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How to Organically Grow your Instagram followers?

Last updated: March 03 2021

Written and researched by experts at Avada Learn more about our methodology

Although Instagram is one of the greatest ways to engage creatively about your brand and interact with your fans, it’s no longer just a social network.

With the advent of Instagram Advertising, Instagram TV, and Instagram Company Pages, it has become a playground for influencers, brands, and entrepreneurs to advertise themselves. Nowadays, many Internet users use Instagram not only to communicate with their peers but also to connect with their favorite products and buy online.

Studies showed that most users use Instagram to browse for a company, and 90% of them follow at least one brand on Instagram.

In this article, we’re going to see how to organically grow your Instagram followers.

Why you should care about your Instagram followers

You need to know how to grow your Instagram followers than ever before in 2021 organically. Why? Since organic reach, social currency, and the potential to push web traffic and sales rely on it.

Although expanding your follow-up may not be your social networking campaign’s primary goal, it always helps to get as many fans as possible on Instagram. There are several explanations why this matter, from reputation to vanity, but much of the time, Instagram also provides a decent chunk of organic exposure because more fans imply more reach.

So what’s the magic number? Yeah, that depends exactly what you’re attempting to do. While an influencer needs 100,000 or more fans, I would suggest that the requirement to indeed start accessing the marketing opportunities of Instagram as a forum is 10,000 followers.

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1. Swipe-ups Instagram Stories

Swipe-ups Instagram Stories
Swipe-ups Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories is a perfect way to tell the story of your brand. The idea of “story” – a.k.a. ephemeral material – has proved to create more engagement than other forms. Nice, but stories can still be an immense driver of traffic and sales.

Instagram Stories is the only portal inside Instagram that lets you share links to external websites via swipe-ups – except for the bio profile that lets you share one page.

But to gain access to the swipe-up connection functionality, you would either need to be checked (and we all know how challenging that is) or have a minimum of 10,000 followers. So it is the first reason that you should care about how to grow your Instagram organically.

2. More followers means more traffic

Instagram is also a rather organic site. There are paying media options, of course, but you can also reach out and communicate with a decent portion of your viewers without needing to pay any bucks.

As such, the more followers you have, the more likely they would be to see and interact with your posts.

A well-considered hashtag approach would also lead to improved outcomes.

3. The Social Currency is Followers

If we like it or not, the proliferation of fans is equivalent to the prestige of Instagram. That’s precisely the role that media influencers are watching. And who will dispute that? If the content is nice, people can get interested and share it. If they do, more users can visit your page and start following you, too. There is no question that the number of followers your sports account will affect any decision to support you or not.

Getting a higher number of followers is not all about the “cool factor” or the randomly set vanity measure. It really does matter to you. This is because your organic scope, your social currency, and, most significantly, your ability to generate real marketing outcomes all rely on you optimizing the number of people who follow you on Instagram.

There are several ways to expand your Instagram over time even without a budget. It continues with a solid hashtag approach, selecting the material that’s perfect for you and your community, and updating daily.

However, one of the most effective ways to ‘growth hack’ your Instagram account is to connect with the audience. This includes interacting with other users, like their content, and posting on their messages. Chances are that the accounts would note and return the favor. If they really like your stuff, they’re likely to follow your account as well.

How to organically grow your Instagram followers

Really know your audiences well

There is no longer a long-term gain from marketing your material to those who have no curiosity in you and only want a like back. In no time can they unfollow you, and you’ll be left wondering where it all went wrong. There’s no loyalty in there, either.

If you have your target group on Instagram right, you’ll get a higher interaction score, ensuring that your photos would show higher up in your fans’ feeds. It’s a win-win thing.

There are a couple of items you can do to grasp your target group on Instagram truly.

Get a rundown of the demographic profile of your follower base, including age, gender and place. Then, consider studying more in-depth statistics, such as when your fans are online (to make sure you publish at the correct time) or what phrase they use, etc.

Keep an eye on the rivals with a common target demographic – what kind of pictures do they post? Will they upload the lyrics? And if so, what do they mean, and what type of voice do they use? Reflect on your rivals’ most famous roles and then break it down to consider possible explanations why the post has performed so well with their viewers.

If you want to hear more about it, just inquire! Tell the current audience regarding their preferred Instagram posts and the accounts they’re following. Ask them in your next Instagram post or Story, and wait for some helpful insights to come in!

Kim Kardashian had it correct when she requested her fans to give her input to step up her Insta game. Then why don’t you do the same thing?

In any case, if you want to expand Instagram followers organically, you need to make sure that you perform at the right moment, according to your audience’s needs. This takes us to the next point.

Create your own profile with awesome bios

Dior's bio
Dior's bio

The element that you show focus when solving the problem of growing your Instagram followers organically should be your bio information. Your profile and bio are among the first items your future followers can see as they browse your feed. So be sure of the following:

  • Name – Try including a keyword to increase the visibility of your brand during your search.
  • Username – Stay consistent across all of your social networking platforms, so your faithful fans won’t have a hard time keeping track of your tweets.
  • Website – Signify the website of your company. This is the only link that can be clicked on your Instagram feed
  • Bio – Let’s count all those 150 characters. You don’t have to use that cap, just make sure you tell something to persuade people to join you.

Promote your Instagram account on social platforms

Don’t silo on Instagram alone. Although approaching friends of existing fans, bear in mind that there are other markets to tap into. How much do you chat to your Instagram handle on other social networking platforms? Many people have several media pages, and various sites all have particular strengths, so try providing different styles of content on Instagram than on Facebook, and direct fans on other social networks to your Instagram profile for exclusive deals or content. You may also utilize another visual-heavy site such as Pinterest to expand the scope of Instagram material that would only have a limited life cycle on the platform’s extremely active feed.

Beyond social media, there are other interactive environments that you may connect to your account. Adding popular social networking buttons to the daily update, website footer, and broad digital advertising are also excellent cross-platform promotion examples.

Offline, you can connect in-store signs and ads to your Instagram account. Short promotions like “Instagram followers get 5 percent off! “And a custom QR code might even prompt new clients to join you on-site.

The idea of cross-platform marketing is to add current consumers and brand supporters to your brand. There are better followers to win than to drive advertisements to users who may not be associated with your brand.

Optimize your Instagram profile for searching

Optimizing your search profile is a widely under-used Instagram trick to answer how to organically grow your Instagram followers—and one that you can certainly pursue in 2021!

With the latest Instagram announcement, English-speaking users in 6 countries will be able to scan for Instagram using keywords. This is a major game-changer on the app!

Previously, whenever users looked for exercises at home, the hashtag or accounts with the words “at-home workout” in their username will populate. Now, articles with captions, titles, or profiles that incorporate at-home workouts should appear in the quest, even though the keyword is not in the article.

According to the Instagram representative through The Verge, “the team considers a variety of considerations,’ like ‘the style of material, the captions when it was uploaded,’ and more important findings to the floor. It also uses machine learning to “pick the best quality content that is important to you.” Right now, only grid articles can surface.”

Find relevant hashtags

Instagram hashtag
Instagram hashtag

Hashtags is indeed a wonderful discoverability feature, but there is no need to use the maximum 30 hashtag allowance offered by Instagram. Instead of utilizing 30 separate hashtags for each article (which is pretty time-intensive anyway) and running the risk of one of those hashtags getting blacklisted, use less but better-researched hashtags that explicitly represent the content. Between 7 and 10 hashtags is certainly going to be enough. And note, the content is expected to fulfill what your hashtags pledge!

It’s also good to bear in mind that the more common the hashtags you use, the more competition you’re up against to find your stuff. Go for mid-range or niche hashtags to give yourself a greater chance of being spotted – please skip something cryptic that nobody is looking for!

Have a content strategically

The next move in the process of how to organically grow your Instagram is to arrange your articles for one week to one month—depending on how much you want to prepare. The trick is to be posted at the right moment. Hootsuite conducted an analysis on this using data from Unmetric and, after examining the top 20 Instagram accounts from 11 separate sectors, finding that the best times to post varied from one sector to another.

For example, the best period for travel and tourism is between 9 a.m. on Friday. and at 1 p.m. The perfect period for television and culture is Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12 to 3 p.m.

Engage with similar Instagram accounts

Compile a list of all rivals and big Instagram accounts inside your niche. For example, if you’re in the food and beverage business, you would want to compile a list of all the big food blogs and restaurants that talk to the same crowd as you do.

Start by getting to know these accounts to understand better what you’re supposed to publish. When you compare the labels, please ask yourself:

  • What topics does their audience have to deal with?
  • The articles do you like the most?
  • How often is it that they post?

If you want to know how to organically grow your Instagram and make money on Instagram as an influencer, this is one of the most critical facets of what you’re going to do to make your following grow. With a strong niche, you’re more likely to be motivated by the commitment that businesses want you to be selected as their influencers.

Interact with your followers

The power of Instagram authenticity to expand your following is huge — and we expect that it will increase much more in 2021.

One of the easiest approaches to attract a wider group is to build authentic community material. Shared posts on Instagram is one of the easiest places to share the word. Users may share their Instagram stories through feed articles or direct messages.

If it’s the battle to own a company or your step-by-step skincare regimen, your fans experience it as you open your audience.

If you make friends with your followers, they will feel a natural pull to share your content with their own followers’ circle.

The Instagram algorithm prefers posts that interact a ton because when your posts are posted, people’s feeds are bumped. And if a post has ample dedication, it could also end on the Explore Side. Hi new fans! Hello new followers!

The basic act of sharing will go a long way for your brand or company — so an attempt to build (authentic) shared content is worthwhile.

TIP: Slot out the period for Instagram to be involved! In addition to reacting to feedback and DMs, do not neglect to communicate with your pages and your audiences. There’s a perfect incentive for their fans to try you out!

If you really like an article, comment on it! In comparison, hundreds of prospective new followers will quickly see your comment.

Addressing such accounts often helps the Instagram algorithm to realize if you have a “relation” to them. This helps to show your account in associated and suggested account proposals.

Create engaging content

Instagram users are dedicated to posting and commenting on images and videos they think are nice. Analysis has shown that Instagram photos are 23 percent better than Facebook pictures on average.

To know how to organically grow your Instagram, the first rule is to produce entertaining material. The more entertaining your post, the more likely it is to be posted by people. Here are few tips for producing fascinating content and growing the Instagram participation rate:

  • Upload more video material since video articles have proved 38 percent better than picture posts. You may make your own video using these video promotion resources and channels if you do not wish to employ a specialist video service.
  • Build material that can be linked to the audience. The right content can rely on the audience, so you must first and foremost be transparent on who you are.
  • Write on viral issues on Email, Facebook, and YouTube on other platforms.
  • Using the right hashtags to build commitment and fans. Try Jen Herman, Instagram’s lawyer and teacher in social networking, as she describes in a new article by the Social Media Examiner, to fix it.

Create a viral Instagram challenge

The year 2020 was the year of social networking competitions and games from #FliptheSwitch to the #BathtubChallenge.

Influencers and brands have realized the power of Instagram’s viral challenges and games, particularly to raise awareness about brands and create a follow-up.

Take for example Bailey Stanworth, PLAY Digital founder. Inspired by @hunterrae, Bailey launched the BathtubChallenge and invited her followers to dress, take a bath selfie and add 3 mates.

Suddenly, her fans made friends and branded them, and the hashtag exploded to more than 2,000 tweets!

Another way to boost your follow-up? Host your own Instagram game and be imaginative!

Bailey cultivated a second intensely immersive Instagram moment through its PLAY Pong tournament – an online variant of a beer pong tournament. The weekly event organized on Instagram Live sponsored the COVID-19 relief fund.

“When I started quarantining our homes, I thought it was just a fun way to give back, but it quickly became a viral event for up to 100 000 people.”

Think converting your Instagram game into a branded sequence you indulge in every month, two weeks, or even regularly.

Use tagging and geolocation

Statistics reveal that articles with tagged areas are stronger than those with tagged sites. It also allows other people in the same environment as you—for example, at a conference—to communicate with you on social media. Moreover, if other users click at that place, they can see your message beneath that location. If your post is eye-catching, you are expected to attract a new follower, and that is how to grow your Instagram organically.

Use Instagram shoutout

Increase the likelihood of participation by tagging other users or listing their handles in the title. If this would not only inspire you to get active in your article, it also makes it easy for you to share your post in only a few taps. When you share your message, your friends can see your named profile and can quickly click on the tag and access your feed. Who knows, they might also like you enough to pursue you.

This is a really nice example of tagging users with the subtitles.

Be consistent

Let’s ensure you’ve got the fundamentals down. You can’t position all your eggs in the proverbial basket to grow an Instagram account and focus on one post to go viral. The bulk of articles would not go popular, which suggests that you need to find a smarter way to bring your posts before your target audience.

Check the posting calendar, frequency and consistency of material. What are you doing good and what changes are you doing?

instagram global engagement
Instagram global engagement (Source: Sprout social)

Wednesdays are recommended at 11 a.m. Fridays from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. As points of exit. Tuesday and Friday from 10 a.m. for the most reliable interaction. And then at 3 p.m. The better times. The greatest times. If you really don’t have details on your best moments, this period is a decent starting point. You are urged to go through your metrics and locate your brand’s optimal posting hours.

Posting on a regular basis sets your fans an anticipation for the next post. Larger brands publish many hours a day, whereas small firms will only post a few times a week. Whatever you agree to, make sure that the timetable is consistent.

Finally, continuity in the standard of material is really necessary. Instagram streams have a lot of noise these days and you ought to stick out. Instagram followers would not encourage Subpar or commodity images to grow as well as anyone that make their own fascinating material.

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Conclusion

There are several ways to organically expand your Instagram. Here we have highlighted a couple. Others are built to expand quicker whereas others – including spending in time to commit – are slower to yield performance. A mixture of the above tactics would place you in a strong position how to organically grow your Instagram.

After following these methods, review your metrics and see how your account progresses. When there are high rises on several days, see what sort of material has been shared and how people interact with it. Post-specific tactics such as tournaments can balance high peaks. Within a few months of introducing those techniques, you can see a stronger trend of development than in previous months.

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Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.