Nowadays, there are two ways to make your Instagram marketing success:
- Run Instagram ads to reach potential customers with your products.
- Use tricks to increase Instagram followers, and persuade customers to follow you.
Effective Instagram ads requires skills and a good budget.
Do not skip this blog if you are a beginner with a tight budget looking for ways to increase Instagram followers organic to sell and promote your brand.
First of all, let’s look at statistics of Instagram’s user to see the potential for business on this social media platform.
Overview Of Instagram And Its Users
Instagram is the second biggest social media platforms in the world (after Facebook). It reached 1 billion users in 2018. Below is the data regarding Instagram users based on different countries:
- US: More than 163 million Instagram users.
- UK: More than 33 million Instagram users.
- Germany: More than 30 million Instagram users.
- France: More than 27 million Instagram users.
This data is recorded until August 2022. As you see, Instagram is a potential market for marketing and sales.
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You can completely run a business, build your brand, and sell products/services effectively on Instagram if you have a good strategy. And one of the effective strategies is to increase followers on Instagram and reach the right potential customers.
Here are 35 tricks you need to know to increase real Instagram followers.
Creating A Professional Instagram Account
What is “professional”? It simply means that you create an account with all information, including a profile picture, description for the bio, username, or contact information (phone number, address or website, etc.) if you sell products/services.
Why do you need “professional”? It is because no one wants to visit and follow an Instagram account without any information.
If you want others to follow your Instagram account, you must attract them with your “professional” first .
Creating A Unique Interface For The Account
As for style, choosing a main color for your Instagram account helps to create a good impression in their mind or stimulate them to click the “follow” button.
If you are a Chromatophilia, you can pick various colors to make your account stand out.
Colors that you can choose for your Instagram account, including pink, yellow, navy, sky blue, and orange, etc..
Switching To A Business Instagram Account
There are two types of Instagram accounts – personal account and business account. Personal account is default when you register. You must connect your account with a Facebook fanpage in order to switching to the business account.
What will you get when switching to the Instagram business account?
You can look for analysis of demographic factors of your followers, such as the user distribution by gender (male and female), age, and location.
And most important, you can track the daily or weekly follower growth on your account.
Create Or Repost Viral Content
Viral content is content with a strong spread by users’ shares. This achievement requires you to understand the field you are focusing on and your target audience as well.
Each field has unique content of its own, and you are the only ones who know what kind of content your target audience likes.
The first is the format: Audience normally interact more with content that includes video and image.
The second is the content: does your target audience prefer funny, tragic, or unique content?
Regarding content, you can create it yourself or repost it from other accounts (but remember to cite the sources). The more viral the content is, the more people you can reach, which will consequently help increase Instagram followers for free.
As creating content for your Instagram account is critical, you must do it carefully.
Posting A Variety Of Content
People use Instagram for entertainment, not for shopping. So, the content related to entertainment or hobbies will receive better engagement than ads and marketing content.
You can still post entertaining content instead of only focusing on your products, even if your account is for sales.
This trick helps you attract more interaction for your account, thereby increasing Instagram followers naturally.
Increasing Instagram followers helps increase sales!
Choosing The Right Posting Time To Get Free Instagram Followers
The content posted at 2 am tends to receive less engagement than the one posted at 2 pm. It is simply because everyone is often asleep at 2 am instead of interacting with your post.
Let’s take an example to understand the purpose of posting content at the right time. Doing a test is the most practical method to find the best posting time for your account.
Doing a test of posting time – The content posted in the evenings gets more interaction than the one posted in the mornings. In other words, people tend to rest after a day of work and use Instagram for entertainment in the evening.
You can take preference from those following analysis of the posting time:
The time between 8 am – 12 am and 1 pm – 4 pm usually receive the best interaction based on the time zone of each country.
Posting in the “golden hours” will help to increase the engagement of the post, thereby increasing reach and free Instagram followers.
Always Using Hashtags For Posts
The highlight making Instagram different from other social media platforms is the hashtag; later on, other social media platforms follow this trick.
Instagram hashtags always have the hash symbol (#) in front of it to help users mark related content: #instagood, #photooftheday, #motivation, etc. When you search for a specific hashtag, the searching results will show you other related content.
Most importantly, hashtags help customers find you quickly even when they haven’t followed you before.
You sell cosmetics. Customers search for the hashtag #cosmetics and find your online store – they follow you.
Each post can only consist of up to 30 hashtags. If you use too many hashtags, Instagram will leave the content blank.
From my experience, using 20-25 hashtags is reasonable. The hashtags are extremely important in increasing Instagram followers. So, please pay attention to it.
Running Instagram Ads To Increase Instagram Followers
As mentioned above, running Instagram ads requires for analysis and setting up skills. For a better understanding, I will give you a guide in another article.
That being said, you need to know that running ads is still the quickest and most effective way to increase Instagram followers. In other words, it helps you reach many people in a short time.
Running ads on Instagram helps you increase both Instagram followers and sell products/services.
Booking Posts by Influencers To Get More Instagram Followers
Influencers/KOLs are those who have a great influence on their audience in a certain field. Those individuals normally have a few dozen or hundred thousand followers on their social media accounts.
By booking promotional posts by KOLs, you can reach many people without spending much time.
Of course, you have to pay a fee according to the number of followers, interactions, or demographic factors such as age and gender.
Tip: Use Phlanx to evaluate a the level of engagement of a KOL and make decision on wherever to work with them or not.
A test with @cristiano shows that each post on this account gets more than 5 million likes and 67k comments on average.
Interact With Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers/KOLs have an impact or influence over their audience with a low number of followers (5k-20k followers).
You can regularly interact with them or send them a DM to ask for booking a post. There will usually be a fee, but also very low, or some people might even post for free.
This strategy depends on your ability to communicate, interact well and provide good content to the community first and then sell products/services later.
You can find these Micro-influencers via hashtags in your field, make sure to follow them and interact with them frequently.
Using DM Group To Increase Instagram Followers
DM (Direct Messenger) groups are groups that support cross interaction such as like, comment, and follow.
You can find these groups on Instagram via Google or Telegram.
Let’s take an example of a DM group on Telegram. You can send your link to this group for cross-interaction. Dx5 means that you must like and comment on posts of 5 other accounts before sending your Instagram link; otherwise, you will be blocked immediately in case of intentionally spamming.
Using Follow/Unfollow Trick
Many people use this way by finding and then following the audience in your niche.
Instagram’s maximum “following” level per account is 7500. When you reach this number, you have to unfollow all and then re-follow them.
This repeated process normally gives the rate of following back about 5-15%, depending on the field you focus on.
If you follow 1000 people, there would be around 50 – 150 people follow you back.
With this trick, you need to keep it in moderation without spamming. Instagram will block the follow/unfollow feature or even your whole account if you click “follow” continuously.
It is suggested to follow 20 people within 1 minute and no more than 500 people within one day.
Encourage People To Follow Your Account
On each caption or description in the bio, encourage people to follow you. Why should you do this? See the analysis in 1 post below.
You probably think that only your followers can reach posts. In fact, it is not the case. The above post reaches nearly 30k people, and 87% of them do not follow me.
Now, you surely understand why you need to encourage people to follow you, right? The CTA in your content will help you increase your Instagram followers significantly.
Attracting Followers From Other Social Media Platforms
When focusing too much on increasing Instagram followers, you might tend to ignore this trick. However, it is also possible to attract followers from other social media platforms by sharing your profile links.
Via Facebook
With Facebook, you can increase Instagram followers by having posts in groups or running Facebook ads.
Via YouTube
Or on any other social media platform, you can attract followers toward your Instagram account by adding your profile link or posts.
Having A Catchy Caption To Get Instagram Followers
I notice that online sellers who are new to Instagram often publish posts without captions or their writing are quite sketchy.
- Good post with full of information and hashtags
- Bad post
Content is very important. Don’t think that having a good image is enough. You need good content to attract users, as well.
An online shop with detailed information on every post can build customers’ trust, which helps you both sell and increase Instagram followers.
Using Trendy Hashtags To Get Free Instagram Followers
Trendy hashtags are the ones related to remarkable events at that time. They can help you increase Instagram followers very effectively due to the big number of users who search for those content.
This method requires you to regularly follow the news to stay up to date with prominent events.
Offering Giveaway To Get Real Instagram Followers
This strategy can always works effectively on any social media platform when you create a contest or offer a giveaway to encourage users to share your content and tag their friends in the post. Thereby, it helps increase Instagram followers naturally.
Human are always stimulated by the words such as: free, discount, gift, etc. Therefore, offering giveaways regularly will help increase your followers significantly.
Posting Videos To Get More Followers
Users on social media platforms have the tendency to be lazy to read and prefer to watch videos. Facebook develops Facebook Watch and IGTV Instagram to serve this new tendency of users.
More videos – less text. That is the current trend).
As the majority of people like to watch video, they interact more with video content. It is why video content always has more interaction and be viral than the visual or textual content.
- Video content
- Visual content
An example might be hard for you to understanding. For a better understanding, I suggest visiting any Instagram account so that you will realize it is absolutely true.
Users prefer watching and leaving more interaction on the video content than the visual or textual one).
Tagging Related Users
You might be unaware of this, but tagging is more popular on Facebook than on Instagram.
Tagging helps your post be in the “tagged” section of the tagged person. If your content is good, it will be reposted or reach their friends.
I’ve been tagged by a lot of people and I also repost those posts many times because the content is very good.
You should find the accounts in your niche or influencers and tag them on your posts. One note is that you must create interesting content first.
Encouraging Users To Tag Their Friends
Simply put, it would help always to encourage your audience to tag their friends on every post.
– Tagging your friends to watch the videos.
– Tagging your friends to read the interesting content daily.
This strategy is often applied simultaneously with offering giveaways or creating contests. But now, there is no need to do so. You can simply encourage people to tag their friends in useful content on each post.
Encouraging Users To Interact
“If you find it interesting, please like, comment, or share to support the shop/us/me.”.
It is just a simple sentence that most people will oversee it. This sentence should be accompanied by a “call-to-action” to tag their friends (mentioned in trick No.18).
Why is it important to encourage everyone to interact? It is because Instagram will support a post with a lot of interaction to reach more people.
Instagram prioritizes useful content and evaluates the content based on the amount of interaction – the higher interaction, the higher people you reach, and thereby increasing Instagram followers naturally.
Due to its extreme efficiency, I’m applying it to increasing Instagram followers for the whole system.
Using Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories can be understood as a common feature with a series of short stories on Instagram. Not only that, it is applied to Facebook and Youtube as well.
So, now you know how much platforms appreciate this feature. It helps content creators record stories or messages to convey to their audience or other viewers who accidentally surf those stories.
Posting short stories with good content will stimulate users to follow you.
Instagram Stories is a good feature for sales, website-based store traffic increase, and Instagram follower increase.
Joining The Instagram Interactive Group On Facebook
These groups help everyone cross-interact with each other on Facebook.
You need to send the link that needs to increase Instagram followers to the group, then everyone will follow each other after that.
It is similar to using the DM group – you will have followers from real users. Yet, this does not means that you have reach the targeted audience for your sales unless you sell essential products that everyone needs.
Using SoftWares To Get More Followers
Many people use this method due to its convenience. You just need to create an account and set up the tool. Then, everything else (posting the content, commenting, liking, sending messages, following/unfollowing) will be done by the tool.
Drawbacks:
- Your account could be locked easily because this trick violates the Instagram policy.
- You must understand the niche and know how to use the software to take advantage of this method.
In short, using software to increase followers on Instagram is still effective if you know how to use it proficiently and understand how Instagram works to prevent your account from being locked.
Optimizing SEO For Instagram Account
Have you ever heard about SEO? It stands for search engine optimization. You can apply SEO for Instagram to optimize the account so that users can find you on Instagram easily.
You need to optimize keywords through images, usernames, personal names or the bio of your Instagram account. This task helps Instagram give your account a higher rank when users search for related keywords.
Location Tagging On Instagram
A lot of Instagram users overlook this trick. Based on the location tagging of posts, the Instagram algorithm can identify your location and help reach more people near you.
If you run a local business targeting the audience in a small scope, the location tagging for every post will help you increase Instagram followers naturally.
Tagging Relevant Users
This trick helps you reach many potential customers within the niche you focus on. As for relevant users in your niche (especially those with high-following accounts), their customers are also yours.
Tagging relevant users in the same niche helps Instagram identify the topic you focus on. Therefore, helping you distribute your posts and reach the right audience you are trying to attract.
Embedding Instagram Posts In Your Blog
If you are a blogger, never skip this effective practice. Embedding your Instagram posts in blog posts helps direct blog visitors to your Instagram account and click to follow you.
I’ve been applying this strategy for a few years and see how its bring results. That said, the hardest part is to build a blog with lots of traffic.
Using Instagram QR Codes
You should not ignore this feature. The use of QR codes to connect with users is so popular on many other social media platforms, and so is Instagram.
Let’s take advantage of every feature that Instagram offers you to attract and grow followers naturally.
Understanding Instagram Algorithm
All social media platforms, namely Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, work based on their own algorithm. Being active on Instagram, you must understand its algorithm and avoid risks for the account.
This requires you to be active on Instagram to grasp how Instagram works and how its algorithm distribute your content to other users.
Using Instagram Live
As mentioned above, you should take advantage of every feature of Instagram to interact with your current followers and attract/ reach new users. Thereby, it will help you increase your Instagram followers more effectively.
The nature of social media platforms always goes with frequent modification and improvement to meet the users’ expectations. It would help if you were not out of the trend. Using Instagram Live to interact with users actively can help your Instagram account reach more people.
Interacting With Users Through Likes And Comments
Sometimes, you ignore likes and comments that users leave on your account. This ignorance can lead to a loss of interaction and difficulty in reaching many new users if you maintain it regularly.
It would help if you actively interact with users by leaving likes, replying to their comments, or following them. Thanks to this trick, you can increase brand awareness with potential customers, and help those people remember you longer. Then, they potentially become your real customers and suggest your brand to their friends and family.
Applying A Verification Badge
Applying for the submission of authentication with your Instagram account helps you own a high authority Instagram account. Hence, you can increase your real followers on Instagram.
It is necessary if you want to build a brand for your product/service on Instagram.
Learn from Instagram Insights
You can track the analysis right on your Instagram account. There will be a lot of data helping you determine how to develop the Instagram account. The data includes demographics, age, gender, location of people who are following your Instagram account.
You will also be able to track how the content on your account is distributed and displayed. This data is really important that should not be ignored.
A note is that you must switch your personal Instagram account to a business account to see that data.
Taking A Course Of Increasing Instagram Followers
Taking a course of increasing Instagram followers is one way that you should consider. Thanks to the course, you will not need to spend a lot of time (months or years) to realize how Instagram works.
Taking courses can help you save a lot of time, get results faster thanks to supporters who show you how to increase followers on Instagram.
You will get the experience of others instead of spending 5 years learning about marketing methods to increase Instagram followers. Now, you spend money to buy that 5-year experience from other people.
Join my training course if you are interested in.This course teaches you exactly tricks to increase real Instagram followers naturally. You will learn how to build dozens of Instagram accounts.
I have built the course with all you need. Moreover, this knowledge comes from the experience that my team and I have got for over 8 years working on Instagram.
You can see the details of the course to increase real Instagram followers here.
How To Get More Followers On Instagram – FAQs
Below is my answers for a few issues related to how to increase Instagram followers that many people care about.
Should You Hire A Service To Increase Instagram Followers?
It is not a good idea if you build an Instagram account to sell products/services. In other words, you need an Instagram account with a high-quality community of followers.
Most follower-boosting services tend to work with fake accounts. Thus, they can help your account “look like” a nice and prestigious one only.
My advice is to have your account boosted with fake followers (but just a a bit) to increase your reliability, then seek help from trustworthy Instagram follower boosting service providers.
Ways To Increase Instagram Followers Without Losing Current Followers
Many of you worry that the number of followers could decrease after buying followers from a service. In fact, this problem is unavoidable.
So, it would be best to invest in advertising, creating useful content, or increasing the number of followers based on the algorithm to avoid the dropping of followers.
Only when real people follow your Instagram account, will those followers interact with you without unfollowing you after a period of time.
Ways To Increase Real Instagram Followers
As I said above, the only way to increase real Instagram followers is to invest in advertising which enables you to increase followers by reaching potential customers through genders, behaviors, and interests.
You should make a detailed plan for building an Instagram account, such as creating engaging content, researching hashtags, posting the content on time, etc..
To increase real Instagram followers, you also have to do “real” work, not buy fake followers.
Ways To Increase Instagram Followers For Free
I know that many people care about this issue because everyone wants their Instagram account to have a lot of followers by spending a little cost or for free.
Here are the ways you can apply to get free Instagram followers.
- Getting free Instagram followers with the trick of follow/unfollow.
- Getting free Instagram followers with the trick of offering a giveaway/minigame.
- Getting free Instagram followers with the trick of hashtags.
- Getting free Instagram followers with the trick of creating viral content.
Promoting your Instagram account on other social media platforms to increase followers.
Choosing the right time to post the content will help increase free Instagram followers.
There are many ways to get free Instagram followers. That said, “free” also means giving a lower efficiency and taking a lot of time.
Ways To Increase Instagram Followers For Sales
For many of you, increasing Instagram followers for sales requires careful research on customers targeted with your products.
It would help to find Instagram accounts that sell similar products to yours to engage and attract their followers.
If you have a good budget, run ads and target the audience by age, location, gender, and interests to attract and encourage them to follow you.
Should You Run Ads To Increase Instagram Followers
Of course, you should. Let’s give it a shot immediately if you have a good budget. The advantage of running Instagram ads is to attract real followers and real customers.
You can also run Instagram ads to increase followers combined with sales on Instagram. However, running Instagram ads requires you to have good skills otherwise, it will be a budget waste.
And if you need, I will teach you how to effectively run ads and sell products/services on Instagram. We also offer you lifetime support, and direct participate in your campaigns to ensure efficiency.
Should You Run Ads To Increase Instagram Followers
It depends on your purpose with Instagram marketing. Most Instagram follower growing services provide fake followers.
If you aim to get a lot of followers just to make your account look good, you can buy fake followers.
If your purpose is marketing, sales, branding, running ads is not a good idea. It is because the followers you buy are not potential customers for your products/services.
My advice is that you should not run ads. I have used many services to increase followers on Instagram. But the result is the low interaction by those who are not my potential customers.
Why Did I Lose Followers On Instagram?
Choosing cheap follower-boosting services is the main reason causing your Instagram followers to drop. That bad situation can be improved only when you base it on the Instagram algorithm to run ads. Paid advertising helps attract new followers to your brand without dropping later.
Next, if you are losing your current followers even when seriously building and attracting followers on Instagram, please ensure that you frequently post relevant to your users.
Your Turn
Above are all my experiences to get Instagram followers – I have successfully applied them to build an Instagram system. So, I would like to share it with you.
I ensure efficiency if you apply it. But now it’s your turn to start increasing Instagram followers for your purpose. If you are looking for a program that teaches you how to increase followers on Instagram, check out this course.