Have you been wanting to take your Instagram game more seriously and grow your follower count? While, just like with any other social media app, predicting the algorithm is difficult, but there are some things you can do to increase the chances of your account reaching a larger number of people, thus potentially attracting new followers – and we’ll go through them below.
Table des matières
#1 Don’t Buy Instagram Followers
Purchasing Instagram followers in bundles might be a tempting practice, but not one you should go for, and the reason is very simple – Instagram knows.
The platform regularly deletes bots and fake accounts, which is the majority of followers you will get using these kinds of services. Moreover, if you get discovered by Instagram, you not only risk getting a temporary ban – your account can also be permanently disabled, making you lose everything you have worked hard for. Not to mention, if you buy followers for your business account, the potential customers will most likely realize most of your followers are not actual people who love your brand, which can and probably will make you lose credibility.
If you do want to grow your Instagram following, do it organically – by introducing growth strategies into how you manage your social media profile, and using a trustworthy Instagram organic growth service.
#2 Use Trending Hashtags, But Avoid Popular Ones
This might sound confusing, so let us clarify – popular hashtags tend to be used on thousands, if not millions, of posts daily, which means that chances of your post getting noticed are very low, especially when it comes to generic hashtags.
Take a look at the hashtag #travel. While it is just a simple word, it has been used in over 750 million posts, and more are being added as we speak.
However, aside from the number of people using it, there’s one more thing that will most likely prevent your post from being shown to Instagram users: the fact that most posts that appear when searching under a specific hashtag have millions of views.
Let’s stick with #travel as an example. Let’s take a look at the Reels that first appear after searching:
As you can see, they all have one thing in common: their views. There isn’t a single post, even after scrolling a few times, that has less than hundreds of thousands of views. Now, let’s take a look at a similar but more specific hashtag, such as #travelshots, which has over 900 thousand posts associated with it.
While some posts still have a lot of views, there are also a considerable number of posts that have as few as a few views.
So, as you can see, it’s safe to say that generic hashtags either should be avoided or shouldn’t be the only ones used in your post. However, you also shouldn’t do a 180 and go for hashtags that have less than 1000 posts, as not many people are probably following those or looking for them.
Ideally, you should include hashtags that have a mixture of popularity – some with between 1,000 and 10,000 posts, some with 10,000 to 100,000, and some with 100,000 to 1,000,000 posts. This approach should help you boost your Instagram engagement, which in turn should result in attracting more organic followers.
Another thing is that you should switch it up every once in a while – avoid using the same hashtags each time. Instagram’s algorithm is smart and it will most likely shadowban you for using the same tags on every post.
#3 Make Your Instagram Name More SEO-Appropriate
When people are searching for someone to follow or use services of, they will most likely never search by your name – unless you have already established yourself as an authority or a leader in your specific industry. That’s why, unless you already made a name for yourself, you need to remember to make your Instagram name SEO-friendly.
What does it mean exactly?
For example, let’s imagine that you’re a nail artist looking to expand your Instagram reach. Unless you are a well-known person that someone would be able to recognize after seeing only the name, the chances of them finding you are pretty slim. So, what should you do in this case?
Think about what users might be looking for when searching for a person or business like yours. What would they put into the Instagram search bar? Most likely, it would be something like “nail artist.” Let’s take a look at the search results after putting that specific keyword in.
As you can see, all the accounts listed, either have “nail artist” in their name or their Instagram handle. Moreover, the results consist of accounts of different sizes – some have only a few hundreds followers, while others have thousands and are verified. Making your Instagram more SEO-friendly can be a game-changer.
#4 Optimize Your Instagram Bio
Your Instagram name is just the beginning – the next thing that should be optimized is your Instagram bio. Here is where you should place information about what you do so that a potential customer knows what they can expect and whether your business meets their needs. Having a well-written and informative bio can help you grow your followers organically.
Take a look at this profile that has a perfectly optimized bio:
It’s fun but also very informative—if someone were to look for a custom notebook, they would know that they can find them from this specific business.
However, optimizing your Instagram bio is also recommended for personal profiles – it’s a chance for potential new followers to get to know you a bit, even if it’s in just a few words. Tell them about yourself – what your interests are, what they can find on your profile. Really, anything that, if you were that potential follower, would make you click that “follow” button.
Your bio is also a great place to include links to your other social media profiles so that the followers can see other sides of you, as well as other pages that might be of interest to your followers – for example, many use it to include Amazon links to products they highly recommend.
You can have up to five websites on your profile, but if you need more, there’s a way – using Linktree. Linktree is a tool that allows you to create a customized page for all of your important links.
#5 Collaborate with Other Creators
One of the easiest ways to reach new people and attract organic followers is by collaborating with other creators or small businesses—especially now that the social media platform has introduced Instagram Collab posts. Thanks to these posts, the post is shared on every collaborator’s feed, boosting reach from the start.
Here’s an example of a collaborative post between Earthrise Studio, Joyce Koech (a Kenyan activist), and others to share how she uses education to encourage girls to get more involved with climate change.
#6 Schedule Your Post for the Most Engagement
You probably have already heard this advice, but we cannot stress enough how important regular posting is—not only to attract new followers but also to keep the ones you already have interested and engaged in your content.
Ideally, you should post three to five times a week – and while it might not always be possible to do it manually, there are many tools that can help you schedule them so that they will go up without you needing to open the app. Even Instagram itself gives you the option to do so as far as 90 days in advance.
However, how often you post is not the only thing that matters – when you post is important, too. There have been many studies conducted to decide what time is the best to post – and it all comes down to this graph:
Based on data from multiple sources, the best time to post to receive the highest engagement rates is on Wednesday between 11 am and 1 pm, and on Friday, between 10 and 11 am, as the darker the color, the higher engagement rate you can expect for your Instagram post.
Sundays are generally the slowest days in terms of engagement, so if you can, we would recommend avoiding posting on that day.
#7 Think About Your Captions
There seems to be an ongoing dispute regarding how long an Instagram caption should be, with some claiming the longer, the better, while others preaching the complete opposite. So, what’s the truth? According to HubSpot’s The State of Instagram in 2023 report, both sides are right actually.
As you can see on this graph included in the report, the best engagement rate was received by posts with captions containing between 1 and 20 characters. Then, with each increase the engagement rate got lower until it picked up again with captions over 2000 characters. The posts that performed the worst were those with no caption at all.
You might also be wondering, “What about emojis?” After all, it’s not unusual to see emojis as part of the caption – well, as the same report states, including between 1 and 10 emojis can help your engagement rate.
So, should you opt for short or long captions?
Well, that depends on how much you have to share. The caption is your time to shine and show the potential followers why they might find your content engaging or helpful.
Think about what you want to share with them – do you have a story associated with the pictures or video you want to post? Do you want to educate your potential followers on a certain topic? In those cases, a longer caption will definitely be the better option. Or, maybe you’re the complete opposite and you want the post to be lighthearted? In this case, a brief caption with a few emojis might be a good solution.
Writing captions might not sound like a big deal to some, but truthfully, a well-crafted caption can make a world of difference between your post getting lost in the sea of others or being put on other people’s Explore pages.
Another thing you should consider is that unless they click “Show more,” Instagram will only show the first few lines of the caption—so make them count to keep the reader interested enough to want to read the rest of it.
#8 Conduct Competitor Research for Inspiration
Your competitors are some of the best sources of inspiration for posts that will attract more organic followers. That’s why you should compile a list of the big names within your industry whose target audience is either the same or very similar to yours.
Then, once you have that list, do a competitor analysis – What are the topics that encourage the most engagement? Are they following any trends? Which of their posts are getting the most views or likes? How often do they post? Do they use long captions or short captions? If so, what do they put in them?
Answering these questions can give you a pretty good idea of what your potential audience wants and enjoys seeing the most.
How to Grow Instagram Followers Organically - The Bottom Line
While there is no foolproof way to growing Instagram followers, there are some practices that are more likely to work than others – and we included a good chunk of those above. One thing we cannot stress enough, however, is do not buy Instagram followers.
Not only could it lead to your account being disabled forever, but it can also make you lose credibility among your followers if the bought followers are on your company account.
It’s safe to say that it’s simply not worth it.
So, how to organically grow Instagram followers, aside from the things we mentioned above? SimplyGram has an answer for you.
Our Instagram follower growth service is designed in a way to acquire only real accounts who are genuinely interested in the industry and therefore the content you’re posting – we use the Mother/Child method, which involves contacting potential followers on your behalf and directing them towards your account. We also don’t require any of your credentials, which makes our service incredibly safe.
- Make Your Instagram Bio a Follower Magnet: Tips for Real Growth - décembre 4, 2024
- Improve Your Instagram with our Hashtag Guide - décembre 4, 2024
- How to Find Your Niche on Instagram - octobre 24, 2024
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