profile stand out with unique, branded hashtags, and analyze how they perform to ensure they work.
Run a Giveaway
Hosting a giveaway is one of the easiest ways to get users to follow your account. As part of the mechanics, you can ask the audience to tag a friend to introduce your content to a new audience and potentially convert them into followers.
Promote Your Instagram Account
Add social media buttons to your blog and website to make your channels more discoverable, and cross-promote across your other social media profiles. You can use your other social media accounts to direct users to your Instagram and share engaging content through different channels rather than directly asking them to follow you.
Use the Highlights Feature for Your Stories
Stories are a great way to engage with your potential followers, but their 24-hour lifespan can be easily missed. Users are bombarded with information online, so make your Stories worthwhile. Use Instagram’s Highlights feature to organize your Stories and give users a sense of what your account is about.
Here’s how you can use Story Highlights to grow your following:
- Produce snippets of what your brand offers.
- Categorize Stories into themes (e.g. Feedback, How to Order, Company Background, etc.).
- Create teasers of your products and services through photos and videos.
Get Creative With Instagram Reels
Instagram has a feature called Reels that is similar to TikTok. You can create funny and entertaining videos and add audio, special effects, or themes. You can post them directly on your feed or have them publicly appear on the Explore page.
Here’s how to use Reels to get people to follow you:
- Keep an eye out for viral videos and make your own creative version.
- Create informative, entertaining, and engaging videos instead of just advertising your products.
- Produce content that is easy to understand and relatable to your target audience.
Reels are an excellent way for users to get discovered by new followers. The Insights Tool introduced for Reels can help you keep track of data and adapt to your audience’s wants.
Keep a Posting Schedule
To manage your content more efficiently, consider advanced scheduling of your posts to keep up with the ideal posting times. By going to the Followers section, you can check Instagram analytics to get an idea of when users are most engaged. You can also use social media scheduling tools like Publer to help you plan your posts.
Scheduling your posts can help you maintain a consistent theme and have more time to prepare witty captions to get more engagement.
Get To Know the Community
Interacting with others on Instagram is just as important as building your community. By liking, commenting, and sharing content from other creators, you strike a genuine interaction that makes relationships. When you interact with other people’s accounts, you increase your chances of people checking out your profile.
Collaborate With Creators
There’s no need to fork over big bucks to celebrities to get them to promote your brand. In fact, 60% of consumers are more likely to follow a brand after seeing it supported by a creator they trust. So, partner with brand ambassadors who you know will genuinely believe in your brand and share it with their community.
You can also consider collaborating with other brands on Instagram. It can be a win-win situation that will help you gain more followers.
Secure a Spot on Feature Accounts
Feature accounts are great for gaining new followers because they share content from hashtags or tagged posts specific to a particular niche. When a feature account shares your content, it is exposed to a new group of people interested in that niche.
Get Featured on the Explore Page
The best way to get more users to discover you is to get featured on the Explore page. When users click on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the Instagram app, they can explore content instagram’s algorithm has determined might interest them based on their user behaviour and search inputs.
Keep an Eye Out on Your Competitors’ Followers
Interact with your competitor’s followers and audience to win them over. The people who support your competitors are likely to have the same interest in the products you offer. You can follow them, like their photos, and leave friendly comments on their stories.
Tag Your Location to Become More Discoverable
Aside from hashtags, you can make your Instagram posts and Stories discoverable by tagging your location. This could be tagging the city where your photo or video was taken or adding a location sticker to your Stories.
Local businesses benefit most from location tags because they can engage potential customers to follow their page and visit their stores.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask!
There is nothing wrong with asking people to follow you. You can use Instagram captions to tease users with upcoming content they get first dibs at if they follow you.
Key Takeaways
When it comes to followers on Instagram, it’s not just about numbers — but we can see why some might think it is. What really matters is staying authentic and keeping users engaged with unique content that turns viewers into followers.
Once you have more followers, you’re more likely to get verified and build trust and authority in your respective community.
Getting more followers without buying them is possible if you’re able to:
- Post Consistently
- Collaborate with different brands, influencers, and the community
- Optimize your account with hashtags
- Cross-promote your account to other social media channels
- Analyze analytics with tools to manage scheduled posting
Ervin Kalemi
