If you’re trying to get more Instagram followers, you’re not alone. The more engaged Instagram followers you have, the more sales you’re likely to make — which is why every brand on Instagram is trying to grow their account.
By following a few key tips, you can get a leg up on your competition and get as many Instagram followers as possible. Here’s what you need to know to increase your Instagram following.
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Helpful Tools To Gain More Instagram Followers
There are lots of time-saving tools out there — many of them 100% free to use — that will help you get more followers on Instagram. Here are a few of the top tools to look into.
Cross-Promote Using A Link In Bio Tool
One of the easiest ways to gain followers on Instagram is to cross-promote across all of your social media platforms, newsletters, and websites. Use a link in bio tool for an easy way to get the job done. With a bio link tool you can combine multiple links into one URL. This will allow you to direct your followers from other platforms straight to your Instagram account.
Add all of the links you’d like to share to your bio link tool. Then customize the theme of your landing page so it’s on-brand. Finally, make your link go live and keep an eye on the analytics to see how it’s performing. Free marketing tools like Woorise bio link are a smart way to increase your followers on Instagram.
Use An Instagram Growth Tool
Using an Instagram growth tool that focuses on organic growth is an excellent way of growing your following on Instagram. There are some great growth tools out there that you can use to attract followers to your account who will actually engage with your content. These types of tools are great for automating the growth process and eliminating the fear of attracting fake followers or bots to your account, which only end up hurting your engagement.
Kicksta is a great example of an effective Instagram growth tool that gets you real Instagram followers through the power of AI. When you sign up for Kicksta, you provide the tool with a list of Instagram accounts whose followers you’d like to attract. Then Kicksta uses your account to interact with those users. With Kicksta “liking” around 10,000 photos per month, there’s a good chance that the majority of those targeted accounts will come back to check out your account and then follow along. Kicksta works for every industry and can help you get real followers who will stay with your account long-term.
Utilize A Scheduling Tool
The more consistently you post on Instagram, the more likely people will be to follow your account — and by using a scheduling tool, you can schedule your IG posts in advance so you never forget a post.
There are lots of good Instagram scheduling tools out there. If you like to plan out the visuals of your feed in advance, try using Planoly. Planoly lets you lay out your posts in a grid so you can preview what your Instagram profile will look like before you post.
Another great option is Hootsuite. Hootsuite’s collaborative calendar makes it simple for your team to schedule social media posts together. Hootsuite will also automatically schedule posts to fill any gaps left in your calendar.
Buffer is another good Instagram scheduling tool for brands. This user-friendly platform is easy to use to schedule your Instagram posts. Buffer also offers robust analytics to help measure your performance. Use a tool like Planoly, Hootsuite, or Buffer to schedule posts and increase your followers on Instagram.
Create High-Quality Images With An Editing Tool
Posting high-quality images is a good way to gain more followers. A visually attractive Instagram feed will encourage people to tap that Follow button, and continuing to consistently post beautiful images will help them continue to follow along.
VSCO is a good photo editing app for brands. With lots of premade filters plus customizable editing tools, it’s easy to make your photos stand out with just a few taps. VSCO has a free option so you can help your photos look professional at no cost.
Lightroom is also a popular choice. This photo editing software created by Adobe works on all devices and creates beautiful photos that will make your Instagram feed look cohesive and on brand.
In addition to editing your photos to make sure they’re high-quality, use tools that will make your content stand out. Your photos might be great quality now, but how you present them will make the difference between your account getting lost in the crowd or standing out on the Explore page. Find and use content tools to create content that makes your account pop.
Over is a great example. Over provides thousands of templates, graphics, and fonts to help you create graphics that look branded and professional.
StoryArt is another fun app to help you create good content, putting photos together to make collages for Instagram Stories.
Then, there’s Picsart, one of the most easy-to-use editing tools you’ll find. You’ll want to take advantage of it if you want to create stunning images. With the use of various AI features, Picsart acts as an efficient image background remover, image generator, and writing assistant. At the end of the day, Picsart has everything you need to make content that your followers will love.
Finally, if you want to make your own graphics, consider using Canva to help. Canva is a website that lets you easily assemble design elements (either working off of a template or starting from scratch) to make graphics for your social media feeds. You can also create brands in Canva and save certain colors, fonts, and other design elements to use again and again.
Best Practices For Gaining Instagram Followers
Following basic Instagram marketing best practices can help you gain more Instagram followers as you curate a high-quality account that provides true value to your followers. Start out by optimizing your Instagram profile.
Optimize Your Profile
There are several different steps that go into optimizing your IG profile. Let’s take a look at the @talbotsofficial Instagram account as an example.
Profile Picture
There are several different directions you can go when choosing your IG profile picture. Try using your logo or a high-quality, well-lit photo of a person’s face. Talbots keeps it simple with a black background and the word “Talbots” over it.
Username
Your Instagram username should be as close to your business name as possible. Talbots went with @talbotsofficial, leaving no doubt about whose account this is.
Bio Content
Talbots’ bio is a great example of what to include in your IG bio content. The company’s bio reads: “Love your style. Let you shine through.” Talbots also includes a branded hashtag, #MyTalbots, for viewers to browse. And finally, it adds a call to action encouraging you to tap the link and shop its feed.
Link
Don’t forget to use your link in bio tool to add a link in your bio. With a link in bio tool, you can add a customized landing page of links so your followers can get to anywhere they’re trying to go.
Highlights
Save your Instagram Stories so that your followers can access the content even after the 24 hours is up. Talbots has a neat row of highlights on its Instagram profile, with each one clearly labeled so you can find what you’re looking for.
User-Generated Content
Taking advantage of user-generated content is a great way to grow your Instagram account. Posts and ads that incorporate user-generated content — photos or videos created by your customers — get more engagement than traditional company posts.
You can find user-generated content in a few different ways. Try holding a hashtag campaign. Come up with a branded hashtag (like Talbots’ #MyTalbots) and invite your followers to use that hashtag when they post photos of your product. Then you can look through the hashtag to find content to use.
You can also hold a photo contest, asking your followers to share their photos for a chance to be reposted on your account. Here, Starbucks reposted an adorable photo of one of its canine customers with a coffee cup. (Remember to always ask permission before reposting an image that a follower has shared!)
Create Video Content
Video content is extremely popular on Instagram. Videos help your followers identify more closely with you, making your business account seem more personable. Here are a few types of video content you might want to create.
Tutorials
How-to tutorials are the most popular kind of Instagram video content. Try creating tutorial videos to get more Instagram followers. In this helpful how-to video, a Bath & Body Works employee explains how to navigate the store during the Christmas rush while following the company’s social distancing guidelines that are in place.
Behind The Scenes
Behind the scenes videos are another popular type of content on Instagram. With these videos, you’re able to give your followers a glimpse at the inner workings of your company, letting them see the faces behind your account and learn how their favorite product gets made.
Instagram Stories And Live
Instagram Stories or Live videos provide a great way to engage and interact with your followers. Here, Perfect Bar employees answer questions via Instagram Stories about the company’s newest product — refrigerated peanut butter cups.
Personal Stories
Personal stories are another type of Instagram video you’ll want to create. Whether you share the story of an influencer, one of your customers, or one of your employees, sharing a personal story is an excellent method of getting your followers engaged and interested.
Partner With Influencers
Influencer marketing is a hugely effective method of gaining more Instagram followers. 93% of marketers use social media influencers and 84% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is successful. Instagram is the most important platform for many marketers’ influencer campaigns, bringing a great ROI to marketers who take this route.
To find influencers, search the Instagram app looking for influencers in your industry or niche. You might want to target micro-influencers, which have a lot of benefits for brands. And you’ll definitely want to find influencers whose values and goals seem to line up with yours.
What can you do with the influencers you work with? Here are a couple of ideas.
Run Giveaways
Influencer giveaways can help you get up to thousands of new Instagram followers at one time. Have your influencer share a post giving away some of your products. Then make sure that entrants need to follow your brand account in order to win.
In this giveaway, YouTuber Jeanine Amapola partnered with Fabletics to give away a year of free leggings and a virtual workout with Kate Hudson. Entrants were asked to follow Jeanine, follow fabletics, like Jeanine’s post, and leave a comment tagging friends in order to enter the giveaway.
This giveaway was a great method of driving more traffic to the Fabletics IG page.
Influencer Takeovers
Give an influencer access to your Instagram Stories for a day so they can share a day in their life, answer questions, or run some sort of takeover for your followers to enjoy. Influencer takeovers can increase brand awareness, increase engagement, and help promote a specific product or event.
Here, influencer Danielle Brown took over Pura Vida Bracelets for the day to show Pura Vida’s followers her morning routine. Influencer takeovers are a fun way to get your audience engaged.
Find Your Theme
Your Instagram theme can be defined as the overall “look” and feel of your account. It’s about the colors and other design elements you use to evoke emotion when people look at your grid. Having a strong theme doesn’t mean every photo you post looks exactly alike, but it does mean all of your photos coordinate. They make sense when you look at all of them together.
When it comes to Instagram growth, consistency and aesthetic are key. Find a consistent theme that resonates with your brand and audience. Then stick with it. This will show potential followers who come across your page the kind of quality content they can expect when they follow you.
Here’s an example from MELT Ice Cream. MELT uses lots of black, white, and bright yellow in their Instagram theme. As you scroll back through this company’s feed, you see a balanced mixture of smiling faces, product shots, user-generated content, and plenty of delicious scoops of ice cream. MELT also does a great job of slightly tweaking the colors and elements in its photos to help them be seasonal while staying on-brand — spot the small pumpkins and apples strategically placed in this fall feed.
For Skillshare, beautiful graphics with pastel colors take center stage. Skillshare finds success through sharing photos and graphics with interesting colors and patterns that appeal to this company’s creative-minded audience. Many of the images Skillshare posts were created by the company’s followers and/or teachers, helping simultaneously advertise Skillshare classes and get more people engaged with the posts.
Here’s one more example we love: Hello Fresh. Almost every photo this company posts is of a large, round plate of food. The colors on Hello Fresh’s feed are bright and warm. Scrolling through this company’s posts makes you want to sit down at the dinner table — which is, of course, exactly what Hello Fresh wants you to do.
Finding the right theme for your account is important so that your feed will be visually appealing and encourage people to follow.
Increase your Followers On Instagram
Taking actionable steps to increase your number of followers on Instagram is always a good idea. The more followers you have, the more engaged sales you’re likely to make. Use these tips and tricks to optimize your Instagram profile and post high-quality content that will attract engaged followers to your account!.
