17 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers (2026)

17 Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram (2026)

Instagram can be a highly targeted visual marketing channel for your brand and an opportunity to build a loyal audience that will grow alongside your business.

In fact, more than 500 million users browse the Instagram app every day, making it home to some of the most engaged audiences.

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In this guide, we’ll show you how to grow your Instagram follower profile and increase engagement while building a massive following over time – one that is full of real fans, not bots or fake followers.

How to Get More Followers on Instagram?

Here are several tactics that will help you gain more followers on Instagram, from leveraging new features like reels, to cross-promoting content, optimizing your profile, to collaborating with brand ambassadors.

Whether you’re just getting started or looking to expand your reach, these 17 tips will help you increase your Instagram follower count and boost engagement on this platform.

1. Incorporate reels into your content mix
2. Cross-promote your content
3. Curate your profile grid
4. Collaborate with brand ambassadors
5. Gain followers from your loyalty program
6. Sell through your Instagram personal account
7. Get onto featured accounts
8. Use the right hashtags
9. Post at the right time
10. Steal followers from your competitors
11. Pay for sponsored posts and product reviews
12. Use geotagging to support local discovery
13. Organize your stories into highlights
14. Ask for more followers
15. Host giveaways
16. Share user-generated content
17. Use Instagram Live

Let’s dive deeper into how to implement each tactic to gain more followers on Instagram.

1. Include Reels in Your Content Mix

Reels are fun videos you can share with your followers on your Instagram account. They have sound, effects, and creative tools. You can share them on your channel and publicly in the Instagram Explore app, reaching new audiences.

Reels are new territory for brands. Kristie Dash, Beauty Partnership Manager at Instagram, mentioned on the Glossy forum that there is no single recipe for success with Reels. However, she recommends the following tips for gaining traction:

• Keep your content unique and trend-oriented. Identify trends on Instagram and TikTok and add your own style to them. This will increase the chances that your reels go viral and reach the awareness of new people.
• Make content relatable and simple. Not every Reel has to be a production. Lower quality videos can perform the same, if not better, than highly produced Reels.
• Educate your audience. Find a balance between education and entertainment in your Reels.

Reels should now be a major priority for you. It’s a first-rate real estate for discovering your brand by new followers. -Kristen Dash, Beauty Partnership Manager, Instagram

Trilce Jirón Garro, owner of TBS Marketing social media marketing agency, agrees. “Don’t sell your products through Reels content,” she says. “Share facts. Provide tips related to the industry you operate in. Entertain viewers.”

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Trilce suggests that both new and existing brands incorporate fun Reels into their Instagram strategy. “Reels give everyone an opportunity to reach new target audiences,” she says. “There is no learning curve because Reels content is lo-fi. And creators can create community content that builds trust, gains followers, and over time enables sales.”

Trilce also likes the Instagram Insights Tool introduced for Reels. “Reels have become an integrated part of every Instagram marketing strategy,” she says. “Analytical tools for Reels have made it easy to track metrics and analyze data to find out if your Reels are working. Now you can precisely understand what your audience likes and dislikes, when to publish Reels, and what calls to action resonate with viewers.”

Using the Reels Insights tool, you can see patterns and understand the various engagement fluctuations that affect your visibility on the platform. This allows you to create higher quality content that will gain even more engagement and followers.

2. Cross-promoting content

Cross-promotion involves posting similar content across different social media channels. It is a tactic used to save time and resources. It is also effective in raising brand awareness and growing your Instagram audience.

Mobile users spend more and more time with video and entertainment apps, with the biggest increase going to video content on social media platforms. Whether it’s a short video or a long tutorial, you want to improve the reach of your Instagram content.

A great example of successful cross-posting is Justin Bieber’s holiday dance challenge. During the 2020 holidays, the Canadian singer posted the same dance challenge on both TikTok and Instagram. On TikTok, his short video received 9.8 million likes. The same content on Instagram received 4.8 million likes. While some users may overlap, others likely use only one of these services. So Bieber was able to reach more people just by posting the same video on two different platforms.

Nadya Okamoto, founder of the lifestyle brand August, found that TikTok naturally translates to Instagram and YouTube. In an interview with Modern Retail, she said: “As we grew on TikTok from August, we also grew to 175,000 followers on Instagram.” Active posting on multiple platforms “affected our overall acquisition costs to be super efficient,” which allowed the brand to move away from paid media as its primary acquisition channel.

TikTok is not the only channel where you can cross-post. The Instagram Reels format translates well to YouTube Shorts and Pinterest Stories. It is important to note that Instagram’s algorithm will not support Reels that have a TikTok watermark. So if you plan to cross-post content from Instagram to other channels, make sure the content is high quality and does not promote a competing platform through watermarks.

3. Create Your Profile Grid

Most of your Instagram followers will not follow you because of what you posted in the past, but because of the promise of what you will post in the future. Your audience wants to know what they’ll get if they press the Follow button.

Having a channel with a consistent publishing schedule and theme can have the same impact on follower growth as many of the other growth strategies we described above. Even a simple pattern can attract new followers if it is communicated at first glance to everyone who lands on your profile.

Consider your Instagram bio and your last nine posts as your first impression on Instagram. Do they effectively communicate a level of consistency through personality, filters, colors, or layout? Does your clickable link send people every week to the same home page, or do you also link to fun and exciting content?

Grid layout is often an underestimated way to creatively work with your feed’s aesthetics while also giving your publishing strategy the rhythm and consistency that is worth maintaining.

In fact, many accounts that adopt this approach are often able to expend less effort on content creation by focusing on converting visitors to followers, creating text graphics or other content with faster turnaround, and streamlining their overall Instagram content production.

Using a tool like Later, you can easily plan and schedule Instagram posts and create the look and layout of your channel. Letterfolk is just one example of how far some brands go with the aesthetics of their Instagram layout.

Your channel serves as a billboard for your brand. It’s the customer’s first contact with you and captures the essence of your brand.-Trilce Jiron, TBS Marketing

4. Work with Brand Ambassadors

Don’t want to pay well-known influencers big money to promote your brand? Partner with brand ambassadors who have anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand followers. Ambassadors are people who genuinely support your brand, believe in it, and tell their friends about it.

Luxury shoe retailer Sarah Flint reports success with its brand ambassador program, which has more than 500 women members. Each ambassador has her own unique discount code, and when used by five new customers, she receives a free pair of Sarah Flint shoes.

Ambassadors like Holly Hollon attest to the quality and comfort of this brand’s shoes. Her Instagram posts are authentic and relatable to Sarah Flint’s regular customers. This helps the brand increase its Instagram followers and generate sales.

5. Gain Followers from Your Loyalty Program

Retailers are increasingly implementing loyalty programs that repeatedly motivate consumers to shop with their brand instead of a competitor’s. This works for brands like Sephora and Blume. One way brands use loyalty programs is by rewarding those who follow them on Instagram.

When luxury retailer Rebecca Minkoff launched its RM Rewards program, it gave shoppers the ability to earn points for following the brand’s account on Instagram. Brands like Blume also find value in rewarding Instagram followers. Program members can earn Blume Bucks by becoming Instagram friends as opposed to Facebook or Twitter friends.

6. Selling Through Your Personal Instagram Account

Another popular way to increase your Instagram followers is to expand your personal account – essentially, make yourself an influencer. Using both a business and personal account can increase brand recognition, followers, and sales. Professional tip: You can also run this tactic on TikTok to improve your numbers.

It’s a tactic that has worked well for fashion brand ANINE BING. In addition to the brand’s Instagram profile, the company founder increases engagement and awareness through her personal Instagram page, which has over a million followers.

Anine invites her fans into her design studio, walks them through the design process, and even gets feedback from them throughout the entire creative process. Anine also shares a bit about her personal life and pets, so followers get a peek behind the curtain of their favorite designer’s life.

7. Get Featured on Niche Feature Accounts That Post Other Profiles

Instagram feature accounts are pages that curate the best content in a specific niche. They’re like “best of” photography magazines for a given industry. Some feature accounts have a massive number of followers. If you get featured on one of these accounts, it can send new Instagram followers to your profile.

There are feature accounts for every topic: travel, fashion, photography, and more. For example, @discoverearth curates adventure travel content from around the world for more than 6.6 million followers.

8. Use the Right Hashtags

Your goal on Instagram is to regularly engage with your existing audience while also growing your real followers. Publishing new, interesting, and engaging photos will meet the first requirement, but to kick-start growth, tagging your photos with hashtags is incredibly important for you. Hashtagging makes it easier for people searching for specific terms to find your photos.

So what hashtags should you use? Like on Twitter and other social networks, Instagram users prefer certain hashtags over others. If you use popular Instagram hashtags in your photos, you have a much better chance of reaching new users and getting discovered.

At the time of writing this article, these were the 20 most used hashtags on Instagram:

1. love
2. instagood
3. fashion
4. photooftheday
5. beautiful
6. art
7. photography
8. happy
9. picoftheday
10. cute
11. follow
12. tbt
13. followme
14. nature
15. like4like
16. travel
17. instagram
18. style
19. repost
20. summer

If when looking at this list you thought, “But none of that relates to my products or brand,” you’re probably right.

Using hashtags is one thing, using the right hashtags is another.

Popular hashtags like those listed above will likely get you more engagement and likes. However, they won’t lead to greater long-term engagement from relevant users, new followers, or most importantly, sales.

If you want to properly tag your photos, you need to find and use the most relevant hashtags. This means doing the appropriate research and making sure you’re using hashtags that not only capture your brand, but are also searched on Instagram.

To find relevant, related, and popular hashtags, you can use a free online tool such as IconoSquare or Webstagram, which will search for key hashtags closely related to your brand.

For example, if you’re in the men’s accessories business, you can use the #MensFashion hashtag in the Webstagram app and pull up the following list of other key hashtags along with the number of times they’ve been used (i.e., their popularity).

You can also find other related hashtags and their popularity by searching some of your target keywords directly in the Instagram app.

In this exercise, you’ll want to try different keywords that describe your brand and products, and gradually build a list of hashtag keywords.

Keep in mind that Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post. Also, popular words change over time: be sure to revisit your hashtag keywords every few months to use the best possible terms.

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You can also steal hashtag ideas from competitors or similar accounts that have the following you aspire to, but ultimately you’ll want to create your own groups of hashtags that relate to your specific account.

Professional Tip No. 1: For each product and product category in your store, research the most popular related hashtags on Instagram. Based on this research, compile a list of 15 to 20 popular hashtags for each product category and also a base of five to ten popular tags that describe your brand and product offering. Finally, create a list of location-specific hashtags that relate to your brand.

For example:

Brand Keywords: Hashtags

mybrandname #mensfashion #mensaccessories #mensgoods #fashion #mensstyle #instafashion #menswear

Product Category Hashtag Keywords

bugatchisocks #happysocks #corgisocks #socks #sockswag #socksoftheday #sockgame #sockswagg #socksofinstagram #happysockday #sockwars #funsocks #happysockday

Location-Specific Hashtag Keywords

Toronto #TorontoFashion #TorontoFashionBloggers

Save these groups of hashtag keywords to a convenient location, such as Evernote or Google Drive. This way you can easily publish a new image on Instagram on the go optimized for the most relevant keywords. Some Instagram scheduling tools also allow you to save caption templates for storing groups of hashtags.

If you take the time upfront to research, organize, and save the most useful and popular hashtags, you’ll save yourself a lot of time, increase your engagement, and gain new followers.

Professional Tip No. 2: If you’ve been posting on Instagram for a while and feel like you’ve missed all these opportunities to build your audience using hashtag keywords, don’t despair. You can always go back and post a comment with new lists of hashtag keywords and watch the likes and followers roll in.

Using hashtags in Instagram stories

Tagging posts on Instagram with hashtags is standard practice, but you should also use hashtags in your Stories to have a chance of being seen by users who follow that hashtag.

You can use hashtag stickers (which you can find in the Stickers menu on Instagram when creating a story) or simply add hashtags directly in post captions to have a chance of appearing in stories with hashtags.

Now that users can follow hashtags, your Instagram Stories have a chance of being seen by both people who follow that hashtag and anyone currently viewing it.

9. Post your content at the right time

In addition to adding relevant hashtags and using the best filters to gain more Instagram followers, you should also consider the timing of your posts.

A targeted approach involves analyzing what has worked for you in the past and what hasn’t. If you visit the optimization section on IconoSquare, you can get a detailed analysis of your post history compared to engagement. This report will also alert you to the best time of day and days of the week to post content.

Dark circles indicate when you typically post media. Light gray circles show when your community is active. The largest light gray circles represent the best times you can post content.

You can also get a lot of great information for free from Instagram’s analytics for business accounts, which you can find in the Insights section.

You might want to consider using a social media scheduling tool so you can automatically publish posts when your audience is most engaged.

10. Steal your competitors’ followers

One of the best ways to find and gain new followers is to search for your closest competitors’ accounts on Instagram and engage with their audience. These people have already shown some interest in the products you offer, simply by following your competitors.

So how do you effectively steal competitors’ followers? By engaging with them. There are several ways to interact with Instagram users, and the more effort you put in, the more followers and repeated engagement you’ll get from it.

There are three types of engagement on Instagram:

• Follow the user
• Like their photos
• Comment on their photos

Don’t be afraid to use one or two emojis to give the text some personality.

11. Pay for sponsored posts and product reviews

All of these optimized posts on your account are great, but if you really want to increase your Instagram followers, you need to leverage influencer marketing and expose your brand to a wider audience.

So how do you do it? First, unlike the tactics mentioned above for growing Instagram followers, this one is usually not free. However, if done correctly, it provides good value.

To get started, you need to create a list of major accounts in your industry. For example, if you sell cosmetic products, you’ll want to find major beauty blogger accounts.

You may already follow these accounts, but if not, you’ll need to find them. One of the best ways is to use Webstagram and search for some of the top hashtag keywords you’ve discovered. When searching for keywords, you’ll see all related keywords along with the top Instagram accounts that contain those keywords.

In profile results, you should look for several things:

• A large number of followers (typically 20,000 to 200,000).
• An email address in the profile

If an email address is listed in the profile, it usually means the account is open to sponsored posts or shout-outs in a sponsored story.

You’ll want to send an email and ask about their prices for sponsored posts. While these vary among individual influencers, you’ll likely find that the average rate ranges from $20 to $50 per post depending on the size of their following.

If you’re selling a unique and original product, you can also consider sending your product for the influencer to review and post about. Generally, the more natural and less promotional the image, the greater the engagement and response.

To gain more Instagram followers, you don’t necessarily need influencers with a huge number of followers, but rather those who have a high engagement rate (likes and comments relative to their follower count), which can provide you with many influencer marketplaces.

12. Using location tags to boost local discovery

In addition to hashtags, you can also make your Instagram posts and Stories discoverable by tagging your location – either the city you’re in or the place where the photo or video was taken.

Locations not only have their own Instagram channel, but also their own Story and hashtags that you can contribute to when you use the location sticker in your own Stories.

Local businesses can get the most out of location tags by regularly contributing to these channels and also engaging with posts from potential customers who are physically near them.

13. Organize your stories into highlights

Whenever a potential follower lands on your business profile, you have a short time to convince them to follow you.

One way to do this is to use the Highlights feature on your profile and organize your Instagram Stories to communicate what your account is about.

Since Stories have a 24-hour lifespan, you can give them a second life using the Highlights feature and entice others to follow you so they don’t miss future Stories.

Use story highlights to grow your Instagram followers:

• Creating teasers that hint at what your account is about.
• Organizing stories by theme (for example, countries you’ve visited, for travel accounts).
• Explaining your products using images and videos

14. Ask for more followers

It sounds obvious, but it’s worth saying: Don’t be afraid to occasionally ask your target audience to follow you.

Just like YouTubers ask their viewers to follow them at the end of their videos, you can also ask viewers to follow you for more content.

Sometimes people may really like what you post on Instagram, but they need a nudge before they actually start following you.

You can do this in your Instagram captions too: work it into your content by teasing viewers what they’ll get when they follow you, or hint at upcoming content they won’t want to miss.

15. Run a contest

One of the best comments you can get on any social media post, not just Instagram, is when one user tags their friend. Not only do these comments contribute to your post’s engagement, which subsequently makes it favorable to the Instagram algorithm, but each tag brings you a new member of your audience who came through a recommendation and who you can potentially gain as a follower.

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One way to encourage this behavior is to post relevant content that calls for one-to-one sharing (for example, a gym meme that challenges you to tag a friend who skips leg day). However, a more reliable way is to launch a giveaway that encourages your audience to tag a friend and follow your account.

Follow Instagram promotion guidelines and all legal requirements for running a contest on Instagram that apply in your country.

For inspiration, here is an example of a successful product giveaway by Philip Kingsley, which motivates people to follow her account and tag a friend and have a chance to win a collection.

16. Sharing User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content – such as videos, photos, reviews, audio recordings, and more – created by your fans or supporters. It is a fundamental tool in your marketing arsenal for gaining followers on Instagram. UGC helps humanize your brand by featuring real people with real stories that show your product in real life, and builds a more trustworthy relationship with potential customers.

Not only will your audience love their 15 minutes of fame on your Instagram channel, but featuring them also helps increase sales in your online store. According to research by Olapic, consumers are 56% more likely to buy something after seeing a product photo shared by customers.

Take Fashion Nova as an example. This online retailer’s Instagram account largely relies on user-generated content.

Through user-generated content, Fashion Nova has access to thousands of photos from people around the world that it can share with its target audience – photos that both showcase brand values and inspire its followers to engage with its posts and buy clothes worn by real people.

When it comes to creating user content for your online store, start by asking customers to share their favorite experiences and images with your products by:

• Creating a branded hashtag channel where customers can post images.
• Adding a call to action to your Instagram bio
• Launching a contest
• Contacting influencers
• Adding a request for user-generated content to your packaging

Remember, the goal of UGC is to show an authentic perspective on your products. If some customers send you lower quality photos that still highlight the best features of your products, don’t hesitate to use them.

17. Using Instagram Live

Live video is key to a successful marketing strategy on any social media platform. On Instagram, you can use Instagram Live to broadcast videos to your followers and communicate with them in real time.

When your brand launches a live video broadcast, a ring circles your profile picture in the Instagram Stories app and notifies followers that they can watch it. Followers will also receive a notification when you launch live video. After you finish broadcasting, you can upload it to your Story for 24 hours.

Remember that Instagram Live is interactive. Your followers will likely comment during the live broadcast, so try to be aware of their comments and find ways to encourage them to participate.

Among the ways to get more followers when using Instagram Live are:

• Takeover by influencers
• Hosting AMA (Ask Me Anything) or Q&A
• Announcing product launch or update
• hosting talk shows
• behind-the-scenes look at your activities
• sharing current events
• Running product tutorials

Creating an Instagram Growth Strategy to Gain Followers

Growing your Instagram followers is not always just a numbers game. Like on other social networks, the most successful content strategy is authenticity and social approach.

If you focus on engagement rather than just follower count, Instagram can be a great home for your products and brand and can lead to a healthy stream of revenue for your e-shop. For more tips on how to turn this social media platform into a profitable channel, see our guide, how to make money on Instagram.

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