How To Get More Followers On Instagram (Beginner’s Guide)
Want to learn how to get more followers on Instagram, fast? I’ve got you covered.
In this post, I’ll be sharing 20 actionable ways to grow your Instagram following.
I’ve included some tried-and-tested methods that all the pros use, as well as some new strategies that factor in the latest changes to Instagram’s algorithm.
And don’t worry, you won’t find any shady tactics. We’ll be focusing exclusively on getting real, organic followers who will engage with your posts.
Ready? Let’s dive into it…
#1 – Optimize your Instagram bio
Before you do anything else, you need to make sure you’ve optimized your Instagram bio.
There are two things your bio needs to do:
- It needs to tell the Instagram algorithm what your page is all about to help it classify your content correctly (so your posts get pushed to the right audience).
- It needs to tell Instagram users what you’re all about and why they should follow you.
The most important part of your bio is the call to action (CTA). A CTA is there to get the reader to do one specific thing. That could be to click a link, buy a product, or anything else.
If your primary goal is to get more followers, it makes sense to use your CTA to ask people to follow you.
But it’s important to make sure you also give them a reason to do that. Here’s an example of what that might look like in practice from @kenny.kenray, who invites users to ‘follow for tips on creative strategies’.
The other thing your bio needs to include is keywords that are relevant to your niche. That’s how you let Instagram’s algorithm what your page is all about, which helps ensure that it shows your Instagram posts to people in your target audience.
Bonus tip: In addition to your bio, don’t forget to think about your Highlights. New potential followers who check out your page will often click your Highlights to get an idea of what kind of stuff you post, so make sure they see something that gives them a reason to follow.
#2 – Run giveaways on Instagram
Instagram giveaways are an insanely effective way to get more followers.
It works like this. You set up a giveaway with a prize that your target audience will want—something relevant to your niche—and promote it in your Instagram posts.
And you set the entry requirement as ‘follow to enter’ so that users have to follow your Instagram profile to be in with a chance of winning the prize.
If you want, you can also have additional entry requirements, like ‘tag a friend’ or ‘leave a comment on this post’ to help boost the giveaway’s reach. You could even create a user-generated content competition where entrants have to share a post using your branded hashtag to enter.
Don’t worry, setting your giveaway up is super easy. You just need to sign up for a social media contest app—it will do all the heavy lifting for you.
I’d recommend SweepWidget as it’s super straightforward to use. With it, you should be able to set up and launch your giveaway in under 10 minutes. See this SweepWidget review for a walkthrough of how it works.
Here’s an example of a giveaway from @kaybykatrina, who offered 10 lucky winners a specially curated hamper of products.
The rules for participation were to follow their Instagram page; like, save, and share the post, and tag 3 people in the comments. It blew up with over 12.8k likes and 26k comments so far.
Bonus tip: Not sure how best to structure your giveaway? Check out these fun and creative Instagram giveaway ideas for inspiration.
#3 – Publish Instagram posts more often
Ideally, most of the followers you gain on Instagram will be people who see a post you’ve shared in their Instagram feed, check out your page, and then follow you.
But for that to happen, you need to publish a lot of posts. The more posts you publish, the more opportunities you’ll have to win new followers.
If possible, I’d recommend aiming to post at least once a day (and no more than 3 times daily). Or at a minimum, a few times a week.
This is easier if you use a social media scheduling tool, as you’ll be able to create a big batch of posts ahead of time and schedule them in advance.
You won’t have to worry about occasionally forgetting to post something as the tool will automatically publish scheduled posts for you.
Another thing to mention here is that it’s also important to publish at the right time. If you share a post when your target audience is most active, it’s going to perform better and potentially earn you more followers than it would if you shared it at a sub-optimal time.
Again, a lot of tools that let you schedule Instagram posts can help with this as they can also usually calculate your best time to post automatically. We use SocialBee for this at BloggingWizard.
Learn more in Blogging Wizard’s SocialBee review.
#4 – Create the right type of Instagram posts
Instagram has gone through a lot of changes over the last few years.
In the past, it was all about single-image posts.
But these days, Carousel posts and video posts (i.e. Reels) are the hot formats.
For one reason or another, the algorithm tends to push these types of posts to more users than it does with single-image posts.
And as we know, the more users your posts reach, the more followers you’ll earn. So naturally, this is where you should be focusing the bulk of your efforts.
I’d recommend prioritizing Reels and Carousels in your content strategy. Ideally, at least 60% of your posts should be one of the two. The rest can be other post types like single images and Instagram Stories.
#5 – Optimize your posts for the algorithm
If you can send the right signals to the Instagram algorithm, it will push your post to more users.
And as we’ve discussed, the more users you reach, the more followers you can gain from each post.
For Carousel photos, the main thing the algorithm cares about is ‘how many people who see this carousel scroll through to the last slide?’
So, the best thing you can do is to optimize your Carousels so that everyone who sees the first slide sticks around for all of them.
One way to do that is to minimize the number of slides (ideally 2-3 max). Another tip is to make sure your first slide hooks the reader right off the bat.
For Reels, the main thing the algorithm cares about is ‘how long do people spend watching this content?’
With that in mind, the metrics you need to look at are your average watch time and the percentage of viewers that watch your full video. These should both be as high as possible.
Again, the hook is super important here. Start your video off with something that draws the reader in and gives them a reason to keep watching.
Video length matters too. If you have a 15-second Instagram video but you’re only getting 4 seconds of watch time on average, you could probably have condensed that down to 5 seconds and crammed the information in for a higher watch time percentage.
Bonus tip: Don’t forget to optimize your captions for the algorithm too by including niche-relevant keywords that provide the context Instagram needs to figure out which users to show it to.
#6 – Pay attention to your non-follower reach (and fix it)
In Instagram’s native analytics app, you should be able to see your ‘follower vs non-follower reach’. This is an important metric to keep a close eye on.
Every time you upload a new post, you want to be reaching a majority of non-followers. Ideally, at least 50%. That’s going to help you to grow much faster.
If the vast majority of people who see your posts are already followers, you might get a lot of engagements (which is great), but you’re not going to earn many new followers.
If your follower vs non-follower reach ratio is greater than 70/30, it’s an indication that you’re doing something wrong.
You might not be using relevant hashtags. Your hooks might not be good enough. Or you just might not be posting enough quality content.
Figure out what’s going wrong and fix it.
#7 – Add a call-to-action in your posts
I talked earlier about how a CTA is the most important part of your bio.
Well, it’s also one of the most important parts of your Instagram posts.
Try to add a CTA in as many posts as possible asking your audience to follow. You can add it either in the video or the post description/caption.
If you add it to the video, do so right after the hook. Or if it’s a longer video, after the rehook (that’s a second hook that you add part-way through your video to keep viewers engaged).
Remember: Your CTA should only ever ask your viewers to do one specific thing. If your goal is to get more followers, don’t worry about asking people to like or comment, etc—just ask them to follow.
Another tip here is to suggest a reason they should follow you within your CTA. For example, you could say/write something like,
- ‘Follow if you like [something the viewer will like]’
- ‘Follow if you think [something the viewer will agree with]’,
- ‘Follow for more [something you regularly share e.g. stories, recipes, etc.]’.
If you have an effective CTA, you should be getting at least 10-50 followers for every 1000 views you get on Instagram. If you’re getting less than that, your CTA may need some work.
#8 – Steal your competitors’ followers
You’ve probably heard of the infamous ‘follow-for-follow’ strategy that Instagrammers used to use to grow in the early days, right?
They’d randomly follow a ton of accounts in the hopes they’d follow them back to artificially inflate their follower count.
And you probably already know that that doesn’t work.
Why? Because the people who follow you back aren’t genuinely interested in what you have to offer, so they soon un-follow you. Plus, you can easily end up shadow-banned.
However… there is a slight variation we can make to the follow-for-follow strategy that does work.
Instead of following random people, we’re going to follow people we know will genuinely be interested in what we have to offer. Here’s how.
First, enter a hashtag in the search bar that relates to your niche. Then, find a popular post and visit the page of the Instagrammer who shared it. This is your competitor.
Next, click one of their most recent posts, and click the Likes button to bring up a list of everyone who liked it.
These are the users who are most likely to enjoy your content and follow you.
You can click the ‘Follow’ button to follow them, and maybe even visit their page to leave a couple of likes and comments on their posts. They’ll be notified when you do this and might check out your page to see who’s interacted with/followed them.
When they do, they might decide to follow you back. And just like that, you earned a new follower! Now just rinse and repeat.
I know creators who have used this strategy to get tens of thousands of new followers. It can work super well as long as your content is good enough.
Warning: Be careful not to overdo this strategy as Instagram doesn’t like it when you abuse the follow feature. If you follow too many people, too often, it could trigger a shadow-ban. To minimize risk, don’t do it every day, and don’t follow too many people in one go.
#9 – Collaborate with other creators
Find influencers and brands in your niche with a similar target audience, and a similar number of followers to you. Then, reach out to them and invite them to collaborate.
You can use the Instagram Collabs feature to co-author posts with your partner.
When you do, both of your usernames will be added to the post, and it’ll be shared on both of your feeds, to both of your sets of followers. Here’s an example from @mythical and @rhettmc.
The great thing about this is it pretty much guarantees that half of your viewers are going to be non-followers (your partner’s followers)
And as we mentioned earlier, reaching a ton of non-followers is the best way to grow.
Not only that, when the algorithm sees so many non-followers interacting with your post, it’s more likely to push it out to even more people who don’t follow either of you. It’s a win-win.
#10 – Use the right hashtags
A lot of people think hashtags have had their day.
But actually, they’re still relevant for a couple of reasons.
First off, hashtags give Instagram’s algorithm some context to help it understand what your post is all about, so it can push it out to the right audience. And that’s super important.
Secondly, trending hashtags can help you tap into viral trends and significantly boost your reach, helping you to reach more potential followers.
You can find viral hashtags to use in your Instagram video posts under the ‘Reels Trends’ section in your professional dashboard
#11 – Use trending sounds to boost your reach
Another quirk of the Instagram algorithm is that it’ll push out videos that include trending sounds to more viewers (and in doing so, increase your opportunities to earn new followers).
To find trending sounds, you can go to your competitors’ profiles and see what sounds they’ve used recently, and which ones have gotten them a lot of views. Remember that if a sound is trending, you should see an up arrow in the top-right corner.
Another option is to scroll down to the bottom of your professional dashboard and look under ‘Reels Trends’ for trending audio.
Aim to use a sound that’s been used in at least 10k-50k videos, and ideally several viral videos with over 1 million views in the last 72 hours.
It should also have been used in videos with a similar niche, topic, and length to yours. That’s important for the algorithm
#12 – Optimize your Reels for replays
Your Instagram Reels will reach more potential followers if you have a high ‘replay vs initial plays’ ratio because the algorithm prioritizes content that keeps people watching over and over again.
One way to optimize your videos to get more replays is to make them shorter. People tend to be more likely to replay videos that are 6-10 seconds long as there just isn’t enough time to get all the information they need on the first watch.
Another strategy you can try is to add a large caption on-screen that takes time for viewers to read. That way, a lot of viewers will replay the video to give themselves enough time to read it.
#13 – Earn more reposts & shares
Instagram loves it when users share your posts as it brings people back onto the platform.
As such, it tends to push content that generates a lot of shares to more users, which helps you reach more potential followers. Anecdotally I’ve heard that one share is worth up to 400 extra views.
Likewise, reposts are another powerful engagement signal that gives you a big boost in the algorithm.
Optimize your posts to get more reposts and shares. One way to do that is to create relatable content that viewers will want to share with their peer groups.
#14 – Use your caption to start a comment war
Comments are another powerful engagement signal that gives you a boost in the algorithm and can help increase your reach and followers.
A great way to get more comments is to use your caption to start a debate. Ask viewers for their thoughts on a controversial topic, offer up your own hot take, or ask a thought-provoking question. Anything to get people talking (or even arguing) in the comment section.
Another strategy that can help you get a ton of comments is to offer something free to your viewers—like a link to a downloadable resource—and invite them to comment if they want it so you can DM them.
#15 – Remix, recreate, and repost popular content
The bulk of your posts on Instagram should be your own original content.
But a good chunk of it—maybe 30-40%—should be unoriginal content that’s already proven to get results.
For example, you can find relevant videos in your niche that have already gone viral (and thus are proven to resonate with your audience), and then remix them or stitch your reaction to put your own spin on them.
You can also try recreating something that worked for one of your competitors, or repost one of your older posts that performed particularly well.
These types of posts often get more views than original content so they’re great for reaching more people and growing your following.
#16 – Get verified on Instagram
Having a verified badge next to your profile on Instagram tells users who check out your page that you’re the real deal. And that helps you to win more followers.
There are two ways to get verified on Instagram:
You can request a verified badge if you’re a notable person, brand, or entity. Or alternatively, you can pay for Meta Verified—Instagram’s paid subscription plan.
#17 – Engage with your followers more often
It’s worth taking time to engage with your followers, such as by interacting with them in the comments, liking their posts, chatting with them on Instagram Live, etc.
Why? Two reasons.
First off, engaging with your existing followers shows them you care and helps to build closer connections, so they’re less likely to unfollow later down the line.
Secondly, it encourages them to engage with your future posts by leaving likes and comments. The more people you have engaging with your posts, the more people those posts will reach, and you’ll increase your chances of earning more followers.
#18 – Promote your Instagram account on other platforms
If you’re like most people, you probably have a bunch of profiles and pages on other social media platforms.
So why not use them to promote your Instagram?
At a minimum, it’s worth connecting your Instagram account to your other profiles through social links.
But if you want to take it a step further, you can add a CTA to your bios on those other platforms asking your audience there to follow you on Instagram or promote your Instagram account in your other social posts.
#19 – Consider running Instagram ads to get followers
All told, there are 2 billion users on Instagram, most of which can be reached through Instagram ads.
So if you have the budget for it, running Instagram ads is a surefire way to get your account in front of a ton of new people, including many accounts that you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise.
Naturally then, ads can help you to grow your following much quicker than you’d usually be able to manage organically.
But of course, ads eat into your budget quickly, so relying on them isn’t a good long-term strategy. If you’re going to use ads, I’d recommend it only when you’re first starting out to get your first thousand or so followers.
You can then use that base of followers as a jumping-off point to launch your organic Instagram strategy.
#20 – Never buy fake followers
One last tip I want to leave you with before we wrap up is this: Never buy Instagram followers.
I know it’s tempting but trust me, it’s not going to help you in the long term.
Any Instagram followers you ‘buy’ will either be bots or fake followers who aren’t interested in the content you’re putting out, so they’re not going to engage with your posts.
Plus, buying fake followers will limit your ability to earn real followers as it will tank your engagement rate so the algorithm won’t push your content out to as many people. Even worse, if Instagram catches on, you can end up banned. It’s just not worth it.
Final thoughts
That’s it for our beginner’s guide on how to get more Instagram followers. Hopefully, this has given you some ideas to inform your strategy.
Want to learn more about other social platforms? Check out these Facebook Video statistics and YouTube Shorts statistics.
And to streamline your social media efforts, check out these powerful social media automation tools.
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