The Internet is full of pseudo tips promising you to get followers on Instagram fast. There are thousands of hacks that make getting new Instagram followers seem an easy task. The reality, however, is different.
Getting people to follow your account has become more and more difficult for one simple reason – there is a ton of great content on Instagram, and it’s very hard to compete.
Moreover, there are over 2 billion active users on Instagram, which makes the competition even harder. However, it also means a ton of opportunities.
Instagram has proven to be a great platform to sell, raise brand awareness, engage with audiences and fans, as well as simply share outstanding content that inspires, entertains, educates, and captivates our attention.
As a result, Instagram requires a proper strategy for brands to drive profitable traffic to landing pages, grow conversions, and build an engaged audience.
However, if you feel that your Instagram presence isn’t up to your expectation, it may be best to review your existing strategies and conduct an Instagram Audit on your account.
It may be time to relook at your existing strategies and sharpen them to get real, engaged followers who’ll bring value to your brand.
The purpose of this article is to share tips for getting Instagram followers. The larger your audience gets, the more opportunities it’ll bring to your business; therefore, follower growth should always be one of the top priorities for any brand.
9 Tips To Get Followers on Instagram Fast
In this article, I’ll share 9 tips that will help you get genuine Instagram followers organically. I won’t touch on paid advertising options that are available as well. They may not be desirable to many as they require a financial commitment.
I won’t talk about the “hacks” either because most of them are fake and will have more damage to your account in the long run.
Reassess your current Instagram strategies
The problem in you not getting the desired results might underlie your existing Instagram strategies. It’s always a good idea to perform reviews of existing activities and see how they contribute to the results.
The Instagram Audit has helped many of my clients to understand their existing strategies and see what may be improved to optimize for better results.
As brand owners, we are often too preoccupied with the perfect delivery of our message, often forgetting or neglecting multiple other factors that may influence our performance and results.
For example, many brands neglect their audience, which negatively impacts their Instagram follower growth. Yes, you read that right – your existing audience has an impact on your prospective future growth.
In simple words – your existing audience are the first people who you should understand as they have already chosen to follow you. Do you know why they are following you? Do you know what keeps them engaged with your content?
Try looking at your most engaging posts. Do you notice any patterns of why they performed better than other posts? If so, try replicating the strategies used in your content strategy.
If your audience engages more with video content – that’s what interests them. If you notice that certain types of posts (e.g., infographics, data, informal sharing sessions, etc.) perform better – use that as a base for your content strategy.
Determine who your ideal audience is
Often, when I audit Instagram accounts, I have a hard time understanding who the target audience of my clients is. Many brands think that Instagram is a platform where they can appeal to everyone, which is a wrong attitude.
As with everything in marketing, your Instagram account should have a target audience in mind. Your visuals, captions, profile, bio, and hashtags must speak to your target audience.
I recently audited an account of a paint company that struggled to get new followers and drive traffic to their website. One of the issues was that their content (which was gorgeous) didn’t speak to the right people.
In their case, they could be creating for: homeowners, interior designers, painters, or artists – as these are the people who likely need paint. Instead, they were sharing general content about the paint that they sell. It may not be as appealing.
It’s very hard to target ”everyone” immediately; thus, I always propose to choose one or two niches and predominantly work on creating content within them first.
Once you start noticing results, you can start expanding into other niches.
Optimize your Instagram account
Once you know who you are targeting, you should look at your Instagram bio. It’s one of the most important parts leading to your Instagram growth.
Treat your brand’s Instagram bio as the “homepage” of your account or even a business card of your business. It’s one of the first things that’ll help your prospective followers decide if they want to follow you.
I always prefer using short bullet points to write my Instagram bio. In this way, the text is easily digestible and quick to read. Make sure to have a professional image, proper username, call-to-action, and at least one way to contact you.
If you prefer being contacted via direct messages (DMs), state that in your bio.
Make sure to include search terms in your bio or user name.
I recently audited an account that belongs to a home baker. Adding “Artisanal Desserts” has increased account reach as the account was ranking in the top 5 positions in the search results for “desserts.”
Having a well-written Instagram bio is one of the key steps to help you get followers on Instagram.
Always think of one keyword that best describes your business and make sure to add it to the bio – it’ll make your brand more discoverable via search. That’s how you’ll be able to get followers on Instagram, as well.
Out of all content, prioritize Reels
I cannot emphasize it enough. Reels are the latest Instagram trend, and they can help your account reach explode. Literally – I’ve worked with brands that saw 2000%+ growth in reach after introducing Reels into their strategy.
Instagram launched Reels to mimic TikTok. Given their popularity on TikTok, Instagram understands their importance, and thus its algorithms prefer Reels over other types of content.
Reels tend to perform so much better, and currently, they are the best way to get higher exposure. Exposing your content to more audiences will lead to a higher number of followers and a better engagement rate.
If you’ve posted some Reels in the past, you may have noticed that your Reels receive above the average number of likes and a much higher reach.
However, when creating Reels, make sure that your Reels fall into one of these pillars: Entertaining, Inspirational, and Educational.
Engage with other Instagram accounts
One of the most important tips to get followers on Instagram is engagement with other Instagram users.
We are expected to be social on Instagram, which means that commenting, liking, and sharing the content published by others will help you grow your own account.
The easiest way to engage is to reply to the comments under your own posts. However, this isn’t sufficient anymore. I always recommend my clients allocate at least 30 minutes a day and genuinely engage with others.
For example, if you’re a foodie blogger, you may engage with the content published by other foodies, restaurants, food critics, home cooks, etc.
A sincere comment, like, or even DM can grow your reach exponentially. Be careful, though, don’t overdo it. Instagram is very particular with spamming, and any over-engagement may actually harm you.
It’s not entirely clear what the actual limits are. However, I always follow the limits shared by The Preview App – they seem to make sense and are logical.
I recently encountered a video testimonial of an Instagram influencer. She calls it “The 5-Minute Instagram Rule,” and it is exactly what you should be doing.
She basically spends 5 minutes each day engaging with others.
On top, she even sends private voice messages to existing and prospective followers, introducing her account or thanking them for following her.
Forget the follower count; instead, concentrate on the engagement rate
I know this tip to get followers on Instagram contradicts the purpose of this whole article. BUT it’s actually true and very important.
Many of my past clients concentrated on follower count only, neglecting engagement rates. In fact, very few wanted to increase their engagement rate until I explained the importance of it and how it’d correlate to the increase in followers.
Instagram is very particular about delivering the best content to its users. It’s a no-brainer, as high-quality content makes users stay longer on the app and consume more of the content.
But how does Instagram determine what content is of high quality?
It uses an engagement rate as a primary factor.
Posts that receive a lot of likes, shares, comments, or saves are deemed to be of high quality. Therefore, it’s important to get the most engagement as quickly as possible after the publishing of your post.
For this, you should analyze the best times to post. If you manage to get high engagement within the first hour, chances are high that Instagram will push your content to a wider audience.
Therefore, I always recommend my clients prioritize engagement rate as their primary metric, only followed by follower metrics.
Have human elements in your posts
Having people in your posts and Reels can dramatically improve your performance.
Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs researchers looked at 1.1 million photos on Instagram. They found that pictures with human faces are 38% more likely to receive likes than photos with no faces. It’s old research, but the results are still valid.
Once in a while, try adding smiling faces or a host to your Reels to boost the performance. When we see humans in the content, it naturally becomes more relatable.
Creating content that we can relate to is something that will help you get followers on Instagram, as well.
Tell a story with your captions
Did you know that Instagram has been used as a place for microblogging? Pretty cool, huh? But many users still treat captions as something that’s not necessary and don’t plan ahead.
Even though Instagram is a highly visual platform, captions play an important role.
Instagram has become a platform used for microblogging. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Why should content creators use multiple platforms (social media, blog, newsletter, etc.) if they can have everything in one place?
Instagram allows you to write long captions (up to 2,200 characters in length). Make use of all that space. Share your personal experiences and stories to give more value to your audience.
Don’t underestimate the importance of captions. Whether you use your captions to share how the image or video was made, give advice, or explain your feelings or experiences, captions help add value and unique perspectives.
You should also have calls to action in your captions, which can help boost your engagement. And as we spoke already, higher engagement helps you get followers on Instagram.
Suppose you want people to like your posts – state that in your caption. If you wish them to visit your website – explain what they’ll find there and why they should visit it.
Moreover, if your captions are engaging and people spend time reading them, it signals to Instagram that your content is of high quality. Content that people spend time on is often favored by Instagram algorithms and is pushed to more eye-balls.
Do housekeeping on your followers
Like every social media platform, Instagram has tons of fake accounts that are usually bots. There’s a huge difference between an Instagram account with fake followers and genuine ones.
It might be tempting for you to accept all followers and be excited when the number of followers increases, BUT you should be careful and avoid fake followers by all means.
A good rule of thumb is to clean your followers’ list on a regular basis. You want to remove all those followers that seem fake and never engage with your content. What’s the purpose of keeping them?
Some of your followers may seem legit. However, if they aren’t active on the platform anymore, they serve no purpose. If they don’t use Instagram, they won’t see or engage with your posts.
This tip to get followers on Instagram may seem contradictory as well, as I am asking you to remove fake followers. It will, in reality, reduce the actual number of your followers.
But in reality, it’ll boost your engagement rate and help you get more genuine followers in the long run.
Remember when we spoke of engagement rate? It’s all related. Followers that never engage with your content drag your engagement rate lower. In Instagram’s eyes, it may mean poorer quality of content.
Therefore, you should remove inactive and fake followers first to increase your overall engagement rate.
A simple and less painful strategy is to assess your new followers once they start following you.
If they seem legit (have a profile picture, don’t follow thousands of accounts, have some content posted), keep them. However, if they seem fake, remove them from your followers’ list immediately.
More tips to get followers on Instagram
Developing an Instagram strategy takes time and may require help. Knowing do’s and dont’s can help you reach your goals faster and be more efficient in executing the best practices.
I’ve written extensively about ways to get followers on Instagram and create powerful strategies. Below are some of the articles that you may also find useful:
How do you get followers on Instagram?
Above are just some of the strategies I frequently highlight to my clients. However, the list is extensive. Therefore, don’t get discouraged if some of the strategies you use aren’t mentioned in this list.
As mentioned, it’s often a good idea to perform an audit on your strategies and see whether they are bringing results.
An objective opinion on your ongoing activities can give even more insights into your Instagram strategy and give new ideas on how to execute them more effectively.
Instagram will only continue to grow in popularity and importance for brands. If you haven’t implemented these strategies yet, it’s high time to do so. However, if you need a personalized approach and advice, check out my Instagram Audit today.
