12 Tactics to Get More Followers on Instagram
15 minute read
The bad news is that there are no definitive “growth hacks” for increasing your follower count on Instagram. No step-by-step guide will guarantee you success. The good news? There are still things you can do to build an Instagram growth strategy.
Here are 13 ways to organically gain more followers on Instagram – ranked according to what level you are at on Instagram.
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How to Get More Followers on Instagram for Beginners
If you are just getting started with Instagram for your business, the first step is to tighten up the nuts and bolts of your Instagram presence. Here are five basic things to get right before moving on to more advanced practices:
1. Embed keywords into your username and name.
The Instagram algorithm prioritizes search results containing keywords in the name and username.
- Your username is your Instagram handle (your profile’s @name): To be immediately identifiable, it must be the same as your company name and/or consistent with your profile username on other social channels.
- Your name is your company name (or whatever you like): Add relevant keywords here to improve your visibility.
For example, Ursa Major adds the word “skincare” to their name on Instagram to make it easier to find when someone searches for skincare brands and solutions.
Adding a relevant keyword is also an opportunity to tell potential customers at a glance who you are and what you sell, as it is the first thing someone will see when they land on your profile.
⚠️ Remember: Only add one or at most two relevant keywords to your name. Stuffing them in can come across as spammy.
2. Optimize your Instagram bio
There are four elements you need to master to create the perfect Instagram bio:
- A direct description of what you do and/or what you sell.
- Brand personality
- A clear call to action
- A link
Your Instagram bio has only 150 characters. But it is what makes or breaks your first impression on potential followers and customers. The science behind Instagram bios is to make them clear, creative, and complete. Anyone who reads it should immediately know what your company does, how it can help them, and where they can find out more.
Odd Giraffe, a personalized stationery brand, hit the nail on the head with their Instagram bio.
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To start, their “Hello, paper person” not only adds character to their bio that is unique to them, but also filters who they’re talking to: Someone who likes stationery. The following line is a crystal-clear call to action that highlights what they sell and what sets them apart (more than 100 designs).
⚡Pro-tip: Track which call to action drives the most clicks on Instagram. Creating the perfect Instagram bio for your business involves testing different iterations to find out what “clicks” with your potential followers.
The link in your bio is your chance to redirect your audience to an external page. You can add your company’s website or continuously update it based on your latest posts.
Not only that: You can also freely customize your Start Page to align with your brand and track how individual links are performing.
3. Cross-promote your Instagram handle on other channels
Redirecting potential customers from other channels to your Instagram profile is a low-effort strategy to become discoverable and quickly grow your following.
For example, at Buffer we add a link to Instagram in our website footer.
No one should have to manually search for you on Instagram if they already follow you elsewhere. Add a link to your Instagram account on:
- Your product packaging
- Your blogs (if relevant)
- Marketing and transactional emails
- Your website footer and/or sidebar
- Team members’ social media posts
- Your email signature and your employees’ email signatures
- Bios on other social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube
- Networking events and webinars (for in-person events, use your Instagram profile QR code).
The Instagram link doesn’t have to be big and flashy. In most places, a small Instagram icon or your QR code will do the trick.
5. Find your best times to post on Instagram
When is the best time to post on Instagram? When your audience is online.
There is no one-size-fits-all best time to share content on Instagram. Instead, try to determine the ideal posting time for your followers.
How do you find out when your audience is online? Instagram will tell you through its insights in three simple steps.
Step 1: Tap “Insights” on your Instagram profile.
Step 2: Navigate to “Your Audience”.
Step 3: Tap “See All”
At the bottom, you’ll find the times when your audience is most active.
⚠️ Note: This feature is only available in the Instagram mobile app, not on desktop.
Along with timing, also consider when your content is logically more relevant. A step-by-step recipe video will perform better after work hours when people are cooking. Conversely, a post about a coffee shop might do better during the afternoon slump at 2 p.m.
Experiment with posting times to find out when you have the greatest reach and engagement.
How to Get More Followers for Intermediate Instagram Creators
Once you’ve set up your Instagram profile and followed the basic practices for audience growth, you can move on to more advanced methods. Here are five ways to achieve organic growth for your small business on Instagram:
6. Build an Instagram Marketing Strategy
Having a clear idea of how Instagram fits into your overall social media marketing strategy will not only bring you positive business results, but will also guide you on what to post on Instagram.
But how do you create an Instagram growth strategy?
Step 1: Solidify Your Goals
Determine whether you want to increase brand awareness, drive direct conversions, boost website traffic, or something else. Clarifying your goal determines the content you post, your calls to action, and keeps your Instagram network aligned with your brand.
Step 2: Get a 360-Degree View of Your Target Audience
Knowing the basic demographics is key. But go further and deeply understand what your audience is struggling with and how you can help them solve their problems through your Instagram content strategy.
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Natasha Pierre – host of the Shine Online podcast and video marketing coach for small businesses – says that losing sight of the ideal follower in exchange for virality is the biggest mistake creators make:
“People often focus so much on going viral and reaching as many people as possible that they lose sight of the ideal follower they’re trying to reach. You could go viral today, and if you’re mostly reaching the wrong people:
They’re likely not going to follow you, which means: 1.
2) It would lead to a follower who is not an engaged community member if you’re a creator, or would never be a warm lead if you’re a small business.
Taking the time to think about who your ideal follower is will help you create content specific to them, which will lead not only to better growth, but also to high-quality new followers.”
Step 3: Define Your Brand Voice and Aesthetic
Create a unique social media marketing voice so that Instagram users can identify your posts without seeing your username.
Brand voice is hard to track or quantify, but it is undeniably important to be memorable. On Instagram, alongside your brand voice, you can also define your aesthetic. Use your brand colors, stick to a consistent content theme, and have your own personality.
⚠️ Remember: Your social media marketing voice should not differ significantly from your overall brand voice. Reflect your company’s values both in and outside the app.
Step 4: Create Content Pillar Topics and Stick to Them
Decide what niche your Instagram account will have. Set a few overarching topics to write about and don’t stray too far from them. This has many benefits:
- You don’t have to constantly come up with new content ideas.
- Your Instagram community will start recognizing you for the type of content you create.
- You won’t get distracted by new, hot, and shiny things and constantly revise your Instagram strategy.
⚡Pro-tip: Do your best ideas come while washing dishes or walking the dog? Use the Buffer Ideas app and save your thoughts whenever creative ideas strike.
Step 5: Create a content calendar and post consistently
How often should you post on Instagram?
We recommend posting at least once a day — whether it’s a carousel, a reel, or a story. Instagram head Adam Mosseri recommends posting two feed posts per week and two stories per day.
7. Write compelling captions
It’s tempting to skimp on Instagram captions when you’ve put so much effort into creating the perfect carousel or video. However, Instagram captions carry more weight than you might think: they can prompt someone to follow you or scroll past without a second glance.
For example, wellness brand Cosmix doesn’t just write “shop on our website!” on their Instagram posts. They explain what ingredients they use, how their products help with specific issues, and mention studies that support their claims.
However, don’t confuse long captions with better ones: according to the HubSpot 2023 Instagram Engagement Report, Instagram captions perform best when they are either very long or very short (20 characters vs. 2,000 characters).
Writing the perfect Instagram caption is more about understanding your audience and the context of the post than trying to hit a specific character count. If you’re writing an educational post, it makes sense to have a longer caption. However, if you’re sharing an aesthetic product image, shorter is sweeter.
⚡Pro-tip: Remember that the first line matters, whether you’re writing a short or long caption. When scrolling through the Instagram feed, you only see one to two lines of the caption, so a hook that leaves a curiosity gap and stops the scroll is key.
7. Use relevant hashtags
The right hashtags can expose your Instagram posts to a large and targeted audience.
How many hashtags should you use? The limit is up to 30, but Instagram recommends using only three to five hashtags.
However, it’s not about quantity — to get the most out of Instagram hashtags, you need to know how to categorize them. Why? Many people follow hashtags to see posts on a certain topic or to search for something specific. Your goal is to appear at the top of the Explore page at first glance when someone uses a hashtag from your niche.
The right strategy is to use a mix of popular and niche hashtags — that way you won’t get lost in a sea of spam or remain hidden in your small corner of Instagram.
How do you find hashtags that will reach your target audience? Use free hashtag generators to help you find relevant hashtags for your Instagram post. Add a few words about your image or video and these tools will recommend the best hashtags to match it.
⚡Pro-tip: Use brand-specific hashtags to gather all user-generated content (UGC) about your small business in one place.
8. Understand your analytics
Regularly checking your Instagram analytics is key to understanding what’s working for you and what isn’t. You may find that your audience responds best to fun Reels, but educational posts perform best as carousels. Identifying trends guides your content creation strategy so you get the maximum return on investment from Instagram.
Which metric is most important to track? That depends on your Instagram goals and strategy. For example, if you’re testing a new hashtag, knowing the number of new followers is more important than tracking likes from existing followers. But if you’re experimenting with posting times, tracking impressions is more important.
9. Collaborate with Instagram creators or other small businesses
Collaborating with other creators through influencer marketing or partnering with small businesses is mutually beneficial, as it brings a new community to both parties. The key is to ensure you’re working with a business or creator whose values align with yours and whose demographics and interests overlap with your target audience.
For example, period-tracking app Flo partnered with Charity Ekezie to create a sarcastic, humorous, and paid Instagram post to raise awareness of the company’s social initiative, through which premium features are available for free in several countries from Ethiopia to Haiti.
These posts appear on both accounts, meaning all of your creator partner’s followers will see the shared post (and thus your Instagram profile and small business).
If influencers with more than one hundred thousand followers are outside your budget, launch a micro-influencer campaign. Smaller creators often have a tightly knit community that trusts their recommendations.
How do you find these influencers? You can do a manual search on Google or search using hashtags and keywords on Instagram. A smarter approach is to use influencer search tools like Modash, which save time and find relevant creators.
You don’t have to limit yourself to collaborating with individual creators. You can also partner with other small businesses — for example, LinkedIn and Headspace collaborated to create a post about recovering from job loss.
Collaboration posts on Instagram don’t necessarily have to be shared posts. You can also:
- Go live with a creator
- Instagram account takeover
- Repost Instagram content from an influencer’s profile
- Natively publish videos they’ve created on your brand account
How to get more followers on Instagram for pros
Maybe you’re doing everything right and still struggling to gain more followers on Instagram. Or you experienced a sharp spike and have been stuck in a plateau for several months. Here are three ways to get back on track (or boost it further):
10. Experiment with different types of Instagram posts
Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app. The platform has introduced many formats, including Instagram Reels, pinned posts, Story Highlights, and carousel posts.
Which type of post will increase your Instagram engagement? Studies show that Instagram carousel posts have the highest engagement, but it’s more complex than that. Your audience might prefer Instagram Reels for bite-sized entertaining posts and carousel posts for anything educational.
If you feel your Instagram isn’t growing, experiment with different types of posts. The best approach is to mix all types, like skincare brand 100percentpure does.
⚡Pro-tip: Also experiment with different types of content, such as reviving memes that fit your brand, jumping on trending audio, and talking in Reels. Use Instagram’s Trend Report and its creator account to stay on top of the Instagram algorithm and new trends.
11. Talk to your audience in comments and Stories
Engage with your Instagram audience to understand their challenges, answer their questions, and gather content ideas.
Elise Darma — a professional Instagram coach for business owners — says that talking to your audience is an underutilized strategy for growing on Instagram (even though it’s obvious):
“Don’t wait for everyone to come to you. The absolute best hack is to proactively engage with other people on Instagram who are like the people your business helps. Imagine you were at a cocktail party and wanted to make friends there. The smartest strategy wouldn’t be to wait for everyone to come to you; if you took the initiative and started talking to people, introduced yourself, and asked them something about themselves, you’d leave that party with far more friends than if you hadn’t taken that action.”
How do you talk to your audience on Instagram? The foundation is responding to comments and messages you receive — especially when they involve inquiries from potential customers. Yogurt brand Chobani is a great example. They respond to almost every comment they receive.
Responding to every comment and DM isn’t realistic once you start receiving thousands of them, but try to respond to all inquiries.
Beyond comments and DMs, stay active in Instagram Stories as well. There are so many features that can inspire amazing content ideas — such as asking a question, interactive stickers, polls, countdowns, and even adding links. For example, nutrition brand Bulletproof does a weekly Q&A on their Instagram account to answer their audience’s most frequently asked questions about their products.
Don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to come up with Instagram Story ideas? There are plenty of Instagram Stories templates available to help you save time and create aesthetic designs.
The best part about Stories? You can group them together and turn them into Instagram Highlights – these will stay on your profile forever, instead of disappearing after 24 hours. Use them to create a resource section with answers to all common customer questions, to reduce barriers when selling your products on Instagram.
12. Get Verified on Instagram
The coveted blue checkmark on your Instagram account is a badge of instant credibility. It helps you stand out in search results, prevents impersonation, and even gives you a higher engagement rate.
If your goal is to increase your growth rate on Instagram, getting verified will undoubtedly help you do that. But how do you get verified on Instagram? It’s simple: You purchase a subscription through your Instagram profile – however, you must meet certain conditions, such as fulfilling Meta’s minimum activity requirements.
Getting more followers on Instagram isn’t a one-time affair
With these 12 tips, you are certainly better prepared to grow your followers on Instagram. However, it’s not a one-time affair. Maintaining growth on Instagram requires regularly publishing quality content and keeping your social media strategy on top.
Managing scheduling, posting, engagement, and monitoring manually is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
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If you want results right away, you can get Instagram followers right now.
Michal Záruba je specialista na digitální marketing a konzultant v oblasti sociálních médií a SEO. Více než 8 let pomáhá značkám růst online prostřednictvím strategického obsahu, optimalizace pro vyhledávače a efektivní komunikace na platformách jako LinkedIn, Instagram a YouTube.
Na svém blogu sdílí praktické tipy o tom, jak propojit SEO, sociální sítě a brand building do jedné funkční strategie. Zaměřuje se na to, jak firmy mohou využít moderní nástroje a algoritmy k tomu, aby jejich značka nezískala jen dosah, ale i důvěru.
Když zrovna netvoří obsah, přednáší o digitálním marketingu, školí týmy a sleduje nové trendy v AI a vyhledávání.