17 ways to get more followers on Instagram (2024)
Instagram can be a highly targeted visual marketing channel for your brand and an opportunity to build a loyal audience that will grow with your business.
In fact, more than 500 million users view the Instagram app every day, making it home to some of the most engaged audiences.
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In this guide, we'll show you how to grow your Instagram follower profile and increase engagement, while growing a massive following over time - one that's full of real fans, not bots or fake followers.
How to get more followers on Instagram?
Here are a few tactics to help you get more followers on Instagram, from engaging with new features like reels, to cross-promoting content, editing your profile, and working with brand ambassadors.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to expand your reach, these 17 tips will help you increase your Instagram following and engagement on the platform.
- Incorporating reels into the content mix
- Cross-promotion of content
- Curated grid of your profile
- Work with brand ambassadors
- Get followers from your loyalty program
- Sell through your personal Instagram account
- Get to functional accounts
- Use the right hashtags
- Post at the right time
- Steal followers from your competitors
- Pay for sponsored posts and product reviews
- Use geotags to encourage discovery of local sites
- Organize your stories into main points
- Ask for more followers
- Arrange gifts
- Share user-generated content
- Use Instagram Live
Let's dive deeper into how to implement each tactic to get more followers on Instagram.
1. Include reels in your content mix
Reels are fun videos that you can share with your followers on your Instagram account. They have sound, effects and creative tools. You can share them on your feed and publicly on Instagram Explore to reach new audiences.
Reels are new territory for brands. Kristie Dash, beauty partnerships manager at Instagram, told Glossy's forum that there is no single recipe for success with Reels. However, she recommends the following tips to gain traction:
- Keep your content unique and trend-driven. Identify trends on Instagram and TikTok and add your own style to them. This will increase the chances of your reels going viral and reaching new people.
- Make the content relative and simple. Not every Reel needs to be a production. Lower quality videos can perform as well, if not better, than high production Reels.
- Educate your audience. Find a balance between education and entertainment in your Reels.
Reels should be a big priority for you now. It's prime real estate for your brand to be discovered by new followers." -Kristen Dash, Beauty Partnerships Manager, Instagram
Trilce Jirón Garro, owner of social media marketing agency TBS Marketing, agrees. "Don't sell your products through Reels content," she says. "Share the facts. Provide tips about the industry you're in. Entertain your audience."
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Trilce suggests that new and existing brands incorporate Fun Reels into their Instagram strategy. "Reels give everyone an opportunity to reach new audiences," he says. "There's no learning curve because Reels content is lo-fi. And creators can create community content that builds trust, gets followers and, over time, makes sales."
Trilce also likes the Instagram Insights Tool introduced for Reels. "Reels has become an integrated part of any marketing strategy on Instagram," she says. "The analytics tools for Reels have made it easy to track metrics and analyze data to see if your Reels are working. Now you can understand exactly what your audience likes and dislikes, when to post Reels, and what calls to action resonate with your audience."
With Reels Insights, you can see patterns and understand the different fluctuations in engagement that affect your visibility on the platform. This allows you to create higher quality content that gets even more engagement and viewership.
2. Cross-promotion of content
Cross-promotion involves posting similar content on different social media channels. It is a tactic that is used to save time and resources. It is also effective in increasing brand awareness and expanding the audience on Instagram.
Mobile users are spending more and more time with video and entertainment apps, with the biggest growth coming from video content on social media platforms. Whether it's a short video or a long tutorial, you want to improve the reach of your content on Instagram.
A great example of successful cross-posting is Justin Bieber's holiday dance challenge. During the 2020 holiday season, the Canadian singer posted the same dance challenge on both TikTok and Instagram. On TikTok, his short video received 9.8 million likes. The same content on Instagram received 4.8 million likes. While some users may overlap, others likely only use one of these services. Thus, Bieber managed to reach more people just by posting the same video on two different platforms.
Nadya Okamoto, founder of lifestyle brand August, found that TikTok naturally migrated to Instagram and YouTube. In an interview with Modern Retail, she said, "As we've grown on TikTok from August, we've also grown to 175,000 followers on Instagram". Actively publishing on multiple platforms has "impacted our overall cost of acquisition in a way that is super efficient", allowing the brand to move away from paid media as its main acquisition channel.
TikTok is not the only channel where you can cross-publish. The Instagram Reels format translates well to YouTube Shorts and Pinterest Stories. It's important to note that Instagram's algorithm will not support Reels that have a TikTok watermark. So if you're going to cross-post content from Instagram to other channels, make sure the content is of high quality and doesn't promote a competing platform through watermarks.
3. Create a profile grid
Most of your followers on Instagram won't follow you for what you've posted in the past, but for the promise of what you'll post in the future. Your audience wants to know what they'll get if they hit the follow button.
Having a channel with a consistent posting schedule and theme can have the same impact on follower growth as many of the other growth strategies we described above. Even a simple pattern can entice new followers if it's communicated at a glance to everyone who lands on your profile.
Consider your Instagram bio and your last nine posts your first impression on Instagram. Do they effectively communicate a level of consistency through personality, filters, colors, or layout? Does a clickable link send people to the same homepage each week, or are you also linking to fun and exciting content?
The grid layout is an often underrated way to get creative with your feed aesthetic while giving your publishing strategy a rhythm and consistency that's worth sticking to.
In fact, many accounts that adopt this approach are often able to spend less effort on content creation by focusing on converting visitors into followers, creating text graphics or other content with a faster turnaround, and streamlining their overall Instagram content production.
With a tool like Later, you can easily plan and schedule Instagram posts to create the look and feel of your feed. Letterfolk is just one example of how far some brands go with their Instagram layout aesthetic.
Your channel serves as a billboard for your brand. It's the customer's first contact with you and captures the essence of your brand."-Trilce Jiron, TBS Marketing
4. Working with brand ambassadors
Don't want to pay big money to well-known influencers to promote your brand? Work with brand ambassadors who have a few hundred to a few thousand followers. Ambassadors are people who actually support your brand, believe in it and tell their friends about it.
Luxury footwear retailer Sarah Flint says it has seen success with its brand ambassador programme, which has more than 500 female members. Each female ambassador has her own unique discount code, which will earn her a free pair of Sarah Flint shoes when used by five new customers.
Ambassadors like Holly Hollon attest to the quality and comfort of the brand's shoes. Her Instagram posts are authentic and close to Sarah Flint regulars. This helps the brand increase its Instagram followers and earn sales.
5. Get the following information from the loyalty program
Retailers are increasingly introducing loyalty programmes that repeatedly encourage consumers to shop with their brand rather than another. It works for brands like Sephora and Blume. One way brands are using loyalty programs is to reward those who follow them on Instagram.
When luxury retailer Rebecca Minkoff launched its RM Rewards program, it gave shoppers the opportunity to earn points for following the brand's Instagram account. Brands like Blume are also finding value in rewarding followers on Instagram. Members of the program can earn Blume Bucks for becoming a friend on Instagram versus Facebook or Twitter.
6. Selling via personal Instagram account
Another popular way to increase your Instagram following is to expand your personal account - basically, make yourself an influencer. Utilizing both a business and personal account can increase brand recognition, followers and sales. Pro tip: You can also run this tutorial on TikTok to improve your numbers.
It's a tactic that has worked for fashion brand ANINE BING. In addition to the brand's Instagram profile, the company's founder also raises engagement and awareness through her personal Instagram page, which has more than a million followers.
Anine invites her fans into her design studio, guides them through the design process and even gets feedback from them throughout the creative process. Anine also shares a bit about her personal life and lovers, giving viewers a peek behind the curtain of her favorite designer's life.
7. Get to the topic profiles that other profiles post
Instagram share accounts are pages that aggregate the best content in a particular industry. They are a kind of "best of" photography magazines for a given industry. Some feature accounts have a huge number of followers. If you get a placement on this account, it can send new Instagram followers to your profile.
There are feature accounts for every topic: travel, fashion, photography and more. For example, @discoverearth curates adventure travel content from around the world for more than 6.6 million followers.
8. Use the right hashtags
Your goal on Instagram is to regularly engage your existing audience while increasing your actual followers. Posting new, interesting and engaging photos will fulfill the first requirement, but hashtagging your photos is extremely important to start growing. Hashtagging makes it easier for people searching for specific terms to find your photos.
So what hashtags should you use? Just like on Twitter and other social networks, users on Instagram choose certain hashtags over others. If you use popular Instagram hashtags within your photos, you're much more likely to reach new users and be discovered.
At the time of writing, these were the top 20 most used hashtags on Instagram:
- love
- instagood
- fashion
- photooftheday
- Beautiful
- art
- photos
- happy
- picoftheday
- Cute
- follow
- tbt
- followme
- Nature
- like4like
- travel
- style
- repost
- Summer
If you're looking at this list and thinking, "But none of this applies to my products or brand," you're probably right.
Using hashtags is one thing, using the right hashtags is another.
Popular brands like the ones listed above are likely to get you more engagement and likes. However, they won't lead to more long-term engagement from relevant users, new followers or, most importantly, sales.
If you want to tag your photos correctly, you need to find and use the most relevant hashtags. This means doing the relevant research and making sure you use hashtags that not only describe your brand, but that are also searched for on Instagram.
To find relevant, related and popular hashtags, you can use a free online tool like IconoSquare or Webstagram to find key hashtags closely related to your brand.
For example, if you're in the men's accessories business, you can use the hashtag #MensFashion on Webstagram and pull up the following list of other key hashtags, along with their number of uses (i.e. their popularity).
You can also see other related hashtags and their popularity by searching for some of the target keywords directly in the Instagram app.
In this exercise, you'll want to try out different keywords that describe your brand and products, and gradually build a list of keyword hashtags.
Keep in mind that Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post. Plus, popular words change over time: be sure to revisit your hashtag keywords every few months to ensure you're using the best possible terms.
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You can also steal hashtag ideas from competitors or similar accounts that have the kind of following you're aiming for, but ultimately you want to create your own groups of hashtags that relate to your specific account.
Pro tip #1: For each product and product category in your store, research the most popular related hashtags on Instagram. Based on this research, compile a list of 15 to 20 popular hashtags for each product category, as well as a base of five to ten popular hashtags that represent your brand and product offerings. Finally, create a list of location-specific hashtags that relate to your brand.
For example:
Keywords tags: hashtags
mybrandname #mensfashion #mensaccessories #mensgoods #fashion #mensstyle #instafashion #menswear
Keyword hashtags for product categories
bugatchisocks #happysocks #corgisocks #socks #sockswag #socksoftheday #sockgame #sockswagg #socksofinstagram #happysockday #sockwars #funsocks #happysockday
Hashtags with location-specific keywords
Toronto #TorontoFashion #TorontoFashionBloggers
Save these groups of keyword hashtags in a convenient place, such as Evernote or Google Drive. This makes it easy to post a new Instagram image on the go that's optimized for the most relevant keywords. Some Instagram scheduling tools also allow you to save hashtag group caption templates.
If you go to the trouble of finding, organising and storing the most useful and popular hashtags in advance, you'll save yourself a lot of time, increase engagement and gain new followers.
Pro tip #2: If you've been posting on Instagram for a while and feel like you've missed all these opportunities to build your audience with keyword hashtags, don't despair. You can still come back and post a comment with new lists of keyword hashtags and watch the likes and followers roll in.
Using hashtags in Instagram stories
Tagging Instagram posts with hashtags is a given, but you should also use hashtags in your Stories to give them a chance of being seen by users who follow the hashtag.
You can use hashtag stickers (which you can find in Instagram's Stickers menu when you create a story) or simply hashtags directly in the post captions to give you a chance to appear in a story with hashtags.
Now that users can follow hashtags, your Instagram Stories have a chance of being seen by both the people who follow the hashtag and everyone who is currently looking at it.
9. Post at the right time
In addition to adding appropriate hashtags and using the best filters to get more followers on Instagram, you should also consider the timing of your posts.
A targeted approach involves analysing what has worked for you in the past and what hasn't. If you visit the optimization section of the IconoSquare website, you can get a detailed analysis of your post history versus engagement. This report will also highlight the best times of day and days of the week to post.
The dark circles indicate when you usually post media. Light grey circles indicate when your community communicates. The largest light grey circles represent the best times to post.
You can also get a lot of great information for free from Instagram's analytics for business accounts, which you can find in the Followers section.
You may want to consider using a social media scheduling tool to automatically publish posts at times when your audience is most engaged.
10. Steal your competitors from their followers
One of the best ways to find and gain new followers is to find the Instagram accounts of your closest competitors and engage with their audience. These people have already shown some interest in the products you offer, simply by following your competitors.
So how do you effectively steal followers from your competitors? By engaging with them. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and the more work you put in, the more followers and repeat engagement you'll get out of it.
There are three types of engagement on Instagram:
- User tracking
- I like the photos
- Comment on the photo
Don't be afraid to use an emoji or two to add personality to your text.
11. Payment for sponsored posts and product reviews
All of these optimized posts on your account are great, but if you want to really increase your Instagram followers, you need to leverage influencer marketing and expose your brand to a wider audience.
So how to do it? Firstly, unlike the above tactics to increase followers on Instagram, this one is usually not free. However, if done correctly, it is good value.
To get started, you need to create a list of great accounts in your industry. For example, if you sell beauty products, you'll want to find great beauty blogger accounts.
You may already follow these accounts, but if not, you'll have to find them. One of the best ways is to use Webstagram and search for some of the top keyword hashtags you've uncovered. When you search for keywords, you will see all the related keywords along with the top Instagram accounts that contain those keywords.
There are several things to look for in the results of the profiles:
- Large number of supporters (usually 20,000 to 200,000).
- E-mail address in profile
If an email address is listed in the profile, it usually means that the account is open to sponsored posts or shout-outs in a sponsored story.
You'll want to send an email and ask about their sponsored post rates. While this varies from influencer to influencer, you'll probably find that the average rate ranges from $20 to $50 per post depending on the size of your following.
If you are selling a unique and original product, you may also consider submitting your product for an influencer to review and post. Usually, the more natural and less promotional the image, the more engagement and response.
To get more followers on Instagram, you don't necessarily need influencers with huge follower counts, but rather influencers with high engagement rates (likes and comments relative to followers), which can provide you with many influencer marketplaces.
12. Using geo-tags to increase local discovery
In addition to hashtags, you can also make your posts and Instagram Stories accessible by tagging your location - either the city you're in or the place where the photo or video was taken.
Places not only have their own Instagram feed, but also their own Story and hashtags, which you can contribute to by using the place's sticker in your own Stories.
Local businesses can make the most of location brands by contributing regularly to these channels and also engaging with the contributions of potential customers who are physically located in their vicinity.
13. Organize your stories into main points
Whenever a potential follower lands on your business profile, you have a short time to convince them to follow you.
One way to do this is to use the Highlights feature on your profile to organize your Instagram Stories to communicate what your account is about.
Since Stories have a 24-hour lifespan, you can use Highlights to give them a second life and entice others to follow you so they don't miss out on more Stories in the future.
Use story highlighting to grow your Instagram followers:
- Creating teasers that tell you what your account is about.
- organising stories into themes (for example, countries you've visited for travel accounts).
- Explaining your products with pictures and videos
14. Ask for more followers
It sounds obvious, but it deserves to be said: don't be afraid to occasionally ask your target audience to follow you.
Just as YouTubers ask their viewers to watch them at the end of their videos, you can ask your viewers to watch you for more content.
Sometimes people might really like what you post on Instagram, but they need a nudge before they actually start following you.
You can do this in your Instagram captions too: work it into your content by pitching what viewers will get if they follow you, or hinting at content that's coming up that they won't want to miss.
15. Hold a competition
One of the best comments you can get on any social media post, not just Instagram, is when one user tags a friend. Not only do these comments add to the engagement of your post, which in turn makes it favorable to Instagram's algorithm, but each tag brings you a new audience member who came in based on a recommendation and who you can potentially gain as a follower.
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One way to encourage this behavior is to post relatable content that begs for one-on-one sharing (e.g., a meme from the gym that prompts you to tag a friend who skips leg day). However, a more reliable way is to run a giveaway that encourages your audience to tag a friend and follow your account.
Please follow the Instagram Promotion Guidelines and any legal requirements for running an Instagram contest that apply in your country.
For inspiration, here's an example of a successful product giveaway from Philip Kingsley that encourages people to follow its account and tag a friend for a chance to win a collection.
16. Sharing your user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content - such as videos, photos, reviews, audio recordings and more - that you create from your fans or supporters. It's an essential tool in your marketing arsenal for gaining followers on Instagram. UGC helps humanize your brand by featuring real people, with real stories that show your product in real life, and builds a more trusting relationship with potential customers.
Not only will your audience love their 15 minutes of fame on your Instagram feed, but featuring them also helps boost sales in your online store. According to research by Olapic, consumers are now 56% more likely to buy something after seeing a product photo shared by customers.
Take Fashion Nova, for example. This online retailer's Instagram account relies heavily on user-generated content.
Thanks to user-generated content, Fashion Nova has access to thousands of photos from people around the world to share with its target audience - photos that both showcase the brand's values and inspire followers to engage with its posts and buy clothes worn by real people.
When it comes to creating user-generated content for your online store, start by asking customers to share their favorite experiences and images with your products by:
- Create a branded channel with hashtags where customers can post images.
- Add a call to action to your Instagram bio
- Starting the competition
- reaching out to influencers
- Add a "request" for user-generated content to the wrapper
Remember, the goal of UGC is to show an authentic view of your products. If some customers send you lower quality photos that still highlight the best features of your products, don't be afraid to use them.
17. Using Instagram Live
Live video is the key to a successful marketing strategy on any social media platform. On Instagram, you can use Instagram Live to broadcast videos to your followers and interact with them in real time.
When your brand launches a live video stream, the ring closes your profile picture in Instagram Stories and lets followers know they can watch it. Followers also get a notification when you start a live video. Once the live stream is complete, you can upload it to your Story for 24 hours.
Remember that Instagram Live is interactive. Your followers are likely to comment during the live stream, so try to acknowledge their comments and find ways to get them to participate.
Ways to get more followers when using Instagram Live include:
- Takeover of influential persons
- Hosting an AMA (ask me anything) or Q&A
- Notification of a product launch or update
- hosting a talk show
- a glimpse behind the scenes of your business
- sharing current events
- Running product tutorials
Creating an Instagram growth strategy to gain followers
Instagram follower growth isn't always a numbers game. Just like on other social networks, the most successful content strategy is authenticity and social access.
If you focus on engagement, not just the number of followers, Instagram can be a great home for your products and brand, and can lead to a healthy revenue stream for your e-commerce store. For more tips on how to turn this social media platform into a profitable channel, check out our guide to making money on Instagram.
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