Having more Instagram followers is at the heart of enjoying a large audience base for business owners who depend on Instagram for marketing and sales. Hence, seeking better strategies to attract more Insta followers remains a much sought-after topic across the internet.
Among those who need a huge Instagram follower base and large audience are marketing agencies, individual business owners, business brands, and influencers. While some depend on gradually building their Instagram followers organically to enjoy a large audience, others prefer a combination strategy where they buy Instagram followers and apply the gradual organic means.
With Instagram standing only behind Facebook as the most used social media platform, businesses now have a huge market to leverage for brand advertising and sales. However, despite the availability of some statistics that may help businesses to understand some Instagram audience-building strategies, many people are still struggling with how to increase their followers on Instagram. This post seeks to address this concern.
Best Strategies to Get More Instagram Followers
Cross-Promote Content
Pushing out similar posts across many social media networks is known as cross-promotion. It’s a time- and resource-saving strategy. It’s also a good way to raise brand exposure and develop an Instagram audience.
One of the ways people do this is by posting a challenge post across all their social media handles. This could be in the form of a video, a puzzle, or any other creative challenge that can attract the attention of social media users. By sharing the same challenge across multiple social media platforms, one stands a higher chance of attracting a larger audience to their brands.
Curate Profile Grid
People tend to forget that Instagram followers do not follow their handle because of the posts they made in the past, but for the posts they expect to see on the account in the future. This trend suggests that people hit the follow button only after they feel they have something they will always look out for in that account.
As a result, there is a need for those who intend to boost their Instagram followers and audience base to maintain a consistent pattern in the arrangement and formatting of their posts. It’s important to have a consistent pattern to attract additional followers who are looking for similar content.
To ensure that this is properly implemented, one should ask questions such as, did the previous posts use filters, colors, or layout to portray some kind of consistency effectively? Does the clickable link always take users to the same homepage? If they did, it only makes sense that subsequent posts should follow similar formatting.
Another section people tend to overlook in curating profile grids is the layout. When people overlook their grid layout, it breeds a lack of consistency in how feeds appear. To avoid this, ensure that each post follows the same pattern as the previous ones and maintains the theme.
Work With Brand Ambassadors
People should be ready to work closely with brand ambassadors as a strategy to pull massive Insta followers to their Instagram pages. Brand ambassadors may not have the number of followers we see under the Instagram accounts of influencers. However, they sure do have a few thousands of followers. Imagine when one strikes a partnership deal with three or more ambassadors, there is a higher chance of attracting more active Instagram users to the account.
Another good thing about working with ambassadors is that while Influencers charge lots of money to help with brand advertising or account promotion, one can leverage the genuine support of ambassadors to gain more Instagram followers.
For instance, a business that sells shoes on Instagram can give out their shows with a discount to interested ambassadors who advertise the shoes for them. By taking this approach, they can get the ambassadors to make a post about their shoes or whatever product they sell on Instagram.
Once these products get advertised by brand ambassadors, their followers would want to check out the Instagram account that has that brand and follow if they are interested in the products. In addition, this strategy may attract direct sales if the seller knows how to close deals.
Market Via a Personal Instagram Account
Here is another way of building Instagram followers. People hardly consider turning themselves into influencers for their products and services. This happens because they believe that products can only be marketed through their product page. But this is not true. It’s advisable to harness both the product page and personal handles when trying to attract more followers and a large audience. Taking this approach increases brand recognition and, in turn, leads interested people to follow the accounts related to the brand.
Pay for Sponsored Posts and Product Reviews
The advantages of sponsoring a post are quite huge if properly done. A lot of accounts on Instagram with high followers do sponsored posts and products reviews. However, this does not stop them from taking the influencer marketing path. Both strategies can be combined for maximum results.
However, this strategy isn’t free but has proven to have a good return on investment if done the right way. Getting started with this strategy is pretty simple. One of the things that need to be done is to get a list of accounts with huge Instagram followers in one’s niche. One can get this list by searching with hashtags or keywords that reflect their products. When this search is done, a list of top Instagram accounts that feature that keyword will pop up.
Below are some things one should look out for in the results
There are a couple of things to look for in the profiles results:
- Check the number of followers on the account when the search results pop up. If it’s up to 20,000 and above, it’s a good account for a sponsored post.
- Check if an email address is attached to the account and try to reach them.
- Make all the necessary inquiries regarding their sponsored post and know how much that will cost. Then, if the cost sounds good enough, strike a sponsored post-deal. Businesses offering a one-of-a-kind or unique product might want to try sending it to their influencer for review and posting. The more natural the review goes, the stronger the engagement and response.
So, to gain more Instagram followers, one does not necessarily need influencers with a large following but rather ones with a high engagement rate.
- Post Consistently
Maintaining consistent posting is another good strategy that helps attract active Insta followers. A study across fourteen industries in 2021 shows that most businesses share not less than four Instagram posts per week on their pages.
The highest benefits are seen by brands that post on Instagram regularly. Marketers admit that Instagram profiles that post daily earn more followers than profiles that post less frequently.
Consistency is crucial to having one’s posts visible on one Instagram feed. For example, If one publishes their posts frequently and receives a lot of engagement, Instagram’s algorithm will likely place the posts at the top of their followers’ feeds.
Of course, quality always takes precedence over quantity. More posting frequency does not always imply increased engagement. However, businesses achieve the most result when they blend quality and consistency.
- Experiment With Different Content Types
Instagram is more than just a photo and video-sharing app. Over time, the app has added a variety of new ways to distribute information on the network. Mixing things up with different Instagram content types is one of the best strategies to obtain more Instagram followers. It allows users to reach and engage with a larger audience.
Remember that Instagram’s algorithm considers people’s interests to display the sorts of information that they engage with the most. As a result, if someone likes and comments on Instagram Reels more frequently than other posts format, they’re more likely to see more Reels in their Instagram feed. However, if someone engages with carousel posts more frequently, they’ll see more of that sort of carousel posts on their timeline.
Each form of a post on Instagram has its own set of benefits. Instagram Reels, for example, have an advantage because they’re the newest video category, and Instagram is constantly releasing new features. Since its inception in 2020, Instagram Reels has pushed the Reels button to the middle of the menu bar and made Reels look larger on the Explore page than photo posts. Given that millions of people visit the Explore page every day, that extra visual feel may significantly increase the number of individuals one can reach.
Videos on Instagram TV (IGTV) are also four times longer than photographs on the Explore page. And, because IGTV films may last up to 60 minutes, this format is great for long-form descriptive videos.
As for Instagram Stories, they are only available for 24 hours, but they do have their advantages. As part of their social media strategy, 57% of businesses say stories have been incredibly effective. One may also use Instagram Swipe Uplinks in Stories to generate traffic to certain sites if one has a verified account or at least 10,000 followers.
Carousel postings, which include up to ten photos or videos in a single post, have the best engagement rates of any post category. Consider carousels to be a teaser or mini-story for a longer-form piece of content, such as a blog. For example, in one post, one might use text, graphics, photographs, video, or a combination.
- Create Unique Content
People don’t follow business brands on social media so they can see sales pitches. Instead, they follow brands because they enjoy the brand’s personality and the content created around the brand.
Even businesses in the same industry can tell that what works for one company may not work for another.
Hence, one must consider what kind of tone they wish to portray or be known for. Is it playful, funny, informative, or Cynical? Again, what one is enthusiastic about should also be reflected in one’s personality.
Importantly, one has to decide the themes their businesses cover on Instagram. As a result, posts on their business account should reflect their company’s personality.
- Use the Pin Comments Feature
There is an important Instagram feature that is hardly talked about. This feature allows people to pin up to three comments for each post. There are many ways people can use this feature to their advantage.
One is to extend posts captions beyond the maximum 2,200 characters using pinned comments. This method allows people to adopt more descriptive and in-depth storytelling, which can interest some account users.
Another way people do this is to pin their most liked and engagement-inducing comments on the top of the comment section of their post.
Regardless of people’s approach, they can use this feature to achieve more engagement and connections on their posts, thereby attracting more audiences.
- Write Great Captions
Attracting more followers on Instagram also needs creativity. Beautiful pictures easily attract people’s attention, even if all they do is take a glance. However, if that attention must be retained, then ensure that these pictures come with enticing captions.
With a caption, one has the chance of being creative in how he describes the post or the pictures accompanying the pictures. With a caption, one can provide more details regarding the context of the post. How this is written goes a long way to determine how Instagram followers react. When a post has a good caption, Instagram users can easily be lured to click, open and view the posts.
Using captions also lets people infuse keywords that can help them appear on search results. Since Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters, there is the freedom to be as creative as possible without sounding boring. The length must not be exhausted and should be varied depending on the type of post.
- Research and Use Related Hashtags
Hashtags are crucial in building Instagram followers and reaching a large audience base. The appropriate hashtags may help one reach a wide and interested audience, and unlike other social media platforms, Instagram users don’t appear to experience hashtag fatigue.
The use of hashtags could start with searching for relevant hashtags in a particular demographic. There are free Instagram tools that help people to discover relevant hashtags for their Instagram posts. These tools can be used to make posts filled with important keywords that would facilitate the chances of the posts appearing in search results.
- Engage With the Audience
On Instagram, engagement is vital for audience growth. Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of focusing just on likes and comments, ignoring the people behind the numbers. People who understand this always try to start a discussion with their followers.
Remember that just because someone views a post on someone’s profile doesn’t guarantee they are actively following that person.
Hence, it’s very vital to kick-start a conversation with a potential follower whenever the opportunity presents itself. If potential followers leave a question, try as much as possible to answer them. This way, they feel valued and want to follow.
- Buy Instagram Followers
Buying Instagram followers has remained one of the most effective ways to gain more Instagram followers quickly. Many Instagram influencers built their Instagram following and audience by buying Instagram followers from reputable sources. This approach has helped them accumulate millions of likes, comments, and views on their profile.
These people understand that even after applying all the tips above to optimize their Instagram accounts, the result will still take some time to manifest. Since buying Instagram followers does not go against Instagram user policy, influencers, marketing agencies, and individuals spend a few bucks to land the amount of active Instagram followers they want in a shorter time frame.
Apart from buying Instagram followers, one can also buy Instagram likes, comments, and Instagram views and see the results within a couple of hours. This way, a lot of time is saved in trying to optimize one’s Instagram account for more followers and a larger audience.
- Have a Target Audience Defined
One needs to ask some vital questions in trying to attract more followers on Instagram. Some of these questions are intended to keep one focused. They are:
- How old is my target audience?
- Where is their location?
- What is their job status?
- How and when do they use Instagram?
- What are their challenges?
Answering these questions will assist one in creating the correct type of Instagram content that is relevant to the target audience most likely to follow on Instagram. It will also keep one focused on the demands of the target audience. Doing this continuously will produce content that will entice potential followers to stick with one’s accounts in the long run.
Conclusion
Instagram followers are the backbone that drives all successful marketing and sales on Instagram. Hence, this post tried to outline and explain some strategic tips that can help anyone interested in building a large Instagram following.
No point is more important than the other, as it’s the tactical combination of them that will determine the level of success one will attain in trying to win new followers on Instagram.
