Instagram is a great platform for running any kind of business. Whether you’re trying to introduce your brand to the world, get into an influencer marketing platform, or start your online career, Instagram is your best choice.
To use Instagram to its full potential, you first need to have a decent-sized following. Learning how to grow Instagram followers organically is the most important aspect of your online marketing scheme. Today we’ll take a look at how you can grow your Instagram followers, and why you should choose an organic route.
How to Organically Grow Your Instagram Followers
It’s really important to keep your growth organic. While buying followers is an option as well, it’s never a good one. We’ll look into the reason behind that further in the article. For now, let’s focus on the top 20 strategies to grow your Instagram organically.
1. Optimize Your Profile Picture
At first glance into your profile, a few things grab people’s attention. Your profile picture is one of them. Taking a look at your profile picture should establish a good idea of what your page is, and what content you post.
So if you have a page dedicated to pets, you should have a picture of a dog. If your page is about you, then a good photo of you with the vibes of your content, and if it’s a brand page then having your brand name on the profile may be the right choice.
There are billions of pages on Instagram and you get only a millisecond to grab someone’s attention. Your profile picture is the easiest way to do that.
2. Optimize Your Instagram Handle
The second thing that people take note of is your handle. If you’re wondering what is an Instagram handle, it’s just another way to talk about your username. So your username is also very significant.
In short, your handle is the shortest description of your page possible. It’s important to use this space to its full potential. Include your details such as your company name, something to point out your page content, and your name if it carries fame.
So let’s say you’re a subpage of the famous internet brand BuzzFeed, and you post food content made by the company. In this scenario, BuzzFeedTasty is a great Instagram handle for you.
3. Keep Stories on Your Profile
Stories are some of the most seen content on Instagram. Since this form of content is short-lived and easily accessible, there’s almost a guarantee that more than half of your viewers will see your stories.
There’s a lot that you can do with stories as well. For example, you can add music and loop videos to get the exact content that you want. So let’s say you’ve put time and effort into creating a story, and think it’s a great piece of content that’ll expire in 24 hours.
In a scenario such as above, make sure to highlight your stories on your page. As someone clicks on your profile, your highlights will immediately be put into view. You can use these highlights to hook people in and grow your Instagram organically.
4. Use Other Social Platforms
While organically growing your Instagram followers is easier than getting more subscribers on YouTube, it’s still not the easiest platform to grow on. On a platform such as TikTok, or even Reddit, you’ll have a much better chance of going viral with fewer followers.
So make use of these platforms as much as you can. Promote your Instagram in your TikTok bio, in your Reddit posts, in your YouTube videos, and anywhere that could bring more Instagram engagement for you.
This is especially true if you already have a following on any other platform. Link people to your Instagram and make sure you make it easy for them to find your page.
5. Make Use of Locations
While there is a global audience available on platforms like IG, you can also bank on the local people in your area. Tagging your location can help bring your page to the top of the search results for people in nearby areas.
Having a local following base is also very helpful with growing your Instagram because it puts you in a niche. While your content may not be particularly niche in this scenario, your location makes you specific enough.
6. Tag Businesses
Businesses often love free promotions. They also typically have a big following. If you’re making a post or story about a business, you should tag them regardless of their size. The business likely re-stories your content.
This can suddenly bring you the attention of thousands of people, immediately introducing you to a completely new demographic. A huge new demographic is guaranteed to give you more followers.
You can also tag your local businesses. The benefit of this is that in addition to giving you more followers, being known by your local vendors can offer you more opportunities for influencer marketing for small brands as well. Part of learning how to grow on Instagram organically is getting more brand and business deals after all.
7. Be Consistent with Your IG Presence
Every social media platform has an algorithm that helps you grow and be seen by its users. Most of these algorithms reward consistency and Instagram is no different. Make sure that whatever schedule you post on is consistent.
You can schedule your Instagram posts, make good morning and good night stories, have a specific event on a certain day of the week and so much more. Anything that keeps your content consistent is helpful.
Consistency doesn’t just buy you brownie points with the algorithm. It also helps your followers get used to your posting schedule, and expect your posts as well. Overall, consistency is one of the most important factors in getting more followers on Instagram.
8. Showcase Your Brand Aesthetics
Visuals are a huge part of Instagram. As your page is opened, a certain aesthetic is immediately presented to the viewer. Having a page that’s aesthetically related to your brand can help people recognize your business, and create a pleasing harmony.
You can do this by using your brand colors and using symbols and markings that are related to your brand identity.
9. Make Use of Reels
Short-form content is the definite winner style these days. Attention spans get shorter with each new generation and long-form videos just don’t do as well anymore. That means platforms also prioritize content that’s under a minute long.
So if you post short reels, you’re more likely to be pushed by the Instagram algorithm. Make sure to create and post reels consistently as they’re arguably the easiest way to get more Instagram followers organically.
10. Go Live
Live is also a form of content the Instagram algorithm favors. The main goal of each algorithm is to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, lives heavily contribute to that. In addition to getting favors from the platform, going live is also a great way to connect with your community.
You can talk to your audience in real-time with Instagram Live. Building a greater sense of community makes more people interested in being part of your audience. You can even try Instagram live rooms for more entertaining content.
Lives is also a great place for influencers that have a business of some sort. You can showcase your products, and answer questions immediately. Overall this form of content can help you build a more intimate community, and grow your Instagram page.
11. Analyze Your Content
Learning from your past highs and lows is important in progressing in everything, and growing your Instagram followers is no different. Taking a look at everything that has previously failed or proven successful can be incredibly helpful.
Anything from the idea behind your content, and the exact time you uploaded it is significant. So make sure to analyze your content with great care and attention. If something works for you once, there is a good chance that it’ll work again.
12. Engage With Your Audience
As already mentioned, building a community can be very helpful for your Instagram organic growth. Engaging with your audience helps you make a bigger and better community.
Like and reply to comments, story a question box, reply to DMs, anything that helps your followers feel more connected to you and your content. Posting daily polls and consistent stories of your everyday life are also helpful.
Engaging with your followers is super important, but make sure you avoid revealing too much information about yourself. It might be helpful to grow your Instagram, but it might end up jeopardizing your safety.
13. Make Use of Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to introduce yourself to new people on Instagram. One of the ways the algorithm determines what content may interest who is through hashtags. So by using the correct tags on your content, you can find a whole new audience.
But what are the right tags? You’re looking for trending hashtags, or hashtags that describe the niche you’re in. If the two categories happen to crossover then you’re absolutely in luck.
Using hashtags is completely free, but you can also make use of hashtag analyzers to get a better grasp of what tags will help you reach more people. Fedica, Native, and Engage AI are some of the best hashtag analyzers in the business.
You can use as many hashtags as you want, but the best number is between three and five for each post.
14. Establish Your Niche
Instagram is a huge platform with billions of accounts which makes it very hard to stand out. By establishing a niche, you’re separating yourself from all the other creators. While making your content more specific makes your potential audience more limited, it does mean that the potential audience will end up following you.
Another benefit to having a niche is that you’re now part of a small community. The smaller a community is, the more likely you are to grow famous within it. If there are only 250 making and following the same line of content as you, then everyone is likely to know you.
For example, an Instagram page that is relatively new and has risen to fame recently is Etymologynerd or Adam Aleksic. Adam started posting reels six months ago when he was getting less than 10K likes on his posts. As of now, Adam has 1.4 Million followers and receives around 200K likes on each reel.
His content has managed to carve out a niche that grew into a huge following. Etymologynerd is one of the very few accounts on Instagram making content about etymology, which made Adam’s journey to 1 Million followers very smooth.
15. Collaborate with Other Influencers
Another great way to get more followers on Instagram is by collaborating with other creators. This is great because it introduces you to a new audience, but still keeps you in the same demographic.
Let me explain. When you collaborate with another content creator, who has similar content to you, you’re being introduced to a similar demographic of audience as your own. The only difference is that they don’t already follow you.
Collaborations are great for growing your Instagram account organically and expanding the size of your community. Something else that makes collaborations great is that they’re often free since the exposure is equal for both sides.
16. Analyze Your Competition
Other than analyzing your own account, analyzing your competition can also prove helpful. If there is an Instagram page you like, you can take a look at their content, what time they typically post, and how they present their page.
It’s important to note that copying is not what we’re promoting. The point of analyzing your competition is not to copy them, but to simply get inspiration from their page. If you happen to copy a strategy or idea, make sure to put your own spin on it as well.
You can also join the trends with other creators. What’s great about trends is that the idea isn’t really yours, and technically you are copying others, but it’s not considered problematic at all. Since trends are basically the same idea, executed by different creators.
17. Join Engagement Groups
If you were around in the old days of YouTube, you probably remember the subscribe for subscribe idea. Engagement groups serve the same purpose. You join a group with other creators and help each other by liking, commenting, and saving each other’s content.
You can find these groups on various platforms, but most of them are on messaging app Telegram. Typically someone sends a post they’ve created and asks other members to help its engagement.
This idea performs quite well as it’s beneficial to everyone involved, and ends up free as well. You can also find these at sources like this.
18. Use a Call to Action
Captions are your best chance to communicate your needs with the majority of your audience. CTAs, or call to actions, are simple ways to push your audience towards interacting with you.
It can be asking them to sign up, follow you, or a question that compels your audience to leave a comment. Direct call to actions can be very effective for gaining new followers and growing your Instagram.
19. Make Use of Giveaways
Everyone loves free stuff. If you’re not familiar, with Instagram giveaways are when you choose a random follower to give something to. Typically you only give your gifts to people who already followed you, and have left comments on the post or replied to your story.
The more comments people leave, or the more replies they give, the more likely they are to win the giveaway. This typically compels your followers to leave at least three comments, giving you better engagement on your post.
If you manage to get sponsors, giveaways will end up free for you as well. This makes the strategy a win-win situation for everyone involved. The only problem is that giveaways can be very time-consuming.
A giveaway picker tool can make this process much easier and smoother. It can also help you avoid any cheating allegations. If you can’t decide which tool to pick, you can check out this list of the best giveaway pickers to make your work easy and breezy.
20. Use Email-Marketing
Email marketing may sound old-fashioned to you, but it still works. However, this strategy works better if you’re hoping to attract an older demographic. Email-marketing is where you send mass emails to people, in hopes of grabbing their attention.
You can include your Instagram handle, the reason you started creating content, and what your posting schedule is. Anything that you think is reason enough to follow you, and maybe some examples of your content.
Make sure to use call to actions, and have a link that offers easy access to your page as well.
There are the top 20 ways to grow Instagram followers organically, but you also have less organic means to grow your Instagram page. One of the main ones is buying followers.
How Buying Followers Work and Why You Should Avoid It
Buying Instagram followers is an easy and quick process, but it’s also a very bad idea for growing your Instagram followers. There are two different types of followers you can buy:
- One gives you accounts that are real but no longer active,
- The other offers you fake accounts that were never active to begin with.
The biggest problem with buying followers is that they don’t offer you any real engagement. You might end up with thousands of followers, but just a couple hundred likes and comments. Instagram recognizes this and at best deletes your fake followers.
You can also remove your ghost and fake followers to avoid unnecessary complications with the platform. There are a few tools to help with this but we recommend using a fake follower checker.
At worst, your account can get suspended or even permanently shut down. Buying followers is never a good idea, it goes against Instagram’s guidelines and it’s hard to hide from platform moderators.
In addition to all that, you may also get scammed. Since there are no regulations related to buying followers, there’s no guarantee you get anything in return for your money. Overall, it’s best to avoid buying Instagram followers.
FAQs
Let’s take a look at a few common questions people had about how to grow Instagram followers organically:
1. Can You Grow an Instagram Account from 0 Followers?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is more complicated. It is possible to grow your channel from the ground up, but the process won’t be easy and will definitely take a lot of time. Following the tips above will be immensely helpful to your journey.
2. Why Are My Instagram Posts Not Reaching Anyone?
If your page has a sudden drop in engagement and reach, you may be experiencing an Instagram shadowban. A shadowban is a small sort of suspension for your account where you can technically still use it, but many features won’t be available to you.
For example, you may not be able to like and comment on posts or send DMs. Most importantly, your posts and stories may not be shown to people as they used to. This could cause your engagement and reach to drop significantly.
3. Is It Easier to Grow on Instagram with a Business Account?
In short, no. According to Instagram, there is no difference in how much reach a business and a personal account gets. The biggest difference between the two is that business accounts have to be public.
So if you’re thinking of changing your account to a business account to get more followers, you’d probably get the same effect by just turning your personal account into a public one.
Conclusion
Learning how to grow Instagram followers organically is crucial to becoming a successful influencer on the platform. There are many different tips and tricks that help you on this journey, but always remember that your content plays the most important role.
Even if you do every offered solution in this 20-something list, you need to make sure you’re offering quality content. Most importantly don’t get discouraged too easily. It takes patience to grow in any business, and that includes content creation.
