How to Get Your First 1000 Followers on Instagram
MOST BRANDS, BUSINESSES, AND EVEN ENTREPRENEURS STRUGGLE WITH GAINING FOLLOWERS ON THEIR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS. HAVING A NEW ACCOUNT IS ACTUALLY EXCITING, BUT YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING, “HOW CAN I GET MORE FOLLOWERS?”
Growing your followers on Instagram is a slow process and you need to arm yourself with patience.
- You definitely don’t want to collect dead profiles, inactive followers, or spammers.
- You want real people who will love your content precisely because of what it is.
Because we have already helped launch several Instagram profiles and have been through the whole process multiple times, we want to give you a little spark of hope.
Definitely don’t give up after your first month on Instagram and keep going.
DOES THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS REALLY MATTER?
Imagine you have 10 followers, and we firmly believe that just one of them is a great person who comments on your photos and simply loves your posts. That kind of person will mention you further. Maybe they’ll reshare your photo.
Now imagine you have 100 followers and 10 of them are more great people who aren’t shy about praising you and spreading the word about you. Eventually you’ll gain 1000 followers and 100 of them will be your loyal followers who can easily turn into your customers.
Stay calm — in the Czech Republic, there are just over 600,000 people on Instagram (data as of November 2015) and every day there are more and more. They’re waiting for you too. You just have to go find them.
Do you see where I’m going with this? If you stick with it and keep “feeding” your Instagram with quality content, your follower growth will move upward at a brisk pace. And you’ll enjoy it!
Before you start creating content for Instagram, you should get clear in your head about what type of content it will be.
Don’t dive in before then! It will be unnecessary work and a waste of time.
THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT WHAT STRATEGY YOU WILL CHOOSE ON INSTAGRAM
Before you pick up your phone and take the first photo of your Wednesday lunch for Instagram, stop!
Instagram for businesses doesn’t work the same as a personal one, where you can photograph everything and your friends go crazy about it. You need to define what you want to convey to people through your posts.
Users respond to profiles with a unified theme. This means that you will need to maintain a clear and consistent visual style.
Your profile must be organized and professional. No yellow, grainy photos! Those don’t belong here!
THE GOALS OF YOUR IG CHANNEL
Instagram for businesses actually serves 2 main purposes.
- It can either be your “virtual picture business card“, which helps you find a new audience and increase awareness of your brand.
- Or it can be your conversion paths (e.g. selling goods in an e-shop or selling digital products, such as an ebook).
Of course, you can use both options. Everything depends on what your business does.
WHAT WILL YOUR CONTENT BE
As a consulting agency that sits in offices all day, you will be limited to photos from the office. Even that can be approached creatively and you can produce original content.
Your colleague with the beautiful polka-dot mug certainly won’t mind if you place it on the windowsill facing the street and photograph her morning coffee in it, adding a few friendly words.
A company that offers some kind of product will have a much easier time creating content. Even so, you shouldn’t forget to occasionally spice up your content with something “non-salesy” from behind the scenes, so your fans don’t get the feeling that you’re only trying to sell at all costs, or start thinking that all the hard work is being done by robots ?
INSTAGRAM ETHICS
Some of you may be tempted by offers to buy followers, which is the biggest mistake you can make on any social network. You might feel good about having 2,000 followers, but that’s not how the game is played today (and it never was).
Anyone who has done this has never gained customers from Instagram.
Many entrepreneurs will defend themselves by saying they don’t have time to wait for followers to join organically (without paying). However, if you don’t have time to invest in genuinely building your Instagram presence, then you shouldn’t start using this social network at all.
GET YOUR PROFILE IN ORDER RIGHT FROM THE START
The most important steps:
- fill in everything you can in your profile
- use a good profile photo (professionally taken, sharp, and cheerful. Forget about a boring logo on a white background – freshen it up with a contrasting color)
- link your website
- add at least the first 9 photos to fill your feed
If you’ve already done all this, congratulations! If not, get to it.
Nobody is likely to start following you if you only have 1 photo. It also won’t look great if you have zero followers. We’re sure some of your friends are already on Instagram, so tell them about your profile and invite them to become your followers. It’ll help you get started 🙂
TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR COMPETITION
Find at least 4–6 similar Instagram accounts that operate in a similar field to yours, and carefully go through their profiles, posts, and Stories.
Watch how they do it, how often they post photos, and what topics appear in them.
Take it purely as inspiration. Don’t rush into copying the same style as your competition. You need to find your own style that will set you apart from that competition.
SHOUT IT OUT TO THE WORLD THAT YOU’RE NOW ON INSTAGRAM TOO
We’re sure you already have some social networks up and running that are working for you in some way. Over the next few weeks, you’ll need to spread the word. Let your followers on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ know that you’re on Instagram and entice them with your new visual content.
Don’t be afraid to send a newsletter letting people know that you’re on Instagram too. You’d be surprised how many of your customers use this app and would be happy to start following you. And that’s exactly what you need!
PUT EFFORT INTO CREATING ATTRACTIVE CONTENT
Instagram is a visual platform built on sharing images. Imagine someone searching for photos under a specific hashtag. There are thousands of photos with the same hashtag that you’ve also used, but why would someone click on your photo in particular? Because it’s interesting to them. This leads them to click through to your profile, and if they’re drawn in by your other photos too, they’ll start following you.
We’re not all top graphic designers and professional photographers, but today’s smartphones and photo-editing apps offer possibilities that simply make those beautiful photos happen!
Let us ask you simply: are you proud of your photos? Do you like them? Would you feel like following yourself if you came across your own profile?
SHARE POSTS EVERY DAY!
When we started with Instagram a few years ago, we thought that “consistency isn’t important”. Today, we strongly disagree!
Consistency creates momentum. If you post photos on Instagram 2x or 4x per week, the growth of your followers will be much slower and it will then be hard for you to find joy in the results that don’t come.
Given that Instagram has introduced great new features like Stories and IGTV, daily photo sharing on your profile is no longer the rule, and it’s important to carefully think through a content strategy for all three channels that Instagram currently offers.
USE HASHTAGS!
We see it often on various profiles. A photo with a caption, but no keywords. How many likes do you think it gets? (unless it’s the Czech Coca Cola profile, which has 11 thousand followers ?
Your growth depends on the smart use of keywords
In each post, you can have a maximum of 30 hashtags. Use them! Put together a set of your hashtags and from them choose the core ones + for each specific photo, add a few hashtags that define the content of the photo.
If you photograph a Clown sitting on a toilet at your company, you probably won’t add the hashtag #foodie to it, even though you manufacture chocolate bars.
Think about how people would search for you by words. Don’t use overly general hashtags. Be more specific.
INSTAGRAM SHOULD BECOME YOUR PRIORITY!
Don’t make excuses that you don’t have time for it. For some reason, you started taking an interest in Instagram. You may want to take your business further, or want to gain new customers. And social networks require time and care.
Without that, there’s no point in doing it. Success doesn’t come for free.
Maybe you spend hours thinking about how to promote yourself on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or LinkedIn and you no longer have the time and space left for Instagram.
INSTAGRAM IS ABOUT CREATIVITY AND THAT NEEDS ITS TIME
And if you can’t make that time, you will only be wasting time here. If you start focusing on Instagram, you will see it in the growth of your followers and an increase in conversions.
Getting the first 500 followers is a lengthy journey and you will feel like you’re on a roller coaster. For a while they will increase, then a few will unfollow again. That’s how it works on Instagram. But if you are patient and stick to your strategy, Instagram will become a success for your business.
Tools to support your profile can also be found here
If you want results right away, you can get Instagram followers right now.
Michal Záruba is a digital marketing specialist and a consultant in social media and SEO. For more than 8 years, Michal has been helping brands grow online through strategic content, search engine optimisation and effective communication on platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
On the blog, Michal shares practical tips on how to combine SEO, social media and brand building into one working strategy, focusing on how companies can use modern tools and algorithms so that their brand gains not only reach but also trust.
Alongside creating content, Michal lectures on digital marketing, trains teams and follows new trends in AI and search.