Looking to grow your Instagram account? After more followers and more engagement? No worries, we’ve got you covered with these 20 methods to build your Insta.
20 Proven Methods On How To Gain More Instagram Followers
- Pimp up your profile
- Tell people what to do
- Keep it reel
- Link your other platforms
- Consider a collab
- Create a hashtag
- Spread some love
- Share some stories
- Save some stories
- Keep an eye on your stats
- Stick to a style
- Post at the right time
- Be consistent
- Hack your hashtags
- Give geotagging a go
- Create engaging captions
- Share user generated content
- Make your posts super-shareable
- Make it clear what you’re about
- Keep things accessible and inclusive
Pimp Your Profile
Your insta bio is your chance to tell people who you are and why they should follow you, so you need to take full advantage of it.
Make sure your profile picture is of great quality and that it matches your picture on your other social media channels.
Then get to work on making the most of the 150 characters you can use in your bio. Use bullet points to tell people who you are, what you do, why they should care, and what you want them to do. And make sure you include a link in there to your website or to a signup page for your email newsletter.
Tell people what to do
Every time you post you need to give people a call to action.
So think about what you want them to do when they see your post. It could be:
- Like the post
- Follow your account
- Leave a comment
- Answer a question in the comments
- React with an emoji
- Share the post
- Save the post
- Visit your website
- Sign up to your newsletter
- Tag a friend who would like to see the post
Keep it reel
There’s no getting away from it – Instagram reels are here to stay. So make sure they’re a big part of your content creation plan.
When you’re making a reel think about using trending sounds but with an original twist, keeping them short and snappy, and using keywords and hashtags in your captions.
Link your other platforms
If you already have a good following on TikTok, Facebook, or Twitter then use it to promote your Instagram and drive more people to it.
Consider a collab
Collaborating with influencers and brands is a great way to attract new followers.
Look for micro-influencers to start with and suggest ways you could work together. You could ask to take over their stories for a day, so they don’t have to worry about content for 24 hours and you get to put yourself in front of their audience.
You could also collaborate on an Instagram challenge, give them some products for free in exchange for a shoutout, or pay for a sponsored post on their feed.
Create a hashtag
Come up with a hashtag for your account that you can use on your posts.
As well as using it yourself you can encourage your followers to use it on posts related to your brand. It’s an awesome way to build a community and also an easy way to start getting more content to use – once people start using your hashtag you can then reshare their content to your account. Just make sure you give credit to the original creator!
Spread some love
Well, spread some like at least! Spend time each day scrolling through posts related to your niche and liking as many as you can.
Then go one step further and leave genuine, meaningful comments on other people’s posts.
It might be time-consuming but it’s a great way to get your account out there and for new people to discover you.
Share some stories
Stories are a great way to share content that’s a bit less curated and a lot more authentic.
Don’t know what to share? Try:
- Showing little bits and pieces of your day
- Asking questions and creating polls
- Sharing your feed post to stories to push it out to more people
- Sharing other people’s content that’s relevant to your niche
- Creating a fun quiz
Instagram pushes stories out at the top of your feed and will bump yours to the front each time you add to it, so try posting a new one every few hours.
Save some stories
Stories only have a 24-hour lifespan but saving them to your highlights means they’ll always be there for new followers to find.
Create covers for your highlights that fit your brand and organise them into themes that are easy to understand.
Keep an eye on your stats
One of the quickest ways to grow your Instagram account is to figure out what’s working and then do more of it.
So look back at your posts and see which ones had the most likes and comments. Is there a particular style of post that people seem to like the most, or a call to action that works best with your followers? Yes? Then create more of those kinds of posts and use that call to action more often!
Stick to a style
Decide on a visual theme that you’ll use in all your posts that represents your brand. It could be that you always use the same filter on your photos, or that every third post will be a text post.
Whatever you do, try to stay consistent with brand colours and fonts, and the style of your photos.
Post at the right time
You don’t want to post to your account and then hear nothing but crickets. To get the engagement you need to build a following, you need to be posting at a time when your people are most likely to be on Instagram.
It’s worth having a dig around your analytics to find out when your posts get the most engagement. But as a general rule interactions on posts tend to peak between 11 am and 1 pm when people are taking a break for lunch, and between 4 pm and 6 pm when they’re getting off work.
Be consistent
If you’re serious about growing your following then consistency is absolutely key.
You don’t have to go crazy, but aiming to post a photo or a reel every day will help build up your engagement rates. And the more engagement you get, the more your posts will be shared and shown to new potential followers.
If posting every day sounds too full on, then try batching all your content for the week and scheduling it in advance.
Hack your hashtags
Did you know you can use up to 30 hashtags in your Insta posts?! But just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should! Most people find that using 7-15 hashtags gives them the highest levels of engagement on their posts.
Just make sure that any hashtags you use are relevant to your niche and scroll through them quickly before you use them to make sure they’re still being actively used by other people.
Give geotagging a go
Need another way for your posts to be found by more people? Try using the geotag feature to tag them with your location.
This way when anyone searches that geotag your post will be in the mix for them to discover. Apparently, posts that are tagged with a location can get up to 79% more engagement than posts without a geotag, so it’s well worth a try!
Create engaging captions
If you want to get good engagement on your posts then you need to kick things off with an engaging caption.
Tell a bit of a story about the photo you’re sharing, and then ask your followers if they’ve had the same experience. Or make a controversial comment and open up the comments for a bit of debate.
Always ask questions in your captions that will encourage people to answer in the comments.
The most important thing after that is to read the comments people leave and respond to them. You know, keeping up the social side of social media!
Share user-generated content
Need a quick and easy bit of content for your page? Then ask your followers to create it for you!
Get them to create videos or photos with your products or talk about how you’ve helped them with your services.
This is an awesome way to raise brand awareness and bring in new followers.
Make your posts super-shareable
The more people share your posts, the more likely you are to pick up new followers. So try creating content that people are going to want to share, like:
- Quotes
- On-trend memes
- Informative carousel posts
- Useful tips and tricks
And don’t forget to actually ask people to share the post if they like it as a simple call to action!
Make it clear what you’re about
People should be able to tell pretty quickly after landing on your profile what you’re all about. So make sure the info in your bio and the content on your page make it clear what new followers can expect from you and your account.
This doesn’t mean you have to just post about one thing, but try sticking to 3-5 content pillars that relate to what you do.
Keep things accessible and inclusive
Make sure your Insta is accessible to everyone by doing these three things:
- Put subtitles on all your video content
- Capitalise the first letter of each word in your hashtags (super helpful for people using screen-readers)
- Write out descriptive alt text in the captions of your photos
Taking the time to do these things shows that you care about all your followers and makes it easy for everyone to enjoy the awesome content you’re putting out there. So if you’re not already doing it, start now!
