Wondering how to get more Instagram followers the right way in 2018? You’ve come to the right place.
Sure, there are dodgy shortcuts you could take like buying followers or using bots—but what’s the point? Your goal is to grow a following of people that will actually care about and engage with your brand. That’s the only way your Instagram strategy will deliver real business results.
Click on any tip below to learn more, or keep scrolling for the complete list of tactics.
How to get more Instagram followers
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
1. Create a clear Instagram strategy
Using any social network without a plan leads to wasted resources and a low return on investment.
Your Instagram marketing plan must clearly define:
- Your goals on the network. This might be to increase brand awareness, boost product sales, drive traffic to your website, etc. Make sure your goals on Instagram align with your broader marketing objectives.
- Who your target audience is. How old are they? Where do they live? What do they do for work? When and how do they use Instagram? What are their pain points and challenges?
- What story you want to tell. Maybe you want to satisfy curiosity by showing followers how your product is made. Or you could use Instagram to share the perspective of an employee to humanize your brand. Another effective tactic is to position your brand in an aspirational way, showcasing the lifestyle or achievements of your customers. Square does this really well.
- Your brand aesthetic. Maintain a consistent brand personality, visual look, and story. Your posts should be easily recognizable and relatable at a glance.
Read our guide to using Instagram for business and we’ll walk you through each step of this important process.
2. Share compelling content
Great content is what gets people to talk like, comment on, and share your posts. And that’s how you get more reach and new followers.
The key to great content is knowing your target audience and what they want to see on Instagram. Everything you post on Instagram must be interesting to these people. Your goal is to inform, engage, and/or entertain them with content. Your visuals must be compelling and your captions engaging.
3. Promote your Instagram presence on other social networks
If you want to get more Instagram followers, you need to make it easy for people to find you.
This tip—and many others—speak to the importance of making your Instagram profile discoverable.
If you’ve already built a following on another social network, let those fans know about your Instagram account. Share a link to your Instagram profile and incentivize your existing social followers to check it out. You could also highlight some of your best Instagram posts on your other channels. Consider boosting these posts with paid advertising to ensure that more of your followers follow you on Instagram.
Destination Canada directed their Facebook audience to their Instagram account with four teaser photos from an Instagram influencer. Great content and potential name recognition can go along way.
The brand also used a custom URL to track success by comparing the number of clicks on the link with the number of new followers they gained on Instagram.
4. Share your Instagram account in other communications
All communication tools—both online and offline—are an opportunity to direct people to your Instagram account.
Make sure you have links to your Instagram account on your website, in your email signature, and online newsletters. This will ensure that people who are already in contact with your brand online can find you on social media.
You should also embed your Instagram content in blog posts. That way people that discover your blog via a search engine will also find out about your Instagram account.
And don’t rule out offline communications tools like product packaging, business cards, or signage at an event or store. Dress company Weddington Way made sure attendees at their launch party in New York could find and tag them on social media. This increased their exposure to both attendees and attendees’ followers.
5. Use relevant hashtags
This will make your posts discoverable to people who are searching for content related to your brand or industry.
Before using hashtags to get more followers, make sure you know the DOs & DON’Ts of using hashtags on Instagram.
DO: Find and use what’s popular.
Use the search function within Instagram to find popular hashtags related to your product, service, or industry. Then, set up a stream in Hootsuite to monitor content posted with that hashtag on Instagram.
DO: Create your own hashtag.
Come up with your own hashtag that will motivate your audience to share photos related to your brand. Don’t think this applies to your market niche? Feminine hygiene brand Always created an effective campaign with #LikeAGirl. The branded hashtag encouraged young women to use this usually derogatory expression to showcase the best of what they can do. The result was more than four billion impressions across all networks in only two months.
A post shared by Always (@always_brand) on May 23, 2017 at 5:55am PDT
DON’T: Go overboard.
Using too many hashtags can be distracting for your audience and dilute your message. It can also come off as desperate, or worse, spammy.
DON’T: Use hashtag gimmicks.
Using hashtags such as #likeforlike, #tagsforlikes, or #followme may give you a temporary boost in followers. But they will likely be spammers or people only interested in being followed back. And that won’t will help you build a meaningful, engaged community on Instagram. Instead, focus on using hashtags specific to your photo, product, or business.
For more on mastering the hashtag, here’s everything you need to know about using Instagram hashtags.
6. Aim for the Instagram Explore tab
The Instagram Explore tab is what you see when you click on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the Instagram app. According to Instagram itself, the Explore tab is where “you can find photos and videos that you might like from accounts you don’t yet follow.” You may also see curated topics the algorithm thinks the community will enjoy. The Explore tab also features Instagram Stories, right across the top of the screen.
More than 100 million people visit the Explore tab every day. That’s a huge opportunity for brands looking to grow their audience.
So, how can you get your content to appear on the Explore tab? It’s not easy. Luckily, we’ve got a whole blog post dedicated to helping you figure it out.
7. Follow other relevant users
When you follow a user on Instagram there’s a good chance they will check out your feed. If it’s full of compelling content that’s relevant to their interests, they’re likely to return the favor.
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