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12 Great Ways To Grow Your Instagram Followers

1. Get Creative with Your Hashtags

Try to capitalize on hashtags that may seem like a stretch. If you sell shoes, maybe post something related to pedicures using pedicure hashtags. The point is to cast a wide net and experiment. Be creative, original, and funny, anything but dull. Mix it up. Make sure you are using hashtags that are both directly related to your business! Look for hashtags that tell a story.

2. Participate in Massively Popular Conversations

The biggest mistake most marketers make is running a space-related account, I was able to grow our client’s followers organically by participating in flat earth debates. Yes, flat-earth! It seems that flat earthers don’t take too kindly to NASA and space, so they posted negative comments on our posts. I looked into it and realized that the topic was trending. What did we do? We engaged. We explained why we loved space and gave a few lessons in science and sociology. Our followers grew exponentially. If your industry consists of creatures, we called humans than most likely; there is a hot topic, drama, or controversy that needs to be addressed. Don’t run away. Drama is the way.

3. Make the Most of Your Profile’s Website Link

Your Instagram profile has a hidden secret, the URL. One of the most effective strategies for elevating your marketing efforts on Instagram is to promote a link in your profile to either drive traffic to your latest content. A more effective approach is to use an IG specific link that is tied directly to your IG strategy. @curiositydotcom does a fantastic job of this by creating a landing page specifically for IG. They feature the same square images on the landing page with the latest IG posts appearing on the landing page as they appear on their profile. The photos on the landing page are clickable and take the user to the content on their site. Ingenious! Every post is a pseudo-ad that sparks the user’s interest and fulfills that newfound need immediately. It is almost if the profile is taking the form of a search engine, but with images.

4. Get Descriptive with Your Captions

I have heard a lot of people say keep captions short. I vehemently disagree. My most successful posts have the longest captions. And I have noticed that I usually love posts that feature along with captions that give me insight into whatever the picture is. Find your brand’s voice and dive into it. Here’s a hint. You won’t learn that voice by reading books. The secret is trial and error. Get out there and do it. Write and re-write until you get it right. Rinse and repeat.

5. Reach Out To Influencers

Influencers are everything. While the methods of working with influencers may vary, what is not a myth is that they work to elevate brands. The best approach is identifying potential influencers, (people within your industry that have a considerable number of followers who are engaged) following them and then engaging with them on their posts Make sure you turn On “Post Notifications” for them to make sure you don’t miss what they are doing. Once you have a cordial relationship with them, offer them products are services. Trust me that they are flattered. Your goal is to get their stamp of approval for your brand.

6. Develop Your Instagram Brand

Stand Out. As you want to stand out. The question is, of course, how? Well, it comes with a bit of self-evaluation and intention. Based on what your goal is on the platform, you can make a solid decision on how you want to be presented.

If your goal is to sell products on Instagram, you may feature product photography. If your goal is to drive leads, your technique may be to feature images of people who have solved their problem with your solution. Generate traffic on your blog or website by posting pristine imagery that highlights your area of expertise. No matter your purpose, make sure you develop a style that is consistent and recognizable. Remaining consistent is by far the most deceptively hardest thing to do on Instagram since it could be a little annoying to use the same concept over time. Look at it as you as an opportunity to create a brand as a work of art. Strive to stand out and not fit in. Remember, people love consistency.

7. Make Full Use of Tags: Location, People and Products

We like to think of social media as a more evolved form of television. When you want to watch a movie or see a particular show that is the new rave of the office, how do you find it? Well, there are channels, guides, lists, genres, categories, etc. Social media works the same way, except a large part of the onus of content producers (YOU) is to make sure their content is accessible. How do you make your content available and in a way, searchable on Instagram? The best way to make sure your content is reaching an excellent organic audience is via hashtags. However, we sometimes overlook the three other tags. Those three tags are products, people and location. Events are gold on social media, and they happen at a place. Events also involve people. Tagging your product is self-explanatory. However, remember, once you tag a product in a post, you can no longer use that post as an ad.

8. Use Calls to Action

We all have a purpose. Your business or organization isn’t on Instagram just be seen. Let your audience know what actions you would like for them to take. Never forget your calls to action. Your call to action may be to click the link in the bio, share the content, like the profile or visit the website. Make it excruciatingly impossible for people not to know why you are here and what it is you would like for them to do.

9. Use Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are growing in popularity, to over 400 million daily users. We have noticed that users are interacting more and more with our stories than our feed posts. Stories are an excellent opportunity to take your followers behind the scenes and show them what a day in the life of your office looks like. But a Story doesn’t have to be a video. You post a story and link it to a newsfeed post and get the best of both worlds. If your audience has a propensity for video content of SnapChat, this is a fantastic opportunity to reach them on their terms without leaving the Instagram interface. Stories also have the advantage of Ask questions. Use polls, quirky GIFs, and music. Play with filters and Boomerangs. This is a fantastic way to start getting comfortable on video and connect with your followers in an even more profound way.

10. Be Social

Find accounts and users in your industry. Use tags and geotags to find those who have just attended the same event or have similar interests. Like their posts, interact with their followers, complement their pics, follow similar accounts. Get social. These actions increase the exposure of your account and at the very least increases the likes of posts already present within your account. Follow hashtags that are directly related to your industry. Repeat the process as much as possible. Like, comment, follow, and engage. This technique, over time, produces consistent results and helps grow your followers when matched with the methods stated above.

11. Join an Instagram Engagement Group

These groups have many names, including Instagram engagement groups, Instagram pods, Instagram dm groups and Instagram telegram groups. No matter what you call them, they all serve the same purpose. That purpose is to drive engagement on your Instagram posts, thereby increasing your followers. These private groups consist of anywhere from 10 to 500 accounts of a particular niche or industry. Whenever a member of the group posts to their account, they share the post with the group and the members of the group to like it and comment on it. In theory, this gives the post enough immediate, authentic engagement to be featured on the Instagram “Explore” page, top the list of relevant hashtags and some level of virility, thereby driving followers for the influencer.

12. Post Consistently and Frequently
People love consistency. When it comes to sports, leaders often trust those who are consistent over those with superior talent. Likewise, posting consistency will always trump highly curated posts that only happen hap-hazard and at whim. People also tend to like a little more than less. Be careful with this, because there is such thing as diminishing returns. But as a rule of thumb, the more often you post, the more likes and followers you get. We recommend at least seven or more times a week, or at least once a day.

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