Instagram is unquestionably a powerful tool for marketers and companies to use. It can provide brands and companies with the chance to connect with new audiences, create active communities, and even turn followers into paying customers. But, Instagram is now busier than ever. It’s never been harder to stand out and grow organic Instagram followers with over one billion active users each month.

The good news is, that there are still approaches to building an engaged, active following on Instagram (without pouring thousands of dollars into social media advertising). Let’s go through all you need to know about developing a strategy for organic Instagram growth.

Top Tips To Increase Organic Instagram Followers

Success on Instagram doesn’t happen overnight. Organic growth takes time. But there are several things you can do to ensure that you at least develop at the fastest speed possible, even if it always requires patience. Here are eight top tips to organically increase your Instagram following.

1. Post More Video Content

Instagram video is having a massive moment right now thanks to Reels, Stories, and Lives, and it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Through videos, Instagram users have more chances to be seen. So it’s crucial to post more video content and to post them consistently.

Instagram Reels

Reels are short, vertical videos that work well for attracting new viewers, especially when shared on the specific Reels stream. Reels can be shared weekly, biweekly, or monthly, depending on the type of material you’re sharing (BTS, an interview, a product launch, etc.).

Cheese By Numbers featured some comforting ASMR and how-to’s about their charcuterie board series.

Adidas creates high-quality and engaging videos that feature their advocacies, athletes, and campaigns.

Instagram Stories

The shortest video format is Instagram Stories, which vanishes after 24 hours (unless you save them to an Instagram Stories Highlight). Stories can be used as conversational, informal, and daily content. They also offer a variety of stickers that you may use to engage with your community.

Some brands use the poll and question sticker to know more about their community or to gather feedback. Others use Stories to give a behind-the-scenes of their workspace or pretty much anything.

Instagram Lives

Lives are unedited videos that are streamed live or in real-time that can be shared and saved on your feed. They’re great for developing a more personal connection with your community. Depending on your capacity, you could do them every month, every two months, or every three months.

If no one else is live at the same time as you when you use live video, you’ll show up right at the top of the Stories feed. Your profile photo in the Instagram app is also given additional prominence by the “LIVE” symbol. Your followers may visit your Instagram page if they see your logo at the top of their feed.

In a series produced by Arcade Studios, they discuss social media news and trends in short 15-minute episodes.

2. Use A Growth Service

Today, manually growing followers and engagements are no longer as effective nor well-liked as it once was. With the competition out there, it may take months or even years to be successful on the platform if you manage your account manually. This is where using a growth service can be helpful, especially if you need to get more followers on Instagram.

Instagram growth services allow you to follow users and accounts that add value to your Instagram account. These services will help you with follower growth of audiences that are genuinely interested in your business and your brand. Growth services will raise the bar for your whole Instagram user engagement strategy, regardless of your use of hashtags, post descriptions, or anything else. With the help of these services, you can add a strong call to action to your profile bio and produce high-quality leads.

But when you decide to use a growth service, be on the lookout for sketchy service providers that may not be safe. Unfortunately, certain Instagram growth services, especially those that aren’t well-known, may employ shady methods, such as buying fake or ghost followers. Remember, Instagram has the right to deactivate accounts whenever the quantity of fake followers reaches a certain limit. Check services for fake accounts using HypeAuditor.

3. Research What Your Competitors Are Doing

Finding new ways to reach your shared customer base can be found by researching how your competitors use Instagram. Further, researching your competitors on Instagram can benefit your campaign and help you utilize your Instagram account to its full potential.

Improve Your Online Brand Presence And Personality

You can observe how your competitors manage their online personas by doing some competitive research. Examine the degree to which your competition is building relationships with their Instagram followers. As a result, you’ll be able to understand what you can do to improve your relationship with your brand community.

You Can Learn From The Mistakes Of Your Competitors

By following your competitors on Instagram, you can see which trends work for them and which ones don’t. Take note of posts that have low user engagement and avoid using them in your account. By learning what doesn’t work for others on Instagram, you can avoid having your campaign suffer a similar fate.

Identify Popular Ideas For A New Campaign

Another benefit of studying your competition on Instagram is that it’ll help you to refine your own marketing strategy. For instance, looking at trending hashtags can help find popular niche concepts. You may also look into the hashtags that your competitors are using in order to learn about their marketing approaches for attracting followers and boosting user engagement. Just be sure that you’re not copying your competitor’s strategy. Instead, adapt this and modify it to your own campaign.

4. Use The Right Hashtags For Your Industry

One of the biggest steps to getting organic Instagram followers is through the use of Instagram hashtags. You can find them by checking out the tags your competitors are using, looking into the tags of industry influencers, and using the IG search feature to find your own hashtags.

Try looking up generic tags first when searching for hashtags. When you run this search, more related tags will be visible at the top of the search feature. These hashtags are usually more detailed (based on industry, niche, or audience). This is a quick and simple method for creating a huge list of relevant tags that you can cycle through while posting.

Be sure to use tags with between 10,000 and 500,000 posts. This will prevent your post from getting lost among the millions of others.

5. Collaborate With Brand Ambassadors

When two or more Instagram users collaborate on a post or series of posts, it is called an Instagram collaboration. By inviting another user to collaborate on a Feed post or Reel, the post will appear on both of their profiles. Most of these Instagram collaborations occur between brands and their brand ambassadors.

Instagram collaborations can be beneficial for both parties when they’re done correctly. Brands can improve their visibility and expand their audience by working with influencers or other businesses. These brand partnerships can lead to increased sales, improved customer loyalty, and expanded market share. For brand ambassadors, collaborations are a great way to make money and get exclusive access to new content, products, or services. Influencers that know how to collaborate with businesses effectively can take advantage of this to try out new things, tell their followers about their experiences, and keep their audience interested.

Adidas Runners is a perfect example of an effective ambassador partnership. To boost their branding and relationship with their customers, they work with both bigger and smaller influencers. In reality, some of the biggest sports businesses invest a great deal of money in influencer marketing.

6. Run Contests & Giveaways

If you want to get more engagement quickly and generate that sense of excitement around your brand and business, try running contests or giveaways. Contests will increase brand awareness and frequently result in high-quality user-generated content or social proof, if not both at once.

Some examples of Instagram giveaways or contests are:

• Photo caption contest
• Tag a friend
• User-generated content
• Share this post
• Hashtag contest
• Like and/or comment to win
• Trivia

A key is to provide a prize that’s most relevant to your target demographic for the best outcomes. What’s important is to get entries and engagement from Instagram users who can potentially become your followers or customers.

The New Yorker has one of the most well-known examples of photo captions available. Readers are invited to submit a caption for that week’s cartoon as part of their weekly contest. The publication then chooses the top three submissions, allowing readers to vote for their favorites. The winning caption will be used in the issue that comes out the following week. This is a great illustration example of how to engage your current audience while also boosting your reach.

7. Use Analytics & Experiment With Different Types Of Content

Data and analytics allow you to assess the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives across several channels to see whether there’s anything you should change, such as your target demographic, the time of day you post, or the format of your content.

You can measure and improve social media in the same way you do other aspects of your marketing. By using Instagram Insights and analytics, you can develop an organic Instagram growth strategy that’ll be more effective.

Data analysis allows you to find out what (and who) your audience is engaging with. It’ll become much easier to create content that gets a lot of engagement once you take those criteria into account.

8. Share UGC

Your followers enjoy seeing user-generated content on your Instagram, and it’s some of the most persuasive content you can use. It shows that you are actively involved in your community, which can increase both UGC and your reputation.

UGC is something you’ll want to share on an Instagram Story to subtly but powerfully promote your brand. If you want to put something on your feed, whether it’s a meme, a review, or just a picture of your product, make sure it’s well done and represents your company.

Encourage UGC by letting Instagram users know what you want to see and providing them with a hashtag they can use to identify their image or video. Look for this hashtag, then ask permission if you can share these posts on your profile.

One of the companies that have gained more prominence for successfully implementing its user-generated content strategy across all of its social media channels is GoPro. Instead of spending a lot of money on expensive marketing efforts. GoPro showcased and expanded its once-tiny brand through the support of its customers and brand aficionados.

With branded hashtags in Instagram like #GoPro #GoProCommunity #GoProAwards and a customized hashtag for just about every country in the globe, they encourage (and make it simple for) people to upload their greatest content. There’s an endless supply of content made using GoPro products, with about 6,000 videos being published online every day. Contests with cash rewards under the hashtag #GoProAwards encourage users to upload their best material.

Be Instagram Smart For Organic Instagram Growth

In terms of marketing, Instagram is an excellent platform. But setting up a business account and posting content isn’t enough. You need to have a strong strategy in place to achieve organic Instagram growth. For that, be smart with Instagram.

AUTHOR BIO:

Kaye Leah writes engaging content as a freelance SEO content writer, copy editor, and module developer, and communications professor.

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