Are you new to social media or simply trying to establish your online presence? You’re probably wondering how to get more Instagram followers. So how to get followers for Instagram? What are the tips on how to get followers for Instagram? Here is your complete guide to how to get followers for Instagram.
No, we’re not talking about buying followers or employing bots. Those tricks may increase your follower count temporarily, but they will not benefit you in the long run.
This is because the only truly valuable Instagram followers are those who care about and engage with your brand.
Step 1: Prepare the Groundwork
Create a well-thought-out Instagram marketing strategy.
A clear plan is required if you want to be effective on social media.
Increasing your Instagram followers is a great place to start. However, followers alone will not make an Instagram account successful. Your goal should be part of a larger strategy that is linked to your business strategy and social marketing objectives.
Consider the reasons you want more Instagram followers. What exactly do you want to achieve? Perhaps you’d like to:
- raise brand awareness
- increase product sales
- Increase traffic to your website.
Staying focused on these business-related goals will help you maintain consistency with your Instagram account. It will assist you in telling a compelling brand story that appeals to new profile visitors and assists in building (and maintaining) a loyal following.
Read More About Social Media Engagements: Why It’s Important?
Define your intended audience.
Ask yourself the following questions about the people you’re attempting to reach:
- Where do they call home?
- What do they do for a living?
- When and how do they engage with Instagram?
- What are their problems and obstacles?
Create a consistent brand story and aesthetic.
Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate how your product is made. Alternatively, humanize your brand by sharing an employee’s point of view. An aspirational brand may highlight your customers’ lifestyles or achievements.
Whatever you want to achieve, it’s critical to maintain a consistent brand voice, personality, and look.
Your posts should be instantly recognizable. Consider your Instagram grid as a single cohesive unit. Instagram Stories can always be used to share content that doesn’t quite fit with the look and feel of your main feed.
Use keywords to appear in searches.
People should first find you on Instagram before they can follow you. However, not all Instagram’s text can be searched. On Instagram, the only two fields contribute to search results: name and username.
Your username is your Instagram handle. It should be consistent with the handle you use on other social networks, as this makes it easier for people to find you. Use your brand name or a name variation that people are likely to use when looking for your brand.
Your name also can be up to 30 characters long. You don’t want to keyword-stuff, but including your most relevant keyword in the name field can help you be found.
Improve your Instagram bio and profile.
Non-followers account for two-thirds of Instagram business profile visits. Visitors may become followers if your bio and profile persuade them to click the follow button.
Your profile includes the name and username fields mentioned above, as well as your website and bio.
Make the most of your bio’s length of up to 150 characters. Show new visitors why they should follow you by conveying your brand identity. What kind of content can they look forward to?
Read More About Instagram Hashtags.
Step 2: Produce excellent content.
Create a stunning Instagram grid.
While this may seem obvious, it is critical when considering how to gain Instagram followers. Every post on your Instagram feed should be of high quality and visually appealing.
When new users visit your profile, the content should entice them to explore further (and click Follow).
Make compelling, lengthy captions.
Although Instagram is primarily a visual social media platform, great Instagram captions can help you gain more reach and engagement.
Here are some key strategies to remember:
- Put the most important information first. If the caption exceeds 125 characters, users must tap “more” to see the entire thing. Make the most of those first few words to elicit an extra tap.
- Pose a query. This makes it simple for your readers to leave a comment. This increased engagement will help your account become more visible to more people.
- Make use of emoji. Emoji add variety and can make your caption more appealing. Just make sure you use the correct emoji!
- Experiment with different caption lengths. Long captions are more likely to improve engagement, according to our data, but ultra-short captions can also be very effective when the visuals speak for themselves.
Share content that is meant to be shared.
Your target audience wants to interact with content that is both useful and inspiring. So, when planning your posts, consider the types of content that others might want to share.
People enjoy disseminating infographics. Feed that desire by sharing your expert knowledge with your followers. When someone embeds one of your Instagram posts in their blog, you gain access to a whole new audience of potential followers.
People can also re-share your Instagram Stories posts. These posts are clickable, so anyone interested in learning more can go to your original post. It’s another simple way to reach out to new audiences and potential new followers.
Accept Instagram Stories
If you want to increase your Instagram followers, you should use Instagram Stories. Every day, half a billion Instagram accounts use Stories, and businesses account for 45% of the most-viewed Stories.
People who use Stories are very involved. Furthermore, you can use the hashtag and location features in your stories to reach out to people who do not already follow you.
Take advantage of Story highlights
Have you put a lot of work into an Instagram Story and aren’t ready to say goodbye after 24 hours? Pinned Stories highlights are an excellent way to introduce your brand to visitors to your profile. So fill those highlights with useful information and content to persuade new visitors to follow you.
Post on a regular basis
Your current followers expect to see content from you. That’s why they initially followed you. So give them exactly what they want!
When users interact with your posts, Instagram’s algorithm learns that your content is valuable. These interactions will expand your reach. Giving your current followers something fun to interact with can help attract new Instagram followers.
Post at the appropriate time
Instagram employs an algorithm rather than a chronological feed. However, timing is still critical to the algorithm.
The social team at Hootsuite discovered that the best time to post on Instagram is between 8 AM and 12 PM PST or 4-5 PM PST on weekdays.
However, your audience’s habits may differ from ours. Based on previous engagement, impressions, or traffic, a tool like Hootsuite Analytics can show you the best time to post for your audience.
Read More About What Is The Best Time To Post On Instagram.
Step 3: Make yourself discoverable.
To reach new users, use relevant hashtags.
Unfortunately, the text of your Instagram posts cannot be searched. However, your hashtags are. Using hashtags wisely can be a good way to gain free Instagram followers. You can even make your own custom hashtags.
Relevant hashtags can help you in the discovery of your content. Hashtags can also be followed by Instagram users. This means that your hashtagged content could appear in the feeds of people who don’t yet follow your account.
In an Instagram post, you can use up to 30 hashtags, but don’t go overboard. Instead, experiment to see how many hashtags work best for your specific account.
Avoid hashtags like #likeforlike, #tagsforlikes, and #followme. These may provide you with a temporary increase in followers. But those people aren’t interested in what distinguishes you and your content. They will not assist you in developing a meaningful, engaged Instagram audience.
Identify relevant users
It’s simple to tag Instagram users who appear in your photos. Simply include a @-mention in your caption or use Instagram’s tagging feature within the post.
Tagging someone just to get their attention isn’t a good idea. Instead, only tag people who are in your photo or are relevant to the content of your post.
Following are some examples of potentially relevant users to tag:
- Customers
- Suppliers
- Other businesses that are relevant
- Employees or coworkers
- Someone who taught you a skill or informed you of something mentioned in the post
- Everyone in the photograph
Encourage people to tag you.
Asking other Instagram users to tag you is another way to introduce your Instagram account to a new audience. When they tag you in a post, their followers can see your handle and can click on it to learn more.
In your bio, you can ask people to tag you on Instagram.
Read More About Advertise In Social Media.
Step 4: Get involved in your community.
Follow more accounts that are relevant to your interests.
Only tag people in Instagram posts if the content is directly relevant to them. However, you are free to follow whoever you want. When you follow someone on Instagram, there’s a good chance they’ll look at your feed and consider following you back.
Participate in existing communities.
Instagram, like all social media platforms, is about the communities that form within it. So make sure you’re present in those places.
Participate in your community by liking, commenting on, and sharing content from other credible users. Avoid generic comments (such as “Awesome post!”) that will appear to be generated by bots.
Participating in other people’s posts helps draw attention (and potential new followers) in two ways:
When you like and comment on other people’s posts, they receive notifications. They might look at your profile in return.
Others may look at your profile if they find your comments thoughtful or intriguing.
Consider collaborating on Instagram Live.
Instagram is a great place to capitalize on the growing popularity of live video. Users are notified when an account they follow begins broadcasting live, so a live video piques their interest.
Use the “Go live with a friend” option to co-host a live video with someone else in your industry to get your Live video in front of a new audience. Request that the other person host a Live video and then invite you as a guest. In a split screen, the two of you will be introduced to all of their followers.
Step 5: Continue to learn
Make an AR filter.
AR filters for Instagram Stories are photo effects that Instagram users can apply to photos taken with their phone’s front and back cameras.
Those puppy-eared posts? These are created using an AR (Augmented Reality) filter. What about those “which [vegetable/pizza/emoji/etc.] are you?” posts? Yes, those, too, employ AR filters.
Consider Instagram advertising.
Okay, so this isn’t exactly a free Instagram follower trick. However, Instagram ads can be a powerful way to quickly gain new followers by putting your content in front of people who would not otherwise see it.
Moreover, unlike buying followers, using Instagram ads is a completely legitimate and effective way to quickly increase your Instagram followers with a small investment.
You can segment your audience based on their location, demographics, and even key behaviors and interests. You can also create a lookalike audience based on people who have previously interacted with your company.
