From small businesses to growing influencers, Instagram is the hottest spot for establishing a connection with the audience. If you have just started and are looking to raise more engagement, the first thing that you should focus on is to increase followers on Instagram.
It takes time to grow the audience and achieve stable growth on Instagram, but it is not impossible. With proper steps, you will soon hit the benchmark you have set for your business account.
Organic growth is significant to attract great engagement and traffic to your website. You are most likely to receive more engagement opportunities if you have a larger audience and trust you and your business. So, to grow on this platform, one thing is essential that is keeping your audience happy.
To increase followers on Instagram and keep your audience happy, there are a few things that you can do. The sooner you start working on these things, the more beneficial it will be for your business. Your follower count in itself speaks a lot about you and your brand, and if you have an engaging audience, nothing can beat you.
Table of Contents
Hacks to Increase Instagram Followers
Read along to find the proven hacks that will do wonders for increasing your Instagram followers.
#1 Collaborate with Creators and Influencers
The most important thing that you need to keep in mind while working on Instagram is the power influencers, and content creators have over their audience. These influencers have built a relationship of trust with their audience because of their content and how they engage their audience.
To increase followers on Instagram, you must step up and start collaborating with these content creators and influencers. Once your active audience sees that their favorite influencers are using and trusting your products, it will establish a feeling of trust within them.
On the other hand, when your products will land on an influencer’s feed, their audience will want to get their hands on the products their ideals use. It will help you in increasing your engagement as well as boost the sale of your products.
#2 Organize Giveaways and Contests
The next thing that you need to focus on is your audience and how much value they hold for your Instagram account. The more active audience you have, the better chances you have to gain new followers on Instagram.
To gain more followers with the help of your existing audience, your products need to get featured on your followers’ accounts. It is done by organizing giveaways and contests on your account, where your audience will have to reshare your posts and follow the requirements to enter.
#3 Start With Your Homepage
Your Instagram bio is the first thing your followers and viewers will see when they land on your page. It would help if you made the bio as catchy and engaging as possible. The 1-2 lines that you will write should explain everything about your brand (if you are running an account for your brand) or yourself (if you have an influencer’s account)
Optimizing your Instagram account is necessary as every step that you will learn here today. A good profile picture and a well-framed bio will be the building blocks that will help attract more traffic and engagement to your account. If you are sunning a brand, you must have an online store or a website that you are promoting through the account. Be sure to include the link in your Instagram bio.
Lastly, keep a search-friendly username and does not have many numbers or special characters present in it. When you use special characters or numbers, it becomes tough for users to search your account. Choose a username that is close to you or your brand’s name. When you use such a name, it becomes easy for the audience to establish a connection.
#4 Post on Your Feed Consistently
When you are done optimizing your homepage or your Instagram bio, the next step is to focus on how consistently you post and what time you chose to post. These two factors are very significant in increasing the number of followers on your Instagram account.
Whether you have acquired a good number of followers or you are still on the journey to win them, posting consistently on your feed will help you a lot. You don’t want to lose your followers because of your negligence. Make a schedule and follow it to post stuff regularly on your profile.
To increase followers on Instagram, you need to post at least twice or thrice a day but don’t exceed the limit. As too many posts will result in the audience thinking that you are spamming them. Keep it minimal but healthy and consistent. Take a look at your Instagram analytics and figure out the best time for you to post.
Once you know when you hit the highest engagement, make a timetable and post your pictures, videos, and Instagram reels around that time. We know from making content to polishing it for publishing, many things are running in your mind, and posting any skip your mind.
To avoid this, you can use Instagram scheduling tools that let you schedule posts for up to 30 days in advance. By doing so, you can produce a lot of content in bulk and schedule it for posting later. It will save you time and give you more time to create more great content and make a window for other things.
#5 Do Not Go After Fake Followers
Avoid having fake followers on your Instagram account. An account with legitimate followers and the other one with fake followers stand entirely apart from each other. Sure, you think buying followers is easy and practical to increase your count, but it is not. The engagement and credibility of your Instagram account are directly proportional to the organic follower growth of your account.
Even if you end up buying fake followers, what good will it do to you? When your audience ends up on an account that isn’t active but has followers in thousands of numbers, they will leave your page without thinking twice. Stay organic and have a trustworthy relationship with your audience.
Fake followers on your account will not engage in any activity such as buying products from your page or even liking, sharing, and commenting on your post. Such things aren’t doing you any good. Instead, the growth that you already have will also start to decline. Instagram will end up removing all of these fake followers from your account, and tell me what impression your account will leave after losing so many followers at the same time.
It is better not to go after such shortcuts to increase followers on Instagram. It is better to come up with some creative and engaging content, sell products that are in demand, and most importantly, have faith in yourself. Things take time. You won’t sleep with 10,000 followers today and wake up with a million the following day.
#6 Spread a Word About Your Instagram Account
I am sure you have a social media account across different platforms. What is the benefit of being on those platforms if you are not using them to promote your Instagram account? List your Instagram account on every platform you use. Embed a link to your account on your Twitter bio. If you have a website or a YouTube channel, be sure that you have listed your account there as well.
You can attract an audience from the platform. Let the world of Tweets know how you are doing on Instagram. Ask people there to come to find you on Instagram and see what you have to offer. Keep your residential address private but do keep your Instagram address public across the platforms.
#7 Post What Your Audience Likes
The growth and engagement and even the trick to increase Instagram followers are in the audience’s hands at the end of the day. A little testing on your account will never go wrong, and it will give you a hint about what stuff your audience is interested to see. You may have noticed that a specific type of post on your account is gaining more viral or getting more likes than the other.
That is the type of content your audience is invested in the most. Upload different stuff from time to time, use other photography techniques, make quick changes in editing and outlay of the post and see what helps and eliminate what does not.
Besides these things, keep up with the latest reels, see what challenges are trending so you are not losing the race, and use trending reels music so that your followers will know you are updated and are keeping up with all the popular content.
Do proper research on what filters are trending, what your competitors are posting, analyze captions, make notes on everything, and then develop a fantastic strategy to beat everyone.
#8 Have a Word With Your Audience
Instagram is best known for its visualization and picture-sharing features. If you look at the reports present on the Internet, about 70% of your audience wants to connect with you after looking through your posts, and 50% of the audience wants to communicate with you over your video content.
If you focus more on your caption writing skills and come up with creative and engaging captions, the chances are likely that your posts will be shared, and there will be a simultaneous increase in your followers.
After captions, try having a direct conversation with your audience. Don’t keep your audience hanging on messages or comments for a long time. Try to revert to as many people as you can. Be it a random inquiry about a product, or a message asking how you are doing, be polite while replying.
Final Pronouncement:
These are the different sections that you can work on while you are trying to increase Instagram followers. In the end, it is all about how much your audience trusts you and how much effort you are putting in to keep your audience happy. Finally, to sum it all up, work hard, focus on things with consistency and rest assured things will work in your favor.
Feature Image Credits: TechStory