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1. 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 hash tagging 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 a set of popular and less popular Instagram hashtags within your photos, you’re much more likely to reach new users and be discovered. Often a set of 40% popular hashtags (above 1 million tags), 40% medium big hashtags (between 1 million and 200k tags), and 20% smaller hashtags (20% under 200k tags) will help you to be seen even more.

Use a set of hashtags that define your niche.

But always put some hashtags in where the content is made or what you are doing. This helps to find people who are interested in specific content or geo based in the same area you live. 

2. Post at the right times

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

We always suggest accounts to switch your account to a creator mode.

Just as a business account you will get much more insights to look at.

These insights tell you much more about the best time to post. Try out posting on different times and investigate through your insights what had the best results. Stick to what got the best results. But don’t forget that if you post at the same time every time you have a blind spot on the world that will not see your posts because they sleep while you are awake and posting. If that part is known as a active part of the world on instagram try to change your posting times so they too can see your posts.   

Do you want to reach a certain country or part of the world? Like the US or Europe? Then find out when it is between 4pm and 7pm in that country and schedule your post to be posted in that timeframe. You will get more people from the country you target by applying this tactic. 

But above all, keep in mind that you need to post when it works best for you!

Because after all, you want to keep up with a certain amount of posts weekly. And you better keep the same amount of posts a week. Your followers will adapt fast to the amount of posts you post and return to your account when they know you ALWAYS post at certain times. 

3. Steal your competitors’ followers

Ok we are not actually stealing followers but going to look at other accounts who have active followers and try to get their attention. 

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 niche you are in simply by engaging or 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 repeated engagement you’ll get out of it.

Instagram is a real ONE on ONE platform. So keep in touch with the followers you engage with. You give and you get in return. 

A really nice way to find new followers is to use a tactic that is called: ‘account hopping’.

You go to your nice, search for active follower pools and start jumping from account to account and go to the comment sections. Those who comment on others are proven to be active on other accounts, so likely to be active on your account too. And just that is what you need! Jump in comments from account to account and engage with them on their accounts. If one has a great comment section too with again lots of followers who commented? Well, hop on to the next pool and repeat. You will be surprised how good this tactic works. 

4. Organize your Stories in Highlights

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

It is proven that people decide in less than 7 seconds to stay on your profile to check you out more as just looking at the first thing they see. 

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.

Make your highlights more attractive and make nice looking covers for your highlights.

There are a lot of apps to find to help you with that, you can make these in no matter of time and your account looks so much better what will help people to hit that follow button.  

5. 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.

Especially with the rollout of reels many people often are watching reels for hours to entertain themselves, but forget to follow you because they are on explore pages scrolling to be entertained, asking them to follow you can help to get a viewer to actually press that follow button.  

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.

6. Hop on trends

When the opportunity presents itself, aligning your content with trending topics or hashtags can improve discoverability and engagement.

For example, you can ride the wave of a trending topic or event, such as a holiday, in a relevant way to boost your engagement. Or you can participate in one of the many “hashtag holidays” that exist, such as #NationalCoffeeDay,(falling on October 1 every year). There are social media holidays for basically every day of the year. Mark relevant events in your calendar so you can prepare quality content in advance.

You can find lots of websites on google where you can find full calendars of existing social media holidays. 

Be sure to join the conversation in a meaningful way, and when in doubt, ask yourself if your target audience would actually pay attention to the trend.

7. Use Instagram Live

With Instagram, you can use Instagram Live to stream videos to your followers and engage with them in real-time.

For instance, your cat or dog is playing, or they are sleeping in a really lovely way?

Well people REALLY love to see what is happening in real time. 

We all love to be a fly and sit in the corner of a room to look at what is happening in someone’s life right? Well, use that curiosity of people to get their attention. 

When you start a live video stream, a ring encases your profile picture in Instagram stories to tell followers they can check out the stream. 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 too for those who might have missed it. 

8. Be consistent

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.

9. Use your account to give another account a shoutout

Do you REALLY want to make a great connection with a follower?

Well, what about suggesting someone to shout out to each other’s followers?

You can use your stories very easily to post another account on your stories and ask your followers to follow your (new) friend.

Your friend can do the same thing for you and outside being seen by their followers you made a real connection with someone!

10. REAL conversations

All the above tips can help you grow. But last but not least, don’t forget to enjoy what you are doing. 

Don’t forget you are on a ‘SOCIAL’ platform so never forget to be social. Do you see an account you love? Just send them a DM and tell them what you like about them! Start a small talk, and ask some questions about their account. Often this results in longer conversations where you REALLY made a connection with someone who doesn’t forget you soon. Because you REALLY made the time to connect you most likely make the best and active followers this way. Hey, it’s a social media platform. So being really social is still the best thing you can do to make a good and especially loyal follower base. 

And above that, you often not only got a new loyal follower, but a real friend with the same interests as you! 

We really think this tactic is the most effective and often most overlooked way to build a strong loyal follower base. 

Don’t you know how to start a conversation?

Go to google and search for conversation starters. There are so many fun ways to get a conversation started. Like for example; ‘if your pet could talk, what would the very first thing be that they say to you’? …

You see? That’s a fun question to give or get right? Well, have fun and enjoy being social. 

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