Growing Your Instagram Following

Building an Instagram following, like building any social media following, takes time. Having a social media following can help you do a number of things:

1. Establish and build your brand.
2. Serve existing customers or clients.
3. Attract new customers or clients.
4. Expand your marketing and advertising reach.
5. Provide an additional sales channel.

Instagram, like Facebook, offers advertising options to attract more followers through the self-serve Meta Ads Manager. Paying to advertise can increase your follower count more rapidly, but you may end up with random followers who won’t engage with your content.

Here are some more organic, cost-free ways to build a more engaged following:

Invite your customers and prospects to follow you.

Start with the basics: Invite your customers to follow you on Instagram in different ways, such as hanging up flyers with a QR code that leads customers to your Instagram account or putting a QR code or your Instagram URL or handle on printed marketing collateral, product packaging, and signage.

A direct way to encourage your customers to follow you on Instagram is to send an email to your email list with a clear invitation to follow with a link directing them to your Instagram account. You could use an incentive to gain followers such as randomly drawing followers to win a prize. The benefit of asking your existing customers to follow your account is that you are more likely to see engagement from them.

Interact with compatible accounts.

With limited time and a business to run, you might be more focused on producing Instagram-worthy content and forgetting to interact with not only people who comment on your posts or send you a Direct Message, but also with other people on Instagram.

Some ways you can interact with others on Instagram include sharing their post to your Instagram Story, inviting someone else to be a co-host of a post with you to expand your post’s reach, and “remixing” a Reel where you can add your own content next to someone else’s content.

Interacting with other Instagram users can attract them as followers and can also put your content in front of their followers, increasing your exposure.

Create an “aesthetic” for your Instagram feed.

Some of the more popular Instagram accounts have a particular look and feel. They could be using a specific color scheme, sticking to a particular color palette that is on brand and visually appealing. They might use a consistent image layout or composition, such as using a white frame around images to create more white space on their Instagram page. Some use a posting pattern so that their Instagram page has alternating types of images, such as quote images spaced between photographs.

Developing a pleasing visual style can attract attention, likes, and follows.

Post a combination of Reels and Stories.

Don’t get caught in a rut of posting the same type of posts over and over again. Vary up the types of posts you publish. Mixing up the type of content you publish on Instagram can help you to reach a wider audience. A quick and easy way to boost the visibility of a standard post or Reel is to add it to your Story.

Stories are mostly visible to your existing followers, prominently displayed at the top of the mobile and web-based app. Reels, on the other hand, can potentially reach non-followers, particularly if you use the Trial Reels feature.

You could also get more Reels views if featured on Instagram’s Explore page – something you cannot pay for, but instead could happen organically with the right combination of engagement, hashtags, relevance, and luck.

Pay to advertise.

You could pay for an ad with the goal of adding followers. There are also services that let you “buy” followers. However, paying for followers can give you mixed results. While there can be benefits to having what appears to be a large following, bought followers tend not to be engaged followers – and they are most likely not going to be your target market. What may look good as a follower count could end up looking less attractive when your likes and comments are low.

Your goal shouldn’t be to get more followers just to increase your follower count. You should be trying to gain engaged, attentive, responsive followers who are more likely to see, share, and react to your posts. Overall, leveraging all the features Instagram offers and posting quality content regularly can help you gain the right kind of followers.