A huge congrats to you for making the decision to grow your Instagram account for your business. As discussed in a Forbes article, Instagram has about one billion active users a month. HopInFirst also explained that 80% of users are following at least one business. Because Instagram is a photo/video sharing app it leads to greater conversions than other social media platforms. It’s the perfect place to showcase your business/brand and reach potential clients or customers. If done right, someone can know exactly who you are by just clicking on your profile. Of course none of this matters if you struggle to gain followers and bring people to your page. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of seven tips that will help you become a master at gaining real Instagram followers.
Instagram Growth Tip #1: Optimize Your Bio
This is where you’ll tell people who you are and what you do in 150 characters or less. The best way to optimize your bio is to use some key words from your industry. Let’s say you’re a jewelry business, then a keyword you’d want to incorporate in your name would be “jewelry” for instance, “jewelry by (your business name)” or even just “colorful handmade jewelry”. This will do two things. One being when people search for jewelry in the Instagram search bar, your page has a higher chance of popping up! The second being that when a potential follower or customer clicks on your page they know exactly who you are and what you do. Next you’ll want to write your short bio. What are you going to do for someone? How does your page or business/service help them? What exactly do you provide? Lastly, you’ll want to include a call to action, and a link to wherever you want people to go.
Gaining New Followers Tip #2: Posting Regularly and Consistently
This can be difficult and time consuming so find something that works for you. If you can only post 3x a week, then that’s totally fine. Just make sure you’re sticking with it and remaining consistent and present on the app. To increase your efficiency, we recommend creating a brainstorm document of all the post ideas you have and setting a day aside to get a few of those posts done for the week. If you’re feeling stuck and need some help with content ideas, you can find a whole year of content ideas here.
Posting checklist:
- Brainstorm ideas or checkout out our list of content ideas here: it’s important that your content offers value, insight, inspires, teaches, or entertains your followers. This will help your posts get more saves, shares, and engagement.
- Set aside time to create the content and get photos/videos.
- Make sure your content aligns with your business and page purpose.
Getting Instagram Followers Tip #3: Finding Similar Accounts
Finding similar accounts is going to be immensely helpful in building your following. This is a great way to build your account and reach your first 1,000 followers. But how do you do that? Let’s say you’re a jewelry maker and you’re just starting an Instagram account to promote your jewelry business. The best way to find similar is to search in the IG search bar for jewelry keywords. For example “jewelry business” “handmade jewelry” or other keywords that align with your brand/business. Take time to sift through the different posts and accounts that come up and see which ones are most related to yours.
If there’s a business that provides the same product or service as you, engage with them and become friends! Instead of looking at them as your competitor, view them as a friend or even a mentor. If they’ve already grown their account you now have the opportunity to learn SO much from them. Not only can you learn a lot but their page is now a whole entire resource for you. It’s like a blueprint. Look at what’s working for them and try to do the same thing but apply it to your page and your business. Look at the people that frequently engage with their posts and engage with those people too. Those people are either similar business owners OR they are potential customers! Aim to create genuine relationships with similar accounts and potential customers.
Growing your Instagram Account Tip #4: Engaging
Setting aside some time each day to engage will do wonders for attaining new followers. What specifically do we mean when we say “engage”? First things first; respond back to any comments or DMs you might have on your page. Go through your home feed and leave genuine comments on the posts that you see. Go through stories and reply to them with meaningful replies. Go through the hashtags that are related to your niche and comment on the top 9 post of some of those hashtags. You’ll also find new accounts that you adore while doing this. If you find an account that really resonates with you, give them a follow and leave some meaningful comments on their posts and send them a DM letting them know how much you love their page/stuff. Focusing on creating actual friendships with people is a great way to grow your Instagram following. Try this for 20-30 mins a day and see how it goes!
Increase Your Instagram Followers Tip #5: Using All The Instagram Features
Instagram loves when users use all the features they provide. Reels are a great way to get Instagram followers fast. Consistently creating and posting reels related to your niche and page is a great way to increase your follower count. We’d recommend finding some trending sounds and applying them to your niche. A good reel with a trending sound, some good and relevant hashtags is a formula for success.
There is also a new collab feature where you can do a collab post with another account. This way your post shows up to each of your followers and all the likes and comments go under one single post as well as being exposed to a whole other accounts follower base. Hence why it’s important to create genuine relationships with others on Instagram and like minded accounts.
Get More Followers on Instagram Tip #6: Boost Your Posts
If your content is good and you know exactly who you want to reach, you might want to consider boosting your posts on Instagram! All you have to do is add in your objective, the age range, interests, location, amount you want to spend per day, and how many days you’d like to run it for. This is a way for Instagram to do some heavy lifting for you. They’ll push your content out to people they think would like it, giving you way more exposure than you would organically get.
Get Real Instagram Followers Tip #7: Hire Help
If you really don’t have the time to do this, and your plate is already filled to the brim, you have the option of hiring help. We understand that growing your Instagram account can be time consuming. There’s no shame in asking for help. After all, your focus should be on your business and not which hashtag will be best suited for your posts this week. We can help you with anything from web design, branding, content creation, or community management. You can check out a full list of our services here.
Top Tips:
- Who you are and what you do.
- Post consistently.
- Experiment with reels and the new collab post feature.
- Find relative hashtags.
- Engage with other accounts in your niche for at least 20-30 minutes a day.
- Create meaningful relationships with other users.
- If you don’t have the time or find yourself struggling and overwhelmed, hire help.