As a brand, starting fresh on Instagram can be tricky. The first thing you need to do? Get more Instagram followers fast.
But how?
The days of shortcuts like buying followers or using bots are over. These tricks might boost your follower count for a short time, but they won’t do you any favors long-term.
That’s because the only truly valuable Instagram followers are real people who care about and engage with your brand. A false follower count might boost your ego, but it won’t help your Instagram strategy.
Click on any tip below to learn more, keep scrolling for the complete list of ways to get more followers on Instagram, or watch the video below for our 5 best tips.
How to get more Instagram followers for free
1. Have a thoughtful Instagram marketing strategy
To use any social network effectively, you need a clear plan.
Getting more Instagram followers is a great goal to start with. But followers alone won’t give you a successful Instagram account. Gaining followers needs to be part of a larger plan that connects to your business strategy and social marketing objectives.
Think about the reasons why you want more Instagram followers. What do you really hope to accomplish? Maybe you want to:
- increase brand awareness
- boost product sales
- drive traffic to your website.
Staying focused on these business-oriented goals will help keep your Instagram account consistent. It will help you tell a compelling brand story that appeals to new profile visitors and helps build (and keep) a loyal following.
2. Define your target audience
Ask yourself some questions about who you are trying to reach:
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- What do they do for work?
- When and how do they use Instagram?
- What are their pain points and challenges?
Answering these questions will help you craft the right kind of Instagram content to reach the people on Instagram who are most likely to give you a follow. It will also keep you focused on the needs of your target audience so you can consistently deliver the type of content that makes them want to keep following you for the long term.
3. Create a consistent brand story and aesthetic
Maybe you want to satisfy curiosity by showing off how your product is made. Or share an employee’s perspective to humanize your brand. If you want to position your brand in an aspirational way, you could try showcasing the lifestyle or achievements of your customers.
No matter what you want to achieve, it’s important to maintain a consistent brand personality and look.
Your posts should be easily recognizable at a glance. Think of your Instagram grid as one cohesive unit. You can always use Instagram Stories to share content that doesn’t quite fit with the look and feel of your main feed.
Even if your products don’t all look the same, you can use consistent styling to give your grid a consistent look and feel, like @themillerswifecustomcookies does:
4. Use keywords to appear in searches
Before people can follow you on Instagram, they have to find you. Not a lot of the text on Instagram is searchable. In fact, only two fields on Instagram contribute to search results: name and username.
Your username is your Instagram handle. It’s a good idea to make it consistent with the handle you use on other social networks, since this also makes it easier for people to find you. Use your brand name or a variation of your name that people are likely to use when searching for your brand.
Your name can be anything you like, up to 30 characters. Keyword stuffing is never a good idea, but it can be useful to include your most relevant keyword in the name field to improve discoverability based on search.
For example, travel writer Claudia Laroye (@thetravellingmom) includes the keyphrase “travel writer” in her Instagram name, upping the chance she’ll be discovered by those looking for travel content in general and travel writers in particular.
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