To grow more followers on Instagram is not as easy as it used to be, especially in recent times when changes have been made to the Instagram Algorithm. The more followers, the more chances you or your business gets recognition and patronage, because of this some people have opted-in to buying fake followers and reviews to look good on Instagram which Instagram Teams do not accept.
We will discuss different ways you can grow your followers on Instagram, these tips when executed successfully, will grow your page followers exponentially and give you more visibility and growth.
1. Have a clear plan
Firstly, ask yourself why you need more followers? To increase awareness, boost sales, or drive traffic? Answering these questions will help you to create a brand story that appeals to your visitors.
Secondly, you have to define your target audience. Who they are, where they are, when and how they interact on Instagram and their challenges, create content, solve their problems and teach them how to handle issues.
Thirdly, create a unique brand story and aesthetic that makes your content recognizable to your visitors whenever they come across your post. This could be your unique fonts, background drops, or brand colors.
To get the maximum effects, ensure that your identity is unique throughout your social platforms and websites.
2. Profile Optimization
Your profile determines if a visitor will want to follow your page. There are different things a visitor checks out before he/she decides to follow your brand or page.
- Username – Does your username match your brand name
- Logo – Is the logo the same as your brand logo
- Description – Have you listed what your brand offers or the products you sell?
- Call to action – Is there a way to contact you or where to see more products like your website or sales page?
- Blue Tick – Is your page verified? This is not necessary but it gives your visitors confidence and trust that this is the official page of the brand.
Make use of a good username that is the same as your brand name or closely related if your brand name has been taken.
Your profile should contain your Business name, website, and other social media platforms you have. You should bullet point services and products you sell on your profile and can also use emojis to make it look aesthetically pleasing.
Also, it is a good fit to use your Instagram name consistent with all other social media networks and use your logo as your profile image to be easily recognized.
3. Maximize Instagram Stories and Highlights
Stories are new additions to Instagram features and it is to show stories of your brand daily without losing updates. Stories can be an image, videos, graphics, or interactive posts. It should be highly engaging, captivating, to convince a visitor to follow your page. Stories are deleted after 24 hours and it should be concise enough to tell a story within the period of time.
Although stories get deleted, you can maximize Instagram Story by using the Story Highlights to keep the memories, updates, products, or services for new visitors.
Highlights should be highly organized to show the brand values and ideas. Some are arranged based on different products, services, experiences, locations, and reviews.
Whatever the idea is behind your Story, it should be as appealing as possible to tell your brand story while conforming with your brand aesthetic.
4.
Post Consistently and at the right time
To grow more followers on Instagram, you need to keep posting content, you have to be seen regularly to be noticed and how do you achieve that? By posting relevant, relatable content and consistently. An average of 3 posts per day is considered the best but do within your capability. There are no limits to what you post on your page as long as it conforms to Instagram Policy.
Bombarding your page with posts wouldn’t help much, scheduling posts to show your audience at the right time when they are most likely to be active on Instagram will be a step to gaining more followers.
Posts should follow a certain pattern or structure to make the page pleasing. People tend to follow aesthetically looking pages, so you should make your page very inviting for followers. There are various tools to help you achieve the looks you want such as photo grids.
For scheduling posts, there are different third-party software to schedule posts, but you can use the Meta Business suite to schedule posts.
5. Use Instagram Reels for contents
Instagram Reels are relatively short videos designed to capture visitors’ attention. They can vary from entertainment, educational, product videos, and graphics. It should be captivating, interesting, and informative to capture interest. Brands that use reels are more likely to gain more followers than brands that don’t.
You may ask what content can I create on Reels?
Most of the Instagram reels are Trending topics on TikTok, so if you feel you need content to create reels, go over to trending topics and choose content. Reels must be of high quality, lower quality videos are acceptable too.
To be more visible, you should create more reels at least twice per week but if you can do it on a daily basis, you are likely to gain more followers.
6. Work towards getting on a featured account
These are Instagram account that creates content around a specific topic or niche. It can be about photography, cosmetics & beauty products, dance clubs, or fashion, getting featured on the account will attract followers to go view your profile and follow your brand.
Make sure to always tag those featured accounts you know and hopefully, you will get to their Instagram feed and be more visible.
This Instagram account backpackersintheworld is a feature account that posts about tourists who visit different locations in the world. Do you feel a need to take a vacation, then you can go over the page and take a look at the tourist places you could visit.
7. Use the right Hashtags and Caption
Captions should be captivating to get the reader’s attention especially when a picture doesn’t tell the whole story. Compelling and structured captions get more engagements than random ones.
How can I write a good caption, you may ask?
- Tell a relatable story, let your readers be immersed in your story. It can be ab experience or how a product was created or a funny story but whatever it is, it should resonate with the reader.
- Ask a question, it can be about anything but most especially be something relating to your brand, or your product.
- Use of emoji – using the right emoji for the right words lightens the feels of your content and can make the caption stand out.
Put the important facts and words first, and try to make the post lengthy, lengthy posts gets to get more traction but if your caption is short, it should be filled with searchable words.
Hashtags are crucial to every brand as you get more reach and increase your audience. Your post will show when a hashtag you used is being searched. Use hashtags that are relevant to your post and always related to your brand and values. Hashtags can be long or short, no matter the length they should be relatable.
You can use up to 30 hashtags for a post, and they range from product or services hashtags to niche, locations, industries, or customized hashtags. There are third-party apps that help you create customizable and popular hashtags. Save your hashtag and use it whenever you want it, just copy and paste it into your post.
Hide hashtags in comments if you do not want them to show on your caption or you can you dots to separate hashtags and caption. However you choose to add it, it is still recognized.
8. Use Geotags on your post to boost discovery
Just as you tag a person or brand, Tag your physical locations to all your posts, so whenever someone searches for the location, your post will appear under the searched word. If the post is convincing and appealing then you can gain followers from your tagged post. This is mostly for tourists and travelers who tour around the world. It will also save people the stress of asking where the image was taken.
9. Use Instagram live features and do live Collaboration
Live feature in Instagram is where you stream live and have interactions with your followers. This is beneficial to brands that sell services and products because it is interactive. You can show how to use a product or play an Instrument. Your followers can comment on your videos and ask questions and you answer based on the questions asked. You can upload your live sessions to Instagram stories once it has ended.
You can make your Live interesting by collaborating with someone else, it can be an Influencer of your ambassador, a follower, or competitor where you people talk about the challenges your business face.
10. Use other social platforms to promote your profile
Cross-promote your profile across your social platforms, use Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok interchangeably to promote your brand. Make your brand be seen and known across all platforms. Post your content across all your social media platform and tag your account respectively, you can gain more attention on one platform than the other. But the bottom line is your profile is gaining more attention on various platforms. It helps to grow more followers on Instagram.
Use blogs, websites pages, or landing pages to promote your Instagram profile, insert links that will lead your lead generation to your profile on Instagram, convert your web visitors into leads. Write blogs around your brands and products, use your profile as illustrations and examples and this will lead the person to go check out your profile.
To convince people to follow you, your page should be aesthetically pleasing and well organized to be able to draw the person’s attention.
11. Use Interactive Features
How active are you on Instagram, for your profile to be searched or followed, your page needs traffic at every point in time, how sociable are you on your page, there are various ways to gain followers such as conducting giveaways, a day or a month, the criteria should be for your brand to be followed on Facebook and Instagram. It can be a contest where the winner gets a product for free or a free service. Also, you can use polls or Questions and answers. Running these features and being truthful about them will bring more followers to your page.
12. Work with Brand Ambassador and Influencers
Work with Influencers and brand ambassadors to grow more followers on Instagram, they have larger loyal fans that will buy a product because of the trust they have for the Influencer. Some Influencers are expensive while some are cheaper, your budget determines the Influencer to go with.
When choosing an Influencer, work with someone within your niche, you would not want to use an Influencer that focuses on a different market for your product, choose someone that has the same interest with your brand or is in the same niche.
You can work with a brand ambassador, this person becomes the face of your brand so that wherever this person goes or her choice of clothing, your brand is represented. Send items for free to them in exchange for them t market them for you.
Jenny’s Glow @jennysglownigeria a Nigerian brand that produces beauty products has so many celebrities as Ambassadors and |Influencers. These have created a high level of trust in Nigerian because their favorite person or role model has endorsed this product, then it is worth trying. They have gained more followers with this initiative.
13. Engage with Instagram Community
Be active on Instagram, engage with the community, post, and comment, respond to posts as many times as possible, react to posts, likes and comments, answer questions relating to products launch, challenges using products, and how to get a product or locate your stores. Timely responses to questions, followers, and your activeness on Instagram will make them trust your brand and become loyal followers.
people ask questions about new products, how to use a product, where to get a product, and challenges. Answering the questions genuinely makes you gain new followers. Comment on people’s posts, drop emojis. Be very active on the comment sections and also you can grow more followers on Instagram when you follow people who commented on a competitor’s post and they will likely follow you back
14. Try IGTV and aim for the Explore Tab
IGTV is the longer version of the reel, video can be up to 60 minutes and are supposed to be informative and educative. Make use of IGTV and you can stand a chance to be featured on Explore Tab. Explore is where videos, images randomly selected are displayed on Instagram, to feature your content needs to be of high quality.
15. Run Adverts on your Instagram Page
Run targeted Ads or Boost your post on Instagram to reach a broad audience and promote your page or brand. You can run ads through Instagram Ads, Facebook Ads or Influencers, or any other Ad featured account on Instagram. Make your Ads simple, concise, and clear to be to draw the visitor’s attention to check your page. Ads have been proven to be one of the best methods of gaining followers if you target the right audience.
Conclusion
These 15 tips are part of the different ways to grow more followers on Instagram. Though there is no template or a stated way to gain more followers, doing these steps will put you a step ahead of your competitors and get your brand in more people’s feed. Instagram algorithm changes daily and no one knows which steps the algorithm favors more but with all these, is one thing. Consistency, keep creating content and posting, and be more active on Instagram. Remember to use all the features, with these Instagram will help you to get your content across more feeds.
