But before you get started with it, it’s time for a quick reality check: A silver bullet strategy that will suddenly bring you to the 1k, 10k or 21k mark, does not exist. When it comes to how to get followers on Instagram, timing is everything. Yes, there is a set of activities that you can do to increase your following. However, suddenly going full-speed with all of them isn’t going to result in anything remarkable, as the effectiveness of each action changes after reaching a certain follower milestone. For instance, there’s no point in buying a shout-out to your account for a 100 bucks from a big influencer while you have 10 followers. Yes, you might get some followers from that, but the price per follower would be unreasonably high. It would be much more effective when you’ve already established a strong identity and following on Instagram, and are looking to speed up the snowball effect. Alright, enough blabbering, let’s head over to the actual guide: How To Get Followers On Instagram… Plan & schedule social media ahead of time. Video, gallery & image posts Calendar, feed & grid preview Instagram, Facebook & Twitter

  START PLANNING YOUR POSTS NOW Step 1: Growing from 0 to 100 Instagram followers Okay, so you now have a brand new account and need to build that initial momentum and get followers on Instagram. If you already have a business or a brand with a somewhat established community, then getting that initial following shouldn’t be that big of a challenge. Send out a newsletter to your existing customers, inviting them to follow you on Instagram. Remember that when you want people to do something, you need to give them an incentive. In this case, a discount for your products to the first 100 followers could work just fine. If you have a large enough email list, you can split the offer so that first the 100 followers get 30% off, next 100 get 20% off, and so on, to not discourage those who might have opened the email later, from following you. Before you send out the email though, make sure you already have a few engaging posts up to give an idea of your brand. If you don’t have an existing customer/follower community, you can turn to your friends, family or colleagues, and ask them to follow you. This is one of my personal favorites, because you can get the initial follower base quite easily even without posting any content (however, I’d still suggest having at least one post there to begin with), and if you’re one of those people with a large family and friend group, you might just hit that 100 followers quite quickly.

  Also, if you have a brand website, you can capture any site visitors by adding an Instagram follow button, to be sure your audience knows where you find you on social! Of course, make sure that your website is well-optimized and built by a reliable website builder (for example, Ucraft or Wix). After you’ve completed this initial step, it’s time to choose a strategy to get followers on Instagram and growing this base to at least a 100 followers. Strategy 1: “Something’s coming…” This will be best if you have some kind of an announcement coming soon — a new website, a product, a giveaway, etc. Create an attractive profile picture, and an engaging and witty bio – don’t be afraid to throw some emojis in there if that’s something that would resonate with your audience. If you have a link to your homepage, email subscription page, or literally any other brand link that could potentially extend the relationship with your followers, definitely add that as well!

 Even if you haven’t properly launched your site yet, it adds credibility to your brand — it shows your audience that you’re serious about your brand to have gone the extra-mile and bought a domain. Ideally, you should have at least a “coming soon” page set-up with a lead capture. But don’t sweat it — your Instagram page doesn’t necessarily grow faster by having a link in your bio. At this point, it’s more of a nice-to-have to start moving towards monetizing your audience, which you can totally do in the later steps as well. When writing an Instagram bio, make sure to be very clear on what your account is going to be about. If you’re planning to launch an eCommerce business, then say it. If you’re giving away free marketing advice, let them know. Maybe you’re launching a giveaway for the first 100 followers? They should know about it. Give people an incentive to follow you, even if you don’t have anything up at the moment. If you want to take it one step further (and you always should), publish at least one post that looks beautiful and conveys your brand message. This will help you to get followers on Instagram, as it lets potential followers know what you’re about, what kind of posts can they expect from you, and gets them excited about your upcoming brand!

Instagram Follower Order

 For ‘Help a Marketer’, I created this: get followers on instagram Brand picture ☑️ Brand description ☑️ Incentive ☑️Website ☑️ Unfortunately, just having your account set up won’t help you get followers on Instagram. Search for accounts that are in your niche or in a niche similar to yours, and already have a substantial following (I wouldn’t go higher than accounts with 10k+ followers though). Once you have identified these accounts, start following at least 10 of them, and make sure to follow about 50 of their followers as well. If you want to go the extra mile (and again, you should), you can check out the accounts of those 50 followers before you follow them, to make sure they actually fit your target audience. Here’s the important bit — make sure to interact with the accounts that you follow on a regular basis! Like their latest posts, leave comments on them, respond to their Instagram Stories and/or just write them a direct message where you introduce yourself in one sentence and mention that you’ve started a new account and you would be honored to see them among your first followers who’ll get [insert the incentive you wrote about in your bio]. The personal approach of the direct message in combination with regular engagement will increase is a great tactic to get followers on Instagram – especially if you haven’t chosen an account that’s too big and will actually see your message. You should be doing all this in the later phases as well, but it’s especially crucial while when you’re still a new account.

 Strategy 2: “A rising star” If, on the other hand, you don’t really have anything big coming up or if you’re interested in developing a personal brand (models, photographers, speakers etc), then go for this one. Everything we discussed in Strategy 1 is still useful. You should work on your bio description, explain who you are and what your account is about, reach out to other accounts in your niche and engage with their followers. The major difference here is that you need to build your feed up BEFORE you do the outreach. Remember, you won’t be driving people to your upcoming offer to get followers on Instagram — you will be driving them to your posts. Here’s the big question: How many posts should you have published before you start serious Instagram outreach? In my opinion, at least 9-12 posts would be a good starting point.

  This means when someone lands on your profile there is sufficient content to portray you and/or your brand. Keep in mind that your posts should complement each other to create a cohesive grid and feed aesthetic. Having a nice layout for your images really matters. Yes, each individual image works for driving engagement from your existing Instagram followers who see the posts in their feed. However, the overall grid look is one of the most important things (if not the most important) in helping you get followers on Instagram. It shows that you take your brand seriously, and lets them know that they can expect similar quality content consistently. If you’re stuck deciding on a style for your feed, check out this article for inspiration ✨

Instagram Followers In Order

 instagram feed Accounts that use consistent colour palettes and go the extra mile planning their feed will get followers on Instagram more quickly than those who don’t! If you decide to go with 12 initial posts, I’d suggest posting them within 2-3 days at least. It depends on how often you’re planning to post in the future, but I personally think that having all 12 posts published in one day doesn’t seem organic at all. (This, however, is just my personal preference, and if you’re super anxious to start, then knock yourself out and post all of them immediately). In every post, include a lot (30 per post) of different hashtags to make your initial posts more discoverable to potential followers. It’s important to show good engagement on your posts right from the start. I suggest choosing both hashtags that have very little post shares (maybe like 1k-20k), as well as very popular ones (10mil+). Chances are that you’ll start getting Instagram followers from this activity alone! The most important thing to remember is that your hashtags are relevant to the content of your post. For more hashtag tips, check out:

 ðŸ’¡ The All-In-One Guide To Instagram Hashtags 💡 Takeaway: Create an attractive bio with an incentive to follow — an offer, the posts themselves, or both Engage with people and brands that might be interested in your content on a regular basis Work on your first posts to develop your own style/layout Research more and less popular hashtags, pick out as many relevant ones as you can, and use them on your posts. Moving on… Explore the data behind your Instagram account. Find the best time to post on Instagram Track your follower growth overtime Understand your post engagement TRY INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS NOW Step 2: Growing to 1,000 Instagram followers Once you have that initial traction, the following strategy will really give an extra boost to get followers on Instagram. Here’s what you do: Identify some of the bigger accounts(50k+ followers) that are similar to yours or are in the same industry with the same target audience you’re trying to reach. Check if their followers are real (some great tools for that: Fameaudit, SocialAuditPro) If the majority of their followers are real, open up their follower list and start following these accounts (I personally suggest to follow accounts that have a real human in the profile picture, instead of a logo)

 Start checking who’s not following you back and unfollow these accounts. There’s plenty of apps for both Android and iOS for this exact purpose — just give it a search. Ideally, at least 20% of the people that you started following, should follow you back. The more followers you have, the ‘healthier’ your follower to following ratio is, the more attractive your feed looks, and the higher the follow-back percentage is going to be. People are more inclined to follow back Instagram accounts that: Look real Have more followers than the account is following Have a lot of followers* Have a nicely designed feed of posts In addition to the follow/unfollow strategy, you should start interacting with these bigger accounts (as long as they’re not direct competitors). Firstly, turn on post notifications for these accounts. Every time they post something, be the first to like and leave a comment. There’s already too many “This is so true”, “That’s dope man”,“Awesome post” type of comments out there because of engagement bots. They have become very easy to spot and most Instagram users know that they are not genuine:

Instagram Followers Order

 GET FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM Generic comments like this are often from accounts using a follower or engagement bot, and therefore don’t count as genuine engagement So try to write something related to the caption or the post — the more human you are, the better! Although AI writing assistants like Jasper AI are all the rage now, It is better to ask specific questions or add your own opinion. This will prove to other Instagram users in your community that you are genuinely interested. get followers on instagram Examples of short comments related to the caption on one of my posts. To reach 1000 followers, I would suggest combining the follow/unfollow strategy together with the strategies covered in the previous step! Secondly, when you start reaching the 1000 follower mark, it’s a good idea to start thinking about scheduling your Instagram posts. This will give you more time to create content, engage with your audience, and continue to get followers on Instagram. Scheduling and managing your Instagram content with Hopper HQ means you can post straight from your desktop, visually plan your Instagram feed, and save loads of time! Photos, videos, carousel posts, captions, first comments can all be scheduled in advance so you never need to rush for last minute posts again.

  Sign up for a free 14 day trial today to test it out — you won’t want to go back to doing things manually. Takeaway: Identify the key accounts that are similar to yours and follow them Turn on post notifications for these accounts Leave a comment as soon as they post Follow their real followers Plan your social media posts. Visually plan your posts. Drag and drop everywhere. Step 3: Growing to 5,000 Instagram followers Now that you have a good foundation for growth, it’s time to accelerate even faster. I’m not saying you should stop doing what you have been doing previously. I think those methods are great even if you have passed the 20,000 follower mark. However, adding other methods from this point forward might give the same if not better results with less effort.

  Firstly, you should start using engagement groups. If you haven’t heard about them, then you should read the following article, to understand what engagement groups are and how they work: Increase your Organic Reach on Instagram with Engagement Groups. Secondly, consider investing in ads. If you’re building a brand (and not just posting pictures of your cat), Instagram ads will come in quite handy at this point. Thirdly, definitely start scheduling your Instagram posts. Once you’ve reached this stage, every minute you invest into your Instagram counts. Check out this step by step guide to scheduling on Hopper HQ. Plan & schedule social media ahead of time. Video, gallery & image posts Calendar, feed & grid preview Instagram, Facebook & Twitter START PLANNING YOUR POSTS NOW To run ads on Instagram, you need to switch to a business account. If you don’t have it yet (or if you don’t know whether you have it or not), there’s a very easy way to activate it: