10 EASY TRICKS TO GET INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS FOR FREE

Do you want to get hundreds or thousands of Instagram followers for free? If you have interesting photographs, hobbies, and stories you want to share with a wide audience right away, there’s nothing more effective in recent years than creating a profile on Instagram. It’s currently probably the most popular platform for sharing photos (definitely for me) and in the Czech Republic alone it has over 1.5 million users.

With great popularity, however, come great restrictions. Figuring out the Instagram algorithm is no longer easy at all. Developers at Facebook work day and night to limit the reach of large accounts and force them into paid promotion.

If you master a few basic Instagram building practices, results can come immediately: In the case of my travel profile, the following 10 tips brought 1,000 followers in a month and 8,000 in the entire first year! I followed foreign blogs like melyssagriffin, but there are also a number of quality Czech sources (wikihow). I was also inspired by travel accounts from friends or career profiles of colleagues in Hollywood.

In this article, I want to share the key techniques for organic growth on Instagram that I’ve collected through practice, expand them with my own recommendations, and trends from recent months:

1. CHOOSE A CLEAR TOPIC AND STICK TO IT

While this is a very intuitive lesson – it’s all the more important. Your followers should recognize your photos at first glance in the feed without looking at the username. This means:

• Don’t switch between multiple filters and always try to maintain a square photo format.
• Try to be original. In the image on the left is an example of my feed – you can see that I always use filters that emphasize colors and posts get a similar “touch”.
• However, you’ll find countless more sophisticated techniques on the internet to enhance your profile’s appearance. For the lazier ones, it’s enough to alternate black and white photos with color ones, and social media gurus can get inspiration from websites like later.com, where you’ll find theme examples from world influencers.

If you’re targeting dog lovers, try to please them with cute moments of bulldogs and avoid photos of food from your favorite bistro. A good example of an account with a consistent theme might be welovesumava (for Sumava lovers) or ellisberankova (dog photography).

2. FOLLOW SIMILAR ACCOUNTS AND BE ACTIVE ON THEM

Now focus on your chosen topics and using hashtags, location, or fans of your favorite profile, start reasonably liking or commenting on posts that seem interesting to you. This is probably the most important technique for getting Instagram followers for free out of them all! Many popular profiles that now reach tens of thousands of followers started this way.

Try looking at your favorite destination and 15 minutes before bed give out a few likes and constructive comments (avoid one-word expressions like “beautiful” or emoticons). You might be surprised how many people start following you or return your likes.

On the right you can see a good example of a comment under a photo from Machu Picchu (see Gallery) from marymills_1 – it contains a short story and a question. This shows interest in the topic and invites reactions, increasing the chance that other accounts will notice you in the comments (at the same time you’ll support the organic reach of the post, but more on that in later points).

3. DISCOVER THE POWER OF INSTA-STORIES

Stories are (not only on Instagram) one of the hottest topics for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Uninterrupted stories have already become an essential part of branding (and getting Instagram followers for free) for every larger Instagram account. The advantage of regular profiles is that thanks to location or hashtag they can target hundreds of people with similar interests who don’t follow you yet.

• However, be careful and test which location will bring you the most views and messages.
• The rule is usually that targeting smaller city areas like “Prague-Karlin” will bring more views relative to less competition than simply “Prague”.

Thanks to recent innovations, you can also share posts older than 24 hours, which you can use to recycle older photos in your current location.

4. ALWAYS FILL IN THE LOCATION FOR YOUR POST AND GIVE IT THE RIGHT TAGS

According to data from my account, I found that around 10 percent of views occur outside the profile and feed – that is through search, therefore:

• So don’t forget to always include all 30 hashtags and the location of the photo in the post.
• The “right” hashtag shouldn’t be too broad or too specific in reach.
• Especially for smaller accounts, it’s recommended to use tags with a value of 10,000–50,000 posts.

… This increases the chance that your photo will rank in the top recommendations for a while.

Well-known and frequently used tags like #igerscz or #czechgirl cause your post to get lost in Instagram history before anyone notices it. If you’re unsure about choosing suitable tags, you can try tools like ink361.

5. HOW TO BEAT THE ALGORITHM?

That’s a complicated question. You can have thousands of followers, but your newest photo will show up to only, say, one-fifth of them. Why? Instagram is increasingly trying to restrict large accounts and promote the reach of only relevant posts.

You can partially help yourself with activity on a new post. Try asking your loyal fans, sister, friends, or grandmother to write a comment and like your shared photo shortly after it’s posted (or use Instagram “pods” – see tip #9).

Response speed to a new post also plays a major role! I’ve noticed that comments in the first 30 minutes are particularly key, which can determine the final success of your post. Remember that your own comments have the same weight. So try to respond and start conversations whenever possible. Similarly, you can also help yourself by writing tags in comment form.

6. FIGURE OUT THE BEST TIME TO BE ACTIVE

A business account allows you to track follower activity on given days and hours. An unwritten rule is that on Sundays (and on holidays in the evening) there’s usually a spike and you can thus reach significantly more users with your post than usual (you’d be surprised how much these days affect the success of Hollywood movies at premieres, or even the price of digital marketing – but more on that another time). But it’s all a matter of testing. The key to success is quality, not quantity. If you share, say, just one post a week but follow all the rules, it will help your branding more than unorganized flooding of the feed with photos (I, for example, share one, occasionally two posts a week). You can easily find out about your followers’ activity directly in the insights tool on Instagram:

7. CHOOSE YOUR PERSONAL HASHTAG

For two reasons. First, it makes your identification across different networks easier, but also you can encourage your followers to use the tag for contests or promotion of their photos.

See how much information can be found, for example, by using my older personal tag #ekonomnacestach on Instagram and in search engines.

Make sure your personal hashtag is unique, and use it under every new post (even outside Instagram).

8. THINK ABOUT LINK-BUILDING

Quality link-building is a key tool for many SEO experts and marketers. Whether you have your own blog, Facebook page, or even an email or Tinder profile (creativity has no limits), remember that each of these mediums can be used for self-promotion and getting Instagram followers for free.

Just an Instagram icon in your email signature can attract many curious people who would never discover your account any other way. If you still don’t know where else to place links, check out the blog post from matthewwoodward, which lists 28 options for backlinks on social media (EN).

9. CREATE OR JOIN “INSTAGRAM PODS”

You already know that early engagement on your posts will positively affect their reach (see algorithm). Instagram “pods” are an easy tool to achieve this.

In practice, it’s actually quite simple – just contact 15 people with the same interests and create a shared chat directly on Instagram where each member will share new posts.

If all participants are active and comment on the post in time, wonders will happen to it within the algorithm! If you’re the founder of the pod, make sure all members are in the same time zone and their accounts are active. Not sure who to contact? Write to me directly here!

10. GET TO KNOW PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE INTERNET

This is something that doesn’t happen overnight, but nothing ever beats the genuine interest of friends and people you meet outside the internet. As a traveler, I’ve met hundreds of amazing people who actively support me and have similar interests. Whether it’s a colleague from work or a host family from America, their activity is priceless! So never be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, especially when traveling, and exchange contacts.

Do you have any similar experiences or techniques I forgot? What are your techniques for getting Instagram followers for free? Do you have a question or did you find a mistake? Feedback is invaluable. I’d be happy if you leave me a question in the comments or on social media!