Get More Instagram Followers with These 9 Tips:

Get more Instagram followers with these 9 tips. Instagram has become a cornerstone of the social presence of many brands, increasing landing page revenue, increasing conversion rates, and building an active audience.

If your Instagram presence is not as strong as you hope, it may be time to learn how to improve your strategies for gaining real and organic Instagram followers. The larger your audience, the more opportunities you have to interact with users and create unique experiences for them.

9 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Followers

1. Optimize Your Instagram Account

Before you embark on how to gain followers on Instagram, one of the most important steps is to have your account fully optimized. Think of your brand’s Instagram biography as the “home page” of your account.

How will people know the account belongs to your brand without a biography, image captions, the correct username, or a profile picture? It may seem obvious, but on Instagram your bio and image help form the foundations of your brand identity. The link in your biography is your only place to drive Instagram traffic to your website, so optimizing your account is essential.

If you’re not sure where to link, try marketing or product pages in your Instagram account related to specific keywords, hashtags, or campaigns. Linking to your home page is fine – but why not provide users with a cohesive experience when transitioning from your biography to the web? This led to the popularity of IG link landing pages, which host relevant links to multiple recent pieces of content mentioned in the brand source, and “link in bio” posts that help direct viewers to these links.

Additionally, keep your username as search-friendly as possible, which usually means staying close to your actual brand. If your business name is longer, shorten it to something your audience would recognize. Don’t add numbers or special characters to your username and, if possible, keep it consistent with other social media handles you already have.

2. Maintain a Consistent Content Calendar

The worst thing you can do when trying to gain followers on Instagram is to post content at random times. If you’re lucky enough to have users initially follow you, you don’t want to make them forget they followed you.

To counter this, stick to a regular posting schedule. Brands typically shouldn’t post more than a few times a day to avoid spam, but whatever your cadence, keep it consistent. Approximately 200 million Instagram users log in daily, so if you want to expand your network further, try posting several times throughout the day.

In fact, our own research on the best times to post on Instagram determines the best posting times for multiple industries, or you can follow our survey of the best times across all topic areas below:

Sticking to a schedule will help you create a consistent experience for your followers and keep them aware of your brand. But if you’re concerned about remembering to post at these various times of day, we’ve got you covered with Sprout’s scheduling and optimal times features – read on for more details.

3. Schedule Your Instagram Posts in Advance

Although the Instagram algorithm has changed to show users more content they like, posting at the right time can still make your posts more visible by increasing the overall engagement they receive.

Your brand can do a lot for visibility, and now at Sprout Social one of them is also scheduling Instagram content. With our latest tools, we can help your brand plan content with an easy process.

If you plan your content in advance, your entire team will see campaigns and plans more efficiently. Creating content ahead of time is always smart, and with our Instagram planning tools, you can reach your audience while maintaining a consistent flow of content.

You can also use Sprout’s proprietary ViralPost feature and let us work for you. ViralPost analyzes your account’s engagement history and determines the optimal time to algorithmically publish posts. Perfect your Instagram content plan with Sprout Social

In addition to planning the complete picture of your Instagram content calendar, Sprout offers even more features to enhance your brand’s source.

Share IG-approved visuals with your team using our Asset Library or try our grid preview feature to ensure every aspect of your presence matches your brand style.

4. Get brand partners and advocates to publish your content

When learning how to gain more Instagram followers, it’s important to know the value of your audience. The larger your follower count (organically), the more interested buyers and customers you’ll have.

The best way to get customers to follow you is to get in front of them and be present. It’s essential to be present on your own Instagram as well as others. Try sponsoring user-generated content to get your brand into customer feeds. You can also host Instagram contests to get your brand in front of a wider audience. These types of campaigns create social proof by showing that your fans are invested enough to reshare your content or create their own UGC

Another way is to get your hand in front of a much larger audience. Try working with larger Instagram accounts in your industry, such as major influencers in your space, and share your content with their audience.

Just make sure you’re providing something of value. The last thing you want to do is be too salesy. Find marketing partnerships and co-marketing plans with other businesses to build your Instagram audience.

5. Promote your Instagram everywhere

How will people find your account if you don’t promote your Instagram? Check that your Instagram account is listed on your website and other social networks.

One of the best ways to get discovery is to create visibility and awareness. If you really want to gain more Instagram followers, let people know where to find you. You can add social media buttons to your website and blog to help promote social sharing across all your networks and also show people where to find you on Instagram

Another great idea is to promote across your social media accounts. The Museum of Modern Art regularly spreads awareness of its Instagram through Twitter. You can easily use your other social networks to redirect users to your Instagram.

Just make sure you’re not just asking for follows. Instead, you should try to promote unique content on your Instagram so users have a reason to follow you there. Fortunately, with Instagram adding lots of new content and video features like Stories, IGTV, and Reels, you have a great opportunity to build followers through creative content.

6. Post what followers want to see

While easier said than done, it’s smart to figure out what content your followers want to see. On Instagram, you’ll quickly discover that some content performs better than others. That’s why testing is so important.

Whether it’s filters, captions, types of content, or posting times, the smallest details can make a difference. Keep an ear to the ground with new Instagram trends so you know you’re posting popular content.

To take your analysis a step further, your brand should invest in Instagram analytics tools. This will make it easier to track, compare, and analyze Instagram content across accounts.

Try different filters, captions, and more and test your content strategy to find what works best with your audience. If you’re not sure where to start, try analyzing your competitors.

You shouldn’t directly copy your competitors, but it’s smart to take notes on what they do or publish posts that support engagement. A little competitive research can go a long way. Using our Instagram competitors overview, you can find out what works for other brands in your industry.

7. Start a conversation

One of the best ways to inform users about your Instagram is conversation. According to Sprout’s 2020 social index, consumers want to engage with visual content such as photos (68%) and video (50%), followed by 30% who want to engage with text posts. Instagram fits this audience profile perfectly because it combines engaging visuals with captions that can be equally engaging when you perfect your Instagram copywriting skills.

People continue to use social media as their contact references for brands, whether it’s casual queries and chat, serious customer care inquiries, or praise for their favorite brands and products. And for your business, you need to be supportive and communicative on Instagram.

Try to answer as many questions or comments as possible, as it could mean the difference between gaining a new customer, follower, or improving your relationship with your audience. Our index survey also showed that 89% of consumers will purchase from a brand after following them on social media, so it’s important to ensure the attention and loyalty needed to turn a visitor to your profile into a follower.

8. Find hashtags that convert

One of the most proven ways to gain followers on Instagram is through hashtags. Hashtags have served for years as a fundamental tool for discovery and have allowed us to expand our social reach. As a marketer, you want to build your community by gaining followers, and hashtags provide exactly that.

For beginners, find hashtags that aren’t too saturated. Social Media Examiner points out this theory by explaining how the hashtag #love has over 184 million photos attached to it. Trying to highlight your Instagram content in a sea of millions of images and videos isn’t an easy thing to do.

You need to find hashtags that people in your target audience are more likely to check. If there’s a relevant connection, these users will likely follow your account. Unique brand hashtags are one way to group posts around hyperrelevant content to your brand and campaigns.

For example, M & Ms does a great job of targeting hashtags for the event they’re participating in. By using hashtags like #mmspotlight, the brand targets its audience more precisely at where the spotlight concert event is taking place, creating awareness.

Understanding how your hashtags work on Instagram is just as important as using them. And with Sprout Social’s hashtag analytics tools, you have direct access to hashtag performance and usage data to find out what works best.

Don’t go blindly into the world of hashtags, know what you’re tagging so you can build your following.

9. Delight your Instagram followers

Finally, when you delight your Instagram fans, you’ll see the benefits in audience growth. We’ve given you plenty of tips for brainstorming and planning content, so you can put them into practice in a way that’s authentic to your brand voice.

For many accounts, this means sprinkling in posts that are genuinely designed to bring smiles to followers’ faces and build relationships with customers. Remember to provide your followers with content as if they were friends in your personal life: this might include posting memes, inspirational content, or just resharing interesting photos or artwork (of course all properly attributed) that could give your followers a little mental pick-me-up during the day.

You can also find tools to support Instagram here >>