The Ultimate Guide To Gaining New Followers On Instagram
Struggling to grow your Instagram following? Or stuck stagnant at the same number for what seems like forever? Well today’s your lucky day! Here’s the ultimate guide to gaining new followers on Instagram!
It’s more important now than ever to have a decent sized following on Instagram. Whether you’re a model going to a casting call and your following will determine whether or not you’ll get a call back, or you run a business and you’re trying to grow your recognition amongst a specific target audience, the numbers will play an important roll in your success regardless of your industry.
It may seem silly or more or less like a little popularity game, but at the end of the day, we will subconsciously base the validity of an account by the number of followers they have.
The bottom line? If you have a good amount of followers, your brand or business must be legit.
Plus, with more followers comes a ton of different perks. New features on Instagram will be unlocked such as the swipe up feature in Instagram Stories. You’ll gain more exposure, be talked about more, and more traffic will reach your account.
So let’s get down to business and talk about what it takes to grow a successful Instagram following. Spoiler alert – it’s going to take some time and effort!
1. Engage with accounts who have large followings within your niche
Do yourself a favor and go and follow the biggest players within your industry. Think anyone who has a blue check or more than 200k followers. As you begin to follow more of these large accounts, the Instagram algorithm will connect you to those accounts and the people interested in them. From there, you’ll begin to notice a little boost in activity or traffic to your Instagram. Make sure to keep up with it though so that you keep the momentum going!
This is where some continuous research will be necessary, as you’ll need to stay up-to-date on which accounts are most popular within your niche.
2. Reply to all comments and relevant DM’s
It’s not spoken of much, but there does seem to be an underlying ‘points’ system when it comes to interaction on Instagram. Obviously, the peeps over at Instagram want to keep your screen time going for as long as possible, so when it’s evident you’re an active member of the app, the benefits will follow. An easy way to boost your following is to respond to all comments and DM’s in a timely manner. The idea here is that the more you respond to your active followers, the more Instagram will boost you up as an active member of the app and direct more traffic to your account.
It’s a win-win for Instagram – you’re causing more people to engage, in turn increasing their screen time and vice versa.
3. Boostly
It’s borderline impossible to keep up with all the tasks necessary to maintain a successful Instagram account. You’ll need to continuously follow, unfollow and like content in order to get new eyes on your page. Luckily, Boostly is here to save the day (and your time) by offering a service that will act as the best social media manager you’ve ever had, plus help you gain the traffic and followers your account has been missing!
To provide a little more information with regard to the process, Boostly starts by taking an in-depth look at your account to identify your ideal target audience. Next, the team over at Boostly will compile a list of target accounts whose current following is well-aligned with your ideal target audience.
From there, Boostly is able to isolate the most engaged followers of those accounts and interact with them via liking and following, to draw their attention to your page. Given that they are already following an account similar to yours, those individuals will be predisposed to be interested in your content, which creates a high probability that they will choose to follow your account.
Over time, Boostly is able to see which target accounts are yielding the highest conversion ratio for your page, and will refine the process based on that data to create an ultra-targeted strategy for your account.
To test it out, sign up for the 5-day free trial!
4. Like photos on your explore page
A great tip to boost your following on Instagram is to like and comment on photos on your explore page. Instagram is shuffling over this content to you for a reason – they are trying to figure out your interests. So help them out and engage with the accounts you find relevant to you, and as a ‘thank you’ Instagram will begin pushing more traffic to your account.
Engagement hack: For an extra boost on your latest post, make sure to begin liking and commenting on posts throughout your explore page within 30 minutes after you upload a post. This will increase engagement on your post!
5. Use Instagram Stories
Again, utilize the features on Instagram to promote your profile. In order to gain maximum exposure, make sure to use these stickers whenever applicable on your Stories! For some inspo on how to create Instagram Stories that will wow your audience, read on here.
6. Post every day
Once again, it’s all about that screen time! And Instagram wants to see you’re contributing to the app. It may seem difficult to do, but posting once a day, 7 days a week will really help keep your account growing at a steady pace.
Some useful advice would be to plan your content out for the month so that you don’t have to worry about what to post every day. Simply take a day to sit down and organize your content and captions. Use apps such as Plann or Later to piece together your content and auto-post so you don’t have to worry about manually posting regularly and you can go on with your day to day life.
7. Use Hashtags
Increase your visibility on each post by using hashtags that are relevant to your account. This opens the door for new viewers to stumble upon your account, and is a great way to really get super targeted followers!
For example, if you own a smoothie shop and use the hashtag #smoothierecipe, you will be targeting people who are 100% interested in smoothie making and will probably take a liking to your account since it aligns with their interest in smoothies. Even if they don’t live in your area, perhaps they’ll bookmark your page for when they do visit your location, send it to a friend, or maybe just follow you for smoothie inspo! Regardless, you’ll be gaining super targeted exposure you wouldn’t have had otherwise, all from the simple use of a hashtag.
Need help figuring out which hashtags to use? Check out our guide to improving your Instagram Hashtag Strategy.
As mentioned previously, gaining followers on Instagram will definitely take some time and effort. However, if you are able to follow all 7 tips, your Instagram following will be steadily growing in no time!
Boostly is the #1 Instagram Growth Service to help you build an engaged audience, drive traffic and generate sales from Instagram! Get started for free today: