How to quickly build instagram followers

17 Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram (2022)

Instagram can be a highly targetable, visual marketing channel for your brand and an opportunity to build a loyal audience that grows with your business.

In fact, over 500 million Instagram users browse the app every day, making it home to some of the most engaged audiences around.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to grow your Instagram follower profile and increase engagement, while growing a massive following over time—one that’s full of real fans, not bots or fake followers.

17 ways to get more Instagram followers

Incorporate Reels into your content mix
Cross promote content
Curate your profile grid
Work with brand ambassadors
Get follows from your loyalty program
Market through your personal Instagram account
Get on feature accounts
Use the right hashtags
Post at the right times
Steal your competitors' followers
Pay for sponsored posts and product reviews
Use geotags to boost local discovery
Organize your Stories in highlights
Ask for more followers
Run a giveaway
Share user-generated content
Use Instagram live

Let’s dive deeper into how to implement each tactic to get more Instagram followers.

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1. Incorporate Reels into your content mix

Reels are fun videos you can share with followers on your Instagram account. They have audio, effects, and creative tools. You can share them on your feed and publicly in Explore to reach new audiences.

Reels are new territory for brands. Instagram’s beauty partnerships manager, Kristie Dash, stated in a Glossy forum that Reels are still a relatively new way to publish content, and there isn’t one formula for success. But, she does suggest the following tips to gain traction:

Keep content unique and trend drive. Identify trends on Instagram and TikTok and put your own spin on it. This increases the chance your Reels will go viral and get in front of new people.

Make content relatable and simple. Not every Reel needs to be a production. Lower quality videos can perform the same, if not better, than highly produced Reels.

Educate your audience. Find the balance between education and entertainment in your Reels.

Reels should be a huge priority for you right now. It’s prime real estate for your brand to be discovered by new followers.
Kristen Dash, Beauty Partnerships Manager, Instagram

Social media marketing agency owner Trilce Jirón Garro, of TBS Marketing, agrees. “Don’t sell your products through Reels content. Share facts. Provide tips about the industry you’re in. Entertain viewers,” she says.

Trilce suggests that both new and existing brands incorporate entertaining Reels into their Instagram strategy. “Reels give anyone the opportunity to reach new target audiences. There’s no learning curve because Reels content is lo-fi. And creators can produce community-driven content that builds trust, gains followers, and makes sales over time.”

Trilce also loves the Instagram Insights Tool introduced for Reels. “Reels have become an integrated part of any Instagram marketing strategy. Analytics tools for Reels has made it easy to track metrics and analyze data to see if your Reels are working. Now, you can understand exactly what your audience likes and dislikes, when to post Reels, and what calls to action resonate with viewers.”

Using Reels Insights, you can see patterns and understand different spikes in engagement that affect your visibility on the platform. That way, you can create higher-quality content that gets even more engagement and followers.

Need help creating a Reels strategy? Read Why and How to Use Instagram Reels to Market Your Shopify Store to learn more.

2. Cross promote content

Cross-promoting involves posting similar content across various social media channels. It’s a tactic used to save time and resources. It’s also effective at increasing brand awareness and growing an audience on Instagram.

Mobile users are spending an increasing amount of time with video and entertainment apps, with video content on social media platforms accounting for the biggest increase. Whether it’s a short-form video or lengthy tutorial, you want to improve the reach of your Instagram content.

Justin Bieber’s holiday dance challenge is a great example of successful cross-posting. During the 2020 holiday season, the Canadian singer posted the same dance challenge on both TikTok and Instagram. On TikTok, his video short received 9.8 million likes. The same content on Instagram received 4.8 million likes. He was able to get in front of more people just by posting the same video on two different platforms.

Nadya Okamoto, founder of lifestyle period brand August, has found that TikTok naturally cross-pollinates to Instagram and YouTube. She says in an interview with Modern Retail, “As we’ve grown on TikTok from August, we’ve also grown to 175,000 followers on Instagram. ” Actively posting on multiple platforms has “affected our overall cost of acquisitions to be super effective,” allowing the brand to steer away from paid media as a main acquisition channel.

TikTok isn’t the only channel you can cross-post on. The Instagram Reels format translates well to YouTube Shorts and Pinterest Stories. It’s important to note that Instagram’s algorithm won’t promote Reels that have a TikTok watermark. So if you’re going to cross-post content from Instagram to other channels, ensure the content is high quality and doesn’t promote a competing platform through watermarks.

3. Curate your profile grid

Most of your followers won’t follow you for what you posted in the past but for the promise of what you’ll post in the future. Your audience wants to know what they’re going to get if they hit that Follow button.

Having a feed with a consistent theme and a consistent posting schedule can have just as much of an impact in growing a following as many of the other growth strategies we’ve covered above. Even a simple pattern can entice new followers, as long as it’s communicated at first glance to anyone who lands on your profile.

Consider your Instagram bio and your last nine posts as your first impression on Instagram. Do they effectively communicate some degree of consistency through personality, filters, colors, or layout? Does the clickable link send people to the same homepage every week? Or are you linking out to fun and exciting content too?

The layout of your grid is an often underestimated way to get creative with the aesthetic of your feed while adding a rhythm to your publishing strategy and consistency that’s worth following.

In fact, many accounts that adopt this approach are often able to spend less effort on creating content by focusing on converting visitors into followers, producing text graphics or other content with a faster turnaround, and streamlining the overall production of their Instagram content.

You can use a tool like Later to easily plan out and schedule the look and layout of your feed. Letterfolk is just one example of how far some brands go with the aesthetic of their Instagram layout.

Your feed serves as the billboard for your brand. It’s a customer’s first touchpoint with you and captures the essence of your brand.
Trilce Jiron, TBS Marketing

4. Work with brand ambassadors

Don’t want to pay the celebrity influencer big bucks to market your brand? Works with brand ambassadors who have anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand followers. Ambassadors are people who genuinely support and believe in your brand and will tell their friends about it.

Luxury shoe retailer Sarah Flint reports seeing success with its brand ambassador program, which has over 500 women. Each ambassador has their own unique discount code, which gives them a free pair of Sarah Flint shoes after five new customers use it.

Ambassadors like Holly Hollon attest to the quality and comfort of the brand’s shoes. Her posts are authentic and relatable to regular Sarah Flint shoppers. This helps the brand grow its Instagram following and earn sales.

5. Get follows from your loyalty program

Retailers are increasingly launching loyalty programs, repeatedly encouraging consumers to shop with their brand over another. It’s worked for brands like Sephora and Blume. One way brands are capitalizing on loyalty programs is by rewarding those who follow them on Instagram.

When luxury retailer Rebecca Minkoff launched its rewards program, RM Rewards, it gave shoppers the option to earn points by following the brand’s Instagram account. Brands like Blume are also finding the value in rewarding Instagram followers. Program members can earn Blume Bucks for becoming a friend on Instagram versus Facebook or Twitter.

6. Market through your personal Instagram account

Another popular way to increase your Instagram following is growing your personal account—basically, make yourself the influencer. Harnessing both the company account and your personal account can increase brand recognition, follower counts, and sales. Pro tip: You can also run this playbook on TikTok to improve your numbers.

It’s a tactic that works well for fashion label ANINE BING. In addition to the brand’s Instagram profile, the company’s founder also drives engagement and awareness through her personal Instagram page, which has over one million followers.

Anine invites followers into her design studio, takes them through the design process, and even gets feedback from followers throughout the creative process. Anine also shares a bit about her personal life and milestones, giving followers a peak behind the curtains of their favorite designer’s life.

7. Get on feature accounts

Instagram feature accounts are pages that curate the best content in a specific niche. They are like the “best of” photo journals for an industry. Some feature accounts have a massive following. If you get placement on the account, it can send new Instagram followers to your profile.

There are feature accounts for every niche: travel, fashion, photography, and more. For example, @discoverearth curates adventurous travel content from around the world for over 6.1 million followers.

8. Use the right hashtags

Your goal on Instagram is to engage your current audience on a regular basis while also growing your number of real followers. Posting new, interesting, and engaging photos will satisfy the first requirement, but to begin growing you’ll find hashtagging your photos extremely important. Hashtagging makes it easy for people searching for specific terms to find your photos.

So which hashtags should you use? Just like with Twitter and other social sites, users on Instagram choose certain hashtags over others. If you use popular Instagram hashtags within your photos, you’re much more likely to reach new users and be discovered.

At the time of this writing, these were the top 20 hashtags on Instagram:

#love
#instagood
#photooftheday
#fashion
#beautiful
#happy
#cute
#like4like
#tbt
#followme
#picoftheday
#follow
#me
#art
#selfie
#summer
#instadaily
#repost
#friends
#nature

If you looked at this list and said, “But none of those apply to my products or brand,” you’re likely correct.

Using hashtags is one thing; using the right tags is completely different.

Popular tags like the ones listed above will likely net you additional engagement and likes. However, they won’t lead to increased long-term engagement, new interested followers, or, most importantly, sales.

If you want to tag your photos properly, you’ll need to find and use the most relevant hashtags. This means doing the appropriate research to make sure you’re using hashtags that not only describe your brand but that are also being searched for on Instagram.

To find relevant hashtags, you’ll want to use a free online tool like IconoSquare or Webstagram to start.

Below, I used Webstagram to find relevant, related, and popular hashtags for my men’s accessory business by searching for key hashtags closely related to my brand.

As an example, searching the hashtag #MensFashion, I was able to pull the following list of additional keyword hashtags along with the number of times they have been used (i. e., their popularity).

You can also find more related hashtags and their popularity if you search for any of your target keywords directly in the Instagram app.

You’ll want to go through this exercise trying different keywords that describe your brand and products, building out your hashtag keyword list as you go.

Keep in mind that Instagram allows for a maximum of 30 hashtags per post. Additionally, the popular words will change over time, so make sure you revisit your hashtag keywords every few months so you're using the best possible terms.

You can also steal hashtag ideas from competitors or similar accounts that have the kind of following you aspire to, but ultimately, you want to create your own groups of hashtags that relate to your specific account.

Pro tip #1: Here’s a trick I use for my ecommerce businesses. For every product and product category in my stores, I’ve researched the most popular related Instagram hashtags. I came up with 15 to 20 popular hashtags for each category of products I sell, as well as a base of five to 10 popular tags that describe my brand and product offering. Finally, I also created a list of popular local specific hashtags that relate to my brand.

For example:

Brand keyword hashtags

#mybrandname #mensfashion #mensaccessories #mensgoods #fashion #mensstyle #instafashion #menswear

Product category keyword hashtags

#bugatchisocks #happysocks #corgisocks #socks #sockswag #socksoftheday #sockgame #sockswagg #socksofinstagram #happysockday #sockwars #funsocks #happysockday

Location-specific keyword hashtags

#Toronto #TorontoFashion #TorontoFashionBloggers

All of these groups of keyword hashtags are stored in a page on Evernote. This makes it easy and efficient when I’m on the go to post a new Instagram image optimized for the most relevant keywords.

You can easily open my Evernote and copy my standard brand-, product-, and location-specific hashtags to post with each photo. Some Instagram scheduling tools also let you save caption templates for storing your hashtag groups.

Doing the work of researching, organizing, and saving the most applicable and popular hashtags upfront will save you a ton of time down the road, increase your engagement, and help garner new followers.

Pro tip #2: If you’ve been posting to Instagram for a while and feel you’ve missed out on all these opportunities to build your audience using keyword hashtags, fret not. You can still go back and post a comment with your new hashtag keyword lists and watch the likes and followers roll in.

Using hashtags in Instagram stories

Hashtagging on Instagram posts is a given, but you should also be using hashtags in your Stories for the chance to be seen by users who follow that specific hashtag.

You can use hashtag stickers (which can be found in the Instagram Stickers menu when creating a Story) or just hashtag directly in your captions for a chance to be featured in a hashtag story.

Now that users can follow hashtags, your Stories on Instagram have a chance to be seen by both people who are following that hashtag and anyone who’s just checking it out.

9. Post at the right times

Beyond adding the appropriate hashtags and using the best filters to get more Instagram followers, you should also consider the timing of your posts.

A targeted approach involves analyzing what has and has not worked for you in the past. By visiting IconoSquare’s optimization section, you can get a detailed analysis of your posting history versus engagement. This report will also highlight the best times of the day and days of the week to post.

The dark circles indicate when you usually post media. The light gray circles show when your community has been interacting. The biggest light gray circles represent the best times for you to post.

You can also get a lot of great insight for free from Instagram analytics for business accounts, found under the Followers section.

You may want to consider using a social media scheduling tool to automatically publish your posts when your audience is the most engaged.

10. Steal your competitors’ followers

One of the best ways to find and attract a new following is by seeking out your closest competitors’ Instagram accounts and engaging with their audiences. These people have already shown some level of interest in the products you carry simply by following your competitors.

So how do you effectively steal your competitors’ followers? By engaging with them. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and the more work you put in, the more followers and repeat engagement you’ll get out of it.

The three types of engagement on Instagram are:

Follow a user
Like a photo
Comment on a photo

Don’t be afraid to use an emoji or two to add some personality to your text.

11. Pay for sponsored posts and product reviews

All this optimized posting to your account is great, but if you really want to increase Instagram followers, you need to take advantage of influencer marketing and expose your brand to a wider audience.

So, how do you do that? First, unlike the tactics to grow Instagram followers mentioned above, this one usually isn’t free. However, if done correctly, it’s of good value.

To get started, you’ll need to make a list of large accounts in your niche. For example, if you sell beauty products, you’ll want to find large accounts from beauty bloggers.

You may already be following these accounts, but if not, you’ll need to find them. One of the best ways is to use Webstagram (mentioned earlier) and search for some of the closest hashtag keywords you uncovered in the beginning of this post. When you do a search for your keywords, not only will it show you the related keywords, it will also show you the top Instagram accounts that feature those keywords.

There are a couple of things to look for in the profiles results:

A large following—usually 20,000 to 200,000
An email address in the profile

If there is an email address in the profile, it usually means the account is open to sponsored posts or a shoutout in a sponsored Story.

You’ll want to email and ask their sponsored post pricing. In general, I have found the average rate to be around $20 to $50 per post, depending on the size of the following.

However, if you’re selling a unique and original product, you may also want to consider sending your product for the influencer to review and post. Usually, the more natural and less advertisement-like the image, the greater the engagement and response.

You don’t necessarily need influencers with a massive following to get more followers on Instagram, but rather ones with a high engagement rate (likes and comments relative to follower count), which many influencer marketplaces can provide.

12. Use geotags to boost local discovery

Besides hashtags, you can also make your Instagram posts and Stories discoverable by tagging your location—either the city you’re in or the venue where the photo or video was taken.

Locations not only have their own Instagram feed but also their own Story, and hashtags that you can contribute to when you use the location sticker in your own Stories.

Local businesses can get the most value out of location tags by posting regularly to these feeds and also engaging with posts from prospective customers who are physically in the vicinity.

13. Organize your Stories into Highlights

Whenever a potential follower lands on your business profile, you have a short span of time to convince them to follow you.

One way to do this is by using the Highlights feature on your profile to organize your Instagram Stories in a way that communicates what your account is about.

Since Stories have a 24-hour lifespan, Highlights can be used to give them a second life and entice others to follow you so they don’t miss out on more Stories in the future.

Use Story Highlights to grow Instagram followers by:

Creating trailers that tease what your account is about
Organizing your Stories into themes (like countries you’ve visited, for travel accounts)
Explaining your products through pictures and videos

14. Ask for more followers

It sounds obvious, but it deserves to be said: Don’t be afraid to occasionally ask your audience to follow you.

The same way YouTubers ask their viewers to follow them at the end of their videos, you can also ask viewers to follow you for more content.

Sometimes people might really enjoy what you put out on Instagram but need a nudge before they actually follow you.

You can also do this in your Instagram captions, work it into your content by pitching what your audience will get if they follow you or by hinting at content that’s coming up that they won’t want to miss.

15. Run a giveaway

One of the best kinds of comments you can get on any social media post, not just Instagram, is when one user tags a friend. Not only do these comments contribute to your post’s engagement, which in turn makes it favorable to the Instagram algorithm, but each tag brings you a new audience member who arrived through a recommendation and who you could potentially win over as a follower.

One way to encourage this behavior is by posting relatable content that begs for 1:1 sharing (e.g., a gym meme that asks you to tag a friend who skips leg day). But a more reliable way is by running a giveaway that encourages your audience to tag a friend and follow your account.

Follow Instagram’s promotion guidelines and any legal requirements for running an Instagram contest that applies in your country of operation.

For inspiration, here’s an example of a successful product giveaway from Philip Kingsley that incentivizes people to follow its account and tag a friend for the chance to win a collection.

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16. Share user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content—such as videos, photos, reviews, audio, and more—that you curate from fans or followers. It’s an essential tool in your marketing arsenal for gaining followers on Instagram. UGC helps humanize your brand by featuring real people, with real stories, that show your product in real life and builds a more trusting relationship with potential customers.

Not only does your audience love their 15 minutes of fame on your Instagram feed, featuring them also helps drive more sales in your online store. According to research from Olapic, consumers today are 56% more likely to buy something after seeing a photo of the product shared by customers.

Take Fashion Nova, for example. The online retailer’s Instagram account relies heavily on user-generated content.

Fashion Nova’s user-generated content gives it access to thousands of pictures from people all over the world to share with its audience—pictures that both showcase the brand’s values and inspire followers to engage with its posts and buy the clothes real people are wearing.

When it comes to creating user-generated content for your online store, start by asking customers to share their favorite experiences and images with your products by:

Creating a branded hashtag feed where customers can post images
Adding a call to action in your Instagram bio
Running a contest
Reaching out to influencers
Adding an “ask” for user-generated content in your packaging

Remember, the goal of UGC is to show an authentic view of your products. If some customers send you lower-quality photos that still highlight your products’ best features, don’t be afraid to use them.

17. Use Instagram Live

Live video is the key to running a successful marketing strategy on any social media platform. With Instagram, you can use Instagram Live to stream videos to your followers and engage with them in real-time.

When your brand starts a live video stream, a ring encases your profile picture in Instagram Stories to tell followers they can check it out. Followers also receive a notification when you start a live video. Once you finish your livestream, you can upload it to your Story for 24 hours.

Remember that Instagram Live is interactive. Your followers will probably comment while you’re live, so try to acknowledge their comments and find ways to get them to participate.

Some ways to gain more followers when using Instagram Live include:

Influencer takeovers
Hosting an AMA (ask me anything) or Q&A
Teasing a product launch or update
Hosting a talk show
Going behind the scenes on your operations
Sharing a current event
Running product tutorials

Building an Instagram growth strategy to drive followers

In this post we talked about the most effective ways to use Instagram to grow your instagram following, but it's not always a numbers game. As with any social network, the most successful content strategy is to be authentic and social.

If you focus on engagement, not just number of followers, Instagram can be a great home for your products and brand and can lead to a healthy stream of revenue for your ecommerce business. For more tips on turning this social media platform into a profitable channel, check out our post on how to make money on Instagram.

Illustration by Eugenia Mello

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How to get more followers on Instagram FAQ

How do you get more followers on Instagram for free?

Find and post in popular hashtags related to your photo, product, or brand.
Create your own branded hashtag.
Use hashtags in Stories.
Create Instagram Reels.

How can I increase my followers on Instagram?

Use the right Instagram hashtags.
Steal your competitors' followers.
Use geotags on Instagram posts.
Organize Stories into Highlights.
Post user-generated content.
Collaborate with other brands.
Post at the best times.
Use Instagram analytics tools.
Publish Instagram Reels.
Livestream on Instagram Stories.

Get More Real Instagram Followers with These 10 Tips

Instagram has become a cornerstone of many brands’ social presence, driving profitable traffic to landing pages, growing conversions, and building an engaged audience.

If your Instagram presence isn’t quite as robust as you’re hoping, it might be time to learn how to sharpen up your strategies for getting real, organic followers on Instagram. The larger your audience grows, the more opportunities you have to engage with users and create unique experiences for them.

The organic distinction is important: sometimes brands take the easy way out when trying to get more Instagram followers. Pay for likes and follower sites are everywhere, but these shortcuts are never worth it, as the Instagram algorithm regularly gets updated to weed out paid, low quality accounts and interactions.

Not to mention, the number on your Instagram following ultimately means nothing if it doesn’t represent an engaged fan following that makes purchases, visits your landing pages, and advocates for your brands with friends and followers. Start building your presence up the right way with these tips on getting more Instagram followers.

10 Ways to increase Instagram followers

1. Optimize your Instagram account

Before you set out figuring out how to gain followers on Instagram, one of the most important steps is to have your account fully optimized. Think of your brand’s Instagram bio as the “homepage” to your account.

Without a bio, image captions, a proper username or profile image, how will people know the account belongs to your brand? It might seem obvious, but on Instagram your bio and image help form the foundations of your brand identity. The link in your bio is your one spot to drive Instagram traffic to your site, so optimizing your account is essential.

If you’re uncertain where to link, try marketing or product pages that relate to specific keywords, hashtags or campaigns on your Instagram account. Linking to your homepage is OK–but why not give users a cohesive experience when moving from your bio to a site? This has led to the popularity of IG link landing pages that host relevant links to the last few pieces of content mentioned on a brand’s feed, and “link in bio” posts that help direct audiences to those links.

Additionally, keep your username as search-friendly as possible, which usually means sticking close to your actual brand name. If your business name is longer, shorten it to something your audience would recognize. Don’t add numbers or special characters to your username, and if possible keep it in-line with other social media handles you already have.

The best way to optimize your account is to create and follow an Instagram marketing strategy. Download our free guide to get started.

2. Keep a consistent content calendar

The worst thing you can do when trying to get followers on Instagram is to post content at random, haphazard times. If you’re lucky enough to get users following you in the beginning, you don’t want to make them forget they followed you in the first place.

To combat this, keep to a regular posting schedule. Typically, brands shouldn’t post more than a few times a day to avoid spam, but whatever your cadence, keep it consistent. Approximately 200 million Instagram users log on daily, so to cast your net even wider, try publishing a few times throughout the entire day.

In fact, our very own research on the best times to post to Instagram pinpoints the top times to post for multiple industries, or you can follow our research of the best times across all topic areas below:

Sticking to a schedule will help you build a consistent experience for your followers and keep them in the know of your brand. But if you’re wondering how you’re going to remember to publish at these different times in the day, we’ve got you covered with Sprout’s scheduling and optimal times features–read on for more details.

3. Schedule Instagram posts in advance

While the Instagram algorithm has changed to show users more content they like, posting at the right times can still give your posts more visibility by increasing the overall engagement they receive.

There’s a lot your brand can do to raise visibility, and now with Sprout Social, scheduling Instagram content is one of them. With our newest tools, we can help your brand schedule Stories, Carousels and Feed posts through an easy process.

By scheduling content in advance, your entire team can see campaigns and schedules more efficiently. It’s always smart to build out content in advance and with our Instagram scheduling tools, you can reach your audience and maintain a consistent flow of content at the same time.

You can also use Sprout’s patented ViralPost feature and let us do the work for you. ViralPost analyzes your own account’s engagement history and identifies the optimal times for you to post algorithmically.

Perfect your Instagram content plan with Sprout Social

In addition to scheduling a complete picture of your Instagram content calendar, Sprout offers even more features to perfect your brand’s feed.

Share IG-approved visuals with your team using our Asset Library, or test out our grid preview feature to make sure every aspect of your presence is true to your brand style.

Get a hands-on look at these features and more with a 30-day free trial of Sprout.

4. Get partners and brand advocates to post your content

When you’re learning how to get more Instagram followers, it’s important to know the value of your audience. The larger your follower count grows (organically), the more buyers and interested customers you will have.

The best way to get customers to follow you is to get in front of them and be present. It’s critical to be present on your own Instagram as well as others. Try sponsoring user-generated content to get your brand in customers’ feeds. You can also hold Instagram contests to get your brand

out to a larger audience. These types of campaigns build social proof by showing your fans are invested enough to repost your content or create their own UGC.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Urban Outfitters (@urbanoutfitters)

Another way is to get your handle in front of a much larger audience. Try to work with larger Instagram accounts in your industry, like notable influencers in your space, to share your content to their audience.

Just make sure you’re providing something of value. The last thing you want to do is seem too salesy. Find marketing collaborations and co-marketing plans with other businesses to build your Instagram audience.

5. Avoid fake Instagram followers

There’s a huge difference between an Instagram account having fake and legitimate followers. It might seem tempting to simply purchase Instagram followers, but the backlash outweighs the perks of organic follower growth.

Fake Instagram followers tend to:

Deceive new followers: If users come to an inactive Instagram feed with tens of thousands of followers, it will lower the account’s credibility. Don’t trick people into following you. Build trust and long-lasting relationships for better engagement.
Have no ROI: It might seem easier to buy followers, but your acquired bot or unmanned new followers won’t be purchasing anything. People follow brands on Instagram for a reason–they like what you’re posting or your company in general. These are actual spenders and bring monetary value to your business.
Create little-to-no buzz: If you have 10,000 fake followers, how many are going to comment, like and share your content? More than likely, these bot or fake accounts will be cleaned up by Instagram, deleted and make your posts seem like engagement graveyards.

Real people have the ability to share, like, comment and engage with your Instagram posts. Additionally, these users enjoy when there’s someone on the other side responding.

For example, Lush Cosmetics takes the time to answer various product questions, which results in users coming back, following or possibly sharing with others. These interactions will always have more value than a set of inactive followers.

6. Showcase your Instagram everywhere

How are people going to find an account unless you promote your Instagram? Make sure your Instagram account is listed with your website and other social networks.

Creating visibility and awareness is one of the best ways to get discovered. If you truly want to get more Instagram followers, let people know where to find you. You could add social media buttons to your website and blog to help promote social shares across all your networks as well as show people where to find you on Instagram.

Follow #MoMAPrimeTime on Instagram today as we celebrate the last day of Summer Camp for 200 New Yorkers, ages 65+! https://t.co/RNyV7Ibr9y pic.twitter.com/64SvbUaWLL

— MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (@MuseumModernArt) June 23, 2017

Another great idea is to cross promote across your social media accounts. The Museum of Modern Art regularly spreads awareness about its Instagram through Twitter. You can easily leverage your other social networks to direct users to your Instagram.

However, make sure that you’re not just asking for a follow. Instead you should try to promote unique content on your Instagram so users have a reason to follow you there. Fortunately, with Instagram adding a ton of new content and video features like Stories, IGTV and Reels, you have a great opportunity to build followers through creative content.

7. Post content followers want

While this is easier said than done, it’s smart to learn what content your followers want to see. You’ll quickly find on Instagram that some content performs better than others. This is why testing is so important.

Whether it’s filters, captions, content types or post times, the smallest detail can make all the difference. Keep your ear to the ground with new Instagram trends so you know you’re posting popular content.

To take your analysis a step further, your brand should invest in Instagram analytics tools. This will make it easier to track, benchmark and analyze Instagram content across accounts.

Be confident in your content strategy by analyzing different filters, captions and more to see what works best with your audience. If you’re unsure where to start, try analyzing your competitors.

You shouldn’t directly copy your competitors, but it’s smart to take notes on what they’re doing or posting that drives engagement. A little competitive research can go a long way. You can use our Instagram Competitors report to get a look at what’s working for other brands in your industry.

8. Get the conversation started

One of the best ways to make users aware of your Instagram is through conversation. According to the 2020 Sprout Social Index, consumers want to engage with visual-first content like photos (68%) and video (50%), followed by 30% who want to engage with text posts. Instagram is the perfect fit for this audience profile, pairing eye-catching visuals with captions that can be just as engaging when you perfect your Instagram caption copywriting skills.

People are continuing to use social media as their contact reference for brands, whether its for off-the-cuff questions and chat, serious customer care queries, or praise for their favorite brands and products. And for your business, you need to be supportive and communicative on Instagram.

Try to respond to as many questions or comments as possible, because it could mean the difference between getting a new customer, follower or improving your relationship with your audience. Our Index research also showed 89% of consumers will buy from a brand after following on social, so it’s important to secure the attention and loyalty needed to convert a visitor to your profile into a follower.

9. Find hashtags that convert

One of the most tried-and-true ways to get followers on Instagram is through hashtags. For years hashtags have served as an essential tool for discovery and allowed us to extend our social reach. As a marketer, you want to build your community by gaining followers and hashtags provide just that.

For starters, find hashtags that are not too populated. Social Media Examiner points this theory out by explaining how the hashtag #love has more than 184 million photos connected to it. Trying to highlight your Instagram content in a sea of millions of pictures and videos is not an easy thing to do.

You have to find hashtags that people in your target audience are more likely to check. If a relevant connection is made, these users will be more likely to follow your account. Unique, branded hashtags are one way to group posts around hyper-relevant content to your brand and campaigns.

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A post shared by M&M'S (@mmschocolate)

For example, M&Ms does a great job at focusing hashtags to an event where they are participating. By using hashtags like #mmspotlight, the brand targets its audience more directly where the spotlight concert event happens and creates awareness.

Understanding how your hashtags perform on Instagram is also just as critical to using them. And with Sprout Social’s hashtag analytics tools, you have direct access to hashtag performance and usage data to see what’s working best.

Don’t go blindly into the hashtag universe, know what you’re tagging so you can build your following.

10. Make your Instagram followers happy

Last but not least, when you make your Instagram followers happy, you see the payoff in audience growth. We’ve given you plenty of tips for brainstorming and scheduling content, so put them into practice in a way that feels real to your brand voice. In other words, avoid seeming needy, sales-driven or robotic.

For many accounts, this means sprinkling in posts that are legitimately designed to bring a smile to followers’ faces and build customer relationships. Don’t forget to provide content to your followers as if they were friends on your personal feed: this might include posting memes, inspirational content, or just re-sharing interesting photos or artwork (all properly credited, of course) that can give your followers a little mental pick-up during the day.

More tips for your Instagram presence

Developing an Instagram following is a multifaceted process. Knowing the ins and outs of best practices on the network will help your strategies be more effective. Learn more with these guides to some of the most important IG essentials:

How to promote your Instagram: 13 ways that actually work
9 Instagram post ideas to spice up your account
How to regram on Instagram
How to get more Instagram Likes
How to craft an impactful Instagram bio for business

How are you growing your Instagram following?

Instagram continues to grow in popularity with audiences, so taking advantage of these tips to get followers will help you increase your reach. If you’re ready to put Sprout’s powerful tools behind your Instagram management, start a free trial today.

5 ways to get followers on Instagram that won't get you banned

ComputerPhoto: Rudy and Peter from pixabay

Despite the emergence of new interesting projects in the field of social networks and content platforms (Pinterest, Tik Tok and others), Facebook still remains a monopolist and dictates its own rules. One of them reads something like this: pay. Without paying for advertising, the posts of commercial pages get into the feeds of only 17% of Facebook users who are subscribers to these pages. The picture is about the same on Instagram. Cheating subscribers with the help of special software is not something that is not welcome here, it is generally completely prohibited. So it turns out that anyone who wants to turn their account into a popular blog has to either pay or look for ways around. Let's talk about what options exist.

Targeted advertising

The only official type of promotion on Instagram is advertising through Ads Manager, which is located on the Facebook platform. It's paid and not cheap if you don't know how to target. In addition, you cannot attract subscribers with the help of advertising, you can only acquaint users of the social network with the information that you offer. Subscribe or not, they decide for themselves.

To save on advertising, use the following settings:

Choose an audience of people far from big cities, there are fewer advertising offers, which means that the auction CPC will be cheaper.
Use clear and understandable creatives to attract subscribers, encourage them to subscribe to you by broadcasting the values of the blog.
If your blog is thematic, look for an audience of those who will like it, and they are more likely to subscribe to it.

In general, this is not the most budget option to get real followers on Instagram, for example, but you will not get banned for it.

Activity chats and like-times

Among shareware promotion methods, activity chats are especially popular. They are started in Instagram itself and beyond, for example, in Telegram. What are these chats? As a rule, they are created by users who want to promote their blogs. To do this, they are looking for aspiring bloggers with the same goal. The task is to help each other with promotion.

It's simple. You join such an activity chat and constantly receive tasks - who to like, who to comment on the post, who to subscribe to. In exchange, you can ask them to do the same for your blog.

Like-times is an activity that allows you to get likes in order to go to the "Interesting" tab and get subscribers indirectly, through content promotion. The mechanics are the same: you like others, in exchange they like you. It is worth remembering that this is not a cheat on Instagram subscribers for money, so unsubscribing cannot be avoided. How to make sure that the cheat was without unsubscribes?

Partnerships with bloggers as a way to get followers on Instagram

By joining chats for support, you can find like-minded bloggers with whom you intersect audience. For example, you have an Instagram blog about life in Iceland, and the chat consists of authors of blogs about life in New Zealand, Argentina and Japan. You can team up with them and promote a whole network of “our” bloggers abroad in such a way as to exchange subscribers who are interested in the topic of living in other countries. The big plus of this method is that it's free.

Giveaways and contests on Instagram

Together with friends found through partnerships with bloggers and support chats, you can launch a giveaway - a general contest with valuable prizes, according to which everyone who wants to participate in the draw must subscribe to all the organizers of the giveaway. As a rule, in giveaways, big prizes provided by sponsors are raffled among the participants, whose main task is to subscribe.

You can attract followers in a more interesting way: to conduct a draw on your own behalf. This is a cheaper way than a giveaway to get followers on Instagram. Then the prize may not be particularly valuable, but in the conditions - the task is to subscribe only to your profile, and no one else.

Cheat on Instagram through applications and websites

Here is another way for which you will not get banned. However, it is important to choose the right one who will really help, and for this you need to order promotion only by live users, and not by bots. All promotion actions on Instagram using this method are carried out using a link that you place as a task on a resource where performers and customers of promotion in social networks by native methods meet. In real time, Instagram users subscribed to platform tasks for promotion will go to your profile and quickly perform the required actions.

What Instagram promotion methods do you use?

As an advertisement

what you need to know before going to the dark side - Dark site of marketing

According to statistics, most Instagram users pay attention first of all to the number of followers of a brand page before they subscribe to it themselves. This pattern is called social proof, or social proof - the presence of a large number of followers is not only proof of the popularity of the brand, but also a signal of its approval from the audience. Therefore, when creating a business page, marketers have to solve a difficult task - to look for the first subscribers. The most common solution to this problem is to buy followers on Instagram by buying bots or autofollowing.

In this article, we will analyze possible ways to get followers on Instagram, and consider the experiment of Hootsuite, which proved by its own example that buying bots to promote a page on Instagram is ineffective.

Instagram followers: the main ways to cheat

There are only 2 ways to get followers on Instagram.

Honest, he's strategic. You set a goal, share good content and the attention of the audience is in your hands. And the second is to use the dark side of marketing - to buy subscribers. That is, bots.

Everyone has long known that brands, celebrities, influencers and even politicians have been adding fake followers on social media. Why do they do it? It's all about perception. Suppose: you bought bots, thereby getting tens of thousands of subscribers. Real people will "like" your page, as the popularity of an Instagram account is judged by the number of its followers.

To begin with, it is worth defining the key difference: promoting a page on Instagram using an automation service and buying bots are far from the same thing.

Instagram follower apps like and comment on posts on your behalf, thereby drawing attention to your profile. You need to specify the user profile you plan to follow based on location, hashtag usage, interests, gender, and more. It is also possible to set criteria after which the bot stops following the account of someone who has not become your subscriber.

Buying Instagram followers is even easier: find an exchange, pay for the service and voila - an explosive growth of the audience. It's cheap, costing about three dollars for every 100 subscribers. But, in most cases, these are bots and zombie accounts (inactive, hacked accounts).

There are also more expensive options that charge upwards of $1,000 for 10,000 subscribers. These services keep your bots active: they publish posts, update information, and even periodically interact with your content.

Still want to buy Instagram followers?

If you still decide to go to the dark side and buy Instagram followers, then read below the example of Hootsuite's, which decided to find out if the game is worth the candle.

They created a fake account and bought 1000 followers for $10. The audience grew before our eyes. This is a plus. But it consisted entirely of bots. This is a minus.

Despite the presence of an audience, real subscribers were not added. Hootsuite even posted one photo, but that didn't help either.

Results - a solid minus: no comments. What does it say? There is a number of subscribers, but this did not affect the interest of real people. Even a month later, the post on the Hootsuite's account page did not garner a single comment, absolute zero.

Of course, the Hootsuite experiment is a banter that was originally intended to be like that. But this is a good example of how most marketers ineptly use the dark Power: they take quantity, but the quality leaves much to be desired.

Yes, after a while they still subscribed to this account. But who are these mysterious kamikaze? Two schoolchildren and a dozen more bots are not a very suitable audience for a technology company.

The only thing that was constant in this experiment, according to Hootsuite's: the number of subscribers remained at the level of 1000, +/- 50 depending on the day of the week. As soon as a certain number of followers disappear - probably due to the blocking of such accounts - the system creates new ones and makes a supply of bots. But it still remained a low-quality audience.

The results obtained when using the application to get followers on Instagram were somewhat different - half of the new followers were eliminated after a week.

Why you shouldn't buy Instagram followers

You get what you pay for: just the quantity. Not quality. An audience consisting of bots will not like your posts and will not comment on them. Using these methods to get followers on Instagram, you jeopardize the reputation of the brand. And you risk losing real customers.

Suppose you hired a social media influencer to promote a product. After carefully studying his profile, we realized that most of his fans are just bots. I think next time you are unlikely to want to work with this person.

What is more valuable for business: having 10,000 fake followers or 100 real ones who comment on your posts and willingly share them?

But there are more important metrics than the number of subscribers. Link clicks and interactions (“likes” and “comments”) are the two most important of these.

Engagement rate. Calculation formula.

One of the ways to measure audience engagement on Instagram is to calculate the engagement rate. Add up all the likes and comments from the last ten posts. Divide the amount by the number of followers of your page. Multiply the result by 100 to get the engagement score.

Number of Likes + number of comments / number of followers x 100 = engagement rate.

Using this indicator, you can check the performance of your Instagram strategy and study the interest of the audience.

How to get Instagram followers without going to the dark side

Study the interests of your audience, share interesting content, thus you will retain your existing audience and attract new followers on Instagram. When posting, use relevant hashtags that will lead you to a new audience. This is, for sure, a more effective way to attract subscribers interested in your company's products or services than to increase the number of bots.

Use Instagram ads to increase your reach. With a budget of just a few hundred dollars a month, you can significantly increase the growth rate of your account and acquire new readers. Instagram offers a wide variety of advertising options, each tied to a specific business goal (brand awareness, website traffic, product sales, or app downloads).

If you want to empower and manage your Instagram account as efficiently as possible, then use Instagram post automation services such as Onlypult. Using this service, you can manage multiple accounts at the same time, publish and schedule content for a specific time, and track your own results. Try it today, especially since you can use it for free for a week.

In closing

What fate awaits a business that is ready to repeat the Hootsuite experiment to buy followers and likes on Instagram? Most likely, such an account will be blocked on Instagram or, even worse, the file will go to the people. We hope that with this article we have conveyed the idea that the idea of promoting a brand with the help of fake followers is far from the best option.