Want to know the secret to growing your Instagram following? 

The secret is… it requires hard work and some patience! Now what you wanted to hear, right?  There is no special secret tip that will grow your following overnight, but if you focus on following a few easy tips, we promise you will see success.

Read on for more tried and true tips to increase followers on Instagram. 

#1: Get Your Profile Ready 

Before you get too far ahead of yourself, you want to be sure that your profile is set up for success. Log into your account and check the following:

  • Profile picture – is it clear and descriptive of your business? 
  • Bio – Is it easy to read? Did you include hashtags, emojis, a link to your website? 
  • Settings – Make sure you have a public business account. 

#2: Start Posting Consistently

People make a very quick decision on whether or not to follow you when they get to your profile page. Now that your profile is ready – are the images ready? If people visit your page and you haven’t posted in weeks, they will assume you are not an active account. Be present, post consistently.

Remember that this is a visual app. We recommend you look back at the top nine images in the grid regularly to ensure they are conveying your messaging and accurately portraying your business.

#2: Hashtags

Hashtags are a tool available to categorize content and make it easy to find. We like to follow these guidelines for best practices: 

  • Use a mix of very specific and fairly general hashtags.
  • Rotate hashtags – even if the same 5 are working for you, Instagram might consider it “spam” if you use them in every single post. 
  • Always be testing – try out new hashtags regularly, rotating through variations of the same ones and check back to see what works and what doesn’t. 

#3: Giveaways

Who doesn’t love free stuff? This isn’t groundbreaking news, but most everyone loves a free gift. Use that to your advantage! 

We recommend partnering with an adjacent business: either a partner, someone with similar products or services, an influencer – anyone that makes sense. Make the rules very easy, for example: 

  • Like this post
  • Follow your business page and whoever you partner with 
  • Tag two friends in the comments

For best results, we recommend boosting the giveaway post to really gain some traction. We have seen very simple giveaways generate thousands of followers. 

What should you giveaway? We recommend something related to your business. 

#4. Boost Your Posts

Boosting posts is a fancy way of saying “pay Instagram to show your post to people”. This is very simple to do – right from the app! 

After you post a photo to Instagram, you will see the blue Promote button, click there to get started. Select your goal and then add a small budget. Then select your audience – we recommend an audience filled with your target market (not your existing followers!). 

The budget we recommend for each post is based on your goals, total budget, existing following and more. If you need help here, drop us a line! 

#5: Work with an Influencer

Influencers are truly good at what they do – influencing people! If you think about your own behavior on Instagram, we can bet you have swiped up on an influencer’s post and purchased something in your lifetime. Because you were influenced!

We recommend finding someone with a large following and more importantly, excellent engagement. By partnering with this influencer, they will be compensated for promoting your product or service, essentially influencing people to follow you!

Creating a strategy for working with influencers will change for every business type. Let us know if this is something you are interested in and we would be happy to help! 

Bonus Tip: Promote your page!

Promote your page in as many ways as you can. Here are some easy ideas:

  • If you have another channel with a large number of followers, you should send them to your IG page. 
  • Ask your family, friends, partners and customers to follow you. 
  • Ask your employees to follow and engage with the page from their personal accounts. 
  • Link to your page from your website and include the IG icon on your print materials. 

Now you have our top 5 tips for increasing your followers on Instagram. If you need help or want to chat more about these tips, send us a message!