Plus we’ll show you how you can use Hootsuite to grow your own following on Instagram and other platforms. What does your brand story look like? Use relevant hashtags Using hashtags relevant to your business or niche will help your posts appear to people who may not already be following you, but are searching for photos related to your brand or industry. Come up with your own hashtag that will motivate your audience to share photos related to your brand. According to Instagram itself, the Explore tab is where “you can find photos and videos that you might like from accounts you don’t yet follow. Post consistently—and at the right time There’s no magic number for how often you should be posting to Instagram, but an analysis by Tailwind noted that “by posting to Instagram daily, you’ll grow followers four times faster than posting less than once a week.” Your existing followers want to see content from you—after all, that’s why they followed you in the first place. Tagging someone encourages them to engage with the post and share it with their own following. Users can then click on that location and see all the photos posted from your store, restaurant, or office, which can help expose your brand (and Instagram account) to more people. Engage with existing communities Like all social media networks, Instagram is about the communities built within it. You want to engage with those communities—but first you have to find them.
With more than 700 million active monthly users, Instagram offers plenty of potential followers for businesses of all sizes. And those followers are worth pursuing, since Instagrammers have shown they’re ready to engage with businesses both within and outside of the app.
More than 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one business, and every month over 120 million Instagrammers engaged with a brand in meaningful ways—like visiting their website, getting directions to a business location, or getting in touch directly by phone, email, or direct message.
If you’re not actively working to get more Instagram followers, you’re missing out on a passionate fanbase that wants to connect and learn more.
There’s no magic formula for how to get Instagram followers. Sure, there are services out there that will artificially boost your follower numbers through dodgy shortcuts like buying followers or using bots—but what’s the point? Your goal is to connect with real people who are passionate about your niche, so they will engage with your content and develop an ongoing connection and loyalty to your brand. No bot can deliver that.
You need to know how to connect with the real people who make up your ideal audience and create powerful content so you can increase your Instagram followers in a meaningful way, with real business results. In this guide, we’ll go into some pretty specific detail about how to do just that—but all of these strategies essentially boil down to a few important truths:
To get more followers on Instagram, you need to be consistent, authentic, and goal-oriented. That means finding potential followers in their existing communities, sharing engaging content that motivates them to follow your account, and telling a reliable, relatable story that delights existing followers and compels new fans to join the fold.
11 ways to get more Instagram followers
Want to jump ahead? Click the section you want to focus on below.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear. Plus we’ll show you how you can use Hootsuite to grow your own following on Instagram and other platforms.
1. Create a clear Instagram strategy
Using any marketing platform without a plan leads to wasted resources and a low return on investment—and Instagram is no exception. Whether you’re starting from scratch or adjusting your current Instagram efforts, a clear strategy will define what you want to achieve so you can target and attract the right followers to align with your business goals.
Research your competitors
Analyzing what your competitors are doing on Instagram will show you:
- What a realistic following looks like for businesses in your niche, industry, or city.
- The type of content other businesses in your niche or industry post—and whether or not it’s working.
- The frequency with which your audience will expect you to post content.
- How other businesses are engaging with your ideal audience.
- Key industry hashtags—including branded hashtags you could learn from and model.
You can monitor your competitors (along with customers, industry terms, locations, hashtags, and any other Instagram content you’d like to keep tabs on) using Instagram streams in the Hootsuite dashboard.
Decide what story you’re going to tell—and tell it consistently
No matter what industry you’re in, you can develop and tell a story perfectly suited to a highly visual social network like Instagram. A compelling, consistent narrative gives your content purpose and inspires engagement with your current community, including shares of your posts that will expand your audience to new potential followers.
What does your brand story look like? Maybe you want to satisfy curiosity by showing followers how your product is made, share the perspective of an employee to humanize your brand, or position your brand in an aspirational way by showcasing the lifestyle or achievements of your customers, as Square does when highlighting entrepreneurs who use their tools.
You don’t have to limit your Instagram strategy to only one perspective, but you do need to maintain a consistent brand personality, visual look, and story. Your posts should be easily recognizable and relatable at a glance. If you can’t align all of your content elements into one cohesive narrative, you may want to consider splitting them across social networks so that you can maintain a clear story on each.
Set goals
Since your Instagram strategy will only be as effective as the goals it was designed to achieve, you need to know what you’re aiming for. We suggest setting goals for Instagram that align with your overall marketing and business strategy—whether that’s brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, or supporting the goals of a larger marketing campaign.
This will help ensure that you not only work to get more Instagram followers, but also target your efforts to find the right Instagram followers to support your business goals.
Keep in mind that no matter what your business goals are, a key Instagram goal is to create great, visually powerful content. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it can’t be stressed enough: the better your Instagram content is, the more likely you are to get more Instagram followers. Photos that are dark, low-quality, branded inconsistently, or simply not interesting provide no incentive for people to follow you.
2. Make your Instagram account more discoverable
If you want to get more Instagram followers, you need to make it easy for people to find you.
Cross-promote your Instagram account and content on other social channels
If you’ve already built a following on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or any other social network, you should make sure those fans know about your Instagram account, too. Mention your Instagram account and provide an incentive to check it out, or just highlight some of your best Instagram posts on your other channels. You may want to consider boosting these posts with paid advertising to ensure that more of your followers make it to your Instagram account.
For example, Destination Canada directed their Facebook audience to their Instagram account with four teaser photos from an Instagram influencer. The great photos and potential influencer name recognition gave their existing Facebook audience a clear reason to check out their Instagram account. They also used a custom URL, allowing them to track success by comparing the number of clicks on the link with the number of new followers they gained on Instagram.
Link to your Instagram account or branded hashtag in other communications
All of your communications tools—both online and offline—provide an opportunity to direct people to your Instagram account or branded hashtag.
Make sure you have links to your Instagram account on your website, in your email signature, and in online newsletters so that more people who are already in contact with your brand online can find you on social media.
You could also embed some of your best Instagram content in your blog posts to make sure people who first find your blog through Google or another search engine have an opportunity to connect with you on Instagram.
And don’t rule out offline communications tools like your product packaging, business cards, or signage at your bricks and mortar location or an event. Bridesmaid dress company Weddington Way made sure attendees at their launch party in New York could easily find and tag them on social media, increasing their exposure to both attendees and attendees’ followers.
Use relevant hashtags
Using hashtags relevant to your business or niche will help your posts appear to people who may not already be following you, but are searching for photos related to your brand or industry.
Before using hashtags to get more Instagram followers, make sure you know the DOs & DON’Ts of using hashtags on Instagram.
DO: Find and use what’s popular.
Use the search function within Instagram or the Trendspottr app in Hootsuite to search for popular hashtags related to your product, service, or industry. Then, set up a stream in Hootsuite to monitor content posted with that hashtag on Instagram.
DO: Create your own hashtag.
Come up with your own hashtag that will motivate your audience to share photos related to your brand. Don’t think this applies to your market niche? Consider that the feminine hygiene brand Always created a hugely effective branded hashtag campaign with #LikeAGirl—which encourages young women to use this usually derogatory expression to showcase the best of what they can do….
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