Tips for Increasing Instagram followers

[Garypo]

Hello everyone!
I’d like to hear what methods you use to grow your Instagram followers. This isn’t a personal account. It’s for my shop where I sell products.
Other than targeted ads, are there any strategies that have worked well for you?
I’d appreciate any advice!

 

[YasmeenLondon]

Before anyone comes here and asks you about your marketing plan, or ask you why instagram is important to your business, or tell you to focus on other marketing channels besides social media (all relevant and important advice) but to answer your question:

1. The fastest way to immediately increase your reach is to collaborate with influencers and micro influencers within your niche or followed by your target market.
2. Incentivise a follow/share by reposting UGC or by doing mini competitions or incentivising loyalty, the BEST type of marketing is the marketing your customer do for you, it not only costs you nothing, it's also considerably more impactful.
3. Do not post your products only with a description, for social media you need to be creative, so think of your product journey, post about your products USP's, product use cases, product reviews (very important and ties into the first point)
4. Post consistently, plan your posts in advance, plan your gird layout in advance, schedule your posts and be creative with the captions (avoid AI slop like elevate and enhance)
5. Use relevant and researched hashtags, the recommendation for hashtags used to be between 15-20 per post but the number is now 3-5.
6. Videos are favoured more in instagram's algorithm over pictures.
7. Always think of the value and goals for every single post, what value does this offer to the viewer, what business goals am I achieving with this post.
8. Make sure to engage with other accounts and other posts within your niche, leave comments and reshare content relevant to your products on your own channel.
9. Analyse your competition, direct and indirect and learn from them, bonus points for not only focusing on aesthetics but on strategy.

Social media is a mess, it works for many, fails for many more. Make sure your social media ties to your overall marketing plan (if you dont have one, do one) and make sure time and resources invested in Social Media are worthwhile and not costing you business.

 

[Jprandss]

Giveaways, competitions

 

[fisicx]

The fastest way to grow followers is to pay for them. Loads of deals on sites like ffiver. But this probably isn’t what you want. The post from @YasmeenLondon is excellent but does need to lead on from the question: why do you want followers?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

why do you want followers?

Vanity!

For most, no business plus at all - chasing unicorns!

 

[Ashley_Price]

Followers doesn't (necessarily) equate to sales! You can have 1 million followers, but it's pointless if they're not buying anything.

I can give you a perfect example: a local musician had over 5000 subscribers to his newsletter, so he decided he'd get a C.D. recorded (this is a good few years ago now) because he felt even if only 10% of his subscribers were to buy a copy it will have covered the cost. He got a C.D. done... not a single subscriber ever bought a copy.

I am guessing you want people to see your posts on Instagram and then go to your shop, so follow @YasmeenLondon's points 3 and 8 especially.

Engaging with your target market is one of the fastest ways to get people to notice you and come and check your account. But do meaningful comments on other people's posts, don't just be salesy, make your comment appropriate to what has been posted. Yes, if you have a product that answers a need, there's no problem with commenting about it, but don't go over the top.

Don't come over as desperate, it will drive people away and DO NOT send direct messages trying to sell to people (this is a technique used in the early days of social media and is guaranteed to get you a bad name and blocked).

 

[alamest]

I’ve been trying to grow my Instagram for a while and honestly the things that helped me weren’t anything crazy.

Posting regularly and actually talking to people in the comments made a bigger difference than any hashtag trick. Reels helped a lot too especially when I mixed behind-the-scenes stuff with product posts. I also started replying to DMs and comments quicker, and IG seemed to push my page a bit more.

I tried paid shoutouts ages ago… worked for a short boost, but the followers didn’t stick around. Real ones came from useful posts and conversations.

Still learning, though . Curious to hear what’s working for everyone else.