You may have asked yourself more than once how to gain followers on Instagram sustainability and effectively. Afterall, it can seem overwhelming with there being so many people on the platform and so much content to compete with. If you are a business or influencer who need to create a larger following, the entire process to get more followers on Instagram may seem complex.

That is why we wanted to write an article about the best ways to gain followers on Instagram for those looking for different approaches related to this topic. When discussing how to get more followers on Instagram, we want to focus as much as possible on data-based approaches that you can undertake whether you are established on Instagram, or just starting out. At the end of the day, we want to give you advice on how to form a long-term strategy to grow your Instagram follower account and extend the reach of your content.  

12 Practical Tips to Gain Followers on Instagram

Have you ever wondered “how do I get more followers on Instagram and beat the competition?” When you are active on Instagram and want to get more followers, the first thing you need to do is put together a well-thought-out plan. But what makes up that plan, and what steps makes the most sense for your profile?      

Ultimately, you need to identify actionable steps to build a long-term strategy. Below, we describe 12 of the best ways to gain followers on Instagram that you should consider using and why: 

1. Research the Best Content Formats
2. Put a lot of Thought into your Captions
3. Find the Best Hashtags to Use
4. Post at Optimal Times
5. Write Persuasive CTAs
6. Take into Account Instagram SEO Best Practices
7. Understand your Target Audience
8. Research (Relevant) Trends
9. Build, and Interact with, your Community
10. Explore Cooperation Opportunities with other Profiles
11. Work with Influencers
12. Make Realistic Goals and Monitor your Progress

1. Research the Best Content Formats

When thinking about how to get more Instagram followers, one of the most basic questions you need to ask is what content formats are most popular with your audience. Your target audience may have certain preferences when it comes to viewing a particular format that your content is in. For instance, perhaps stories are just the format your audience is looking for. Or perhaps your carousels have generated the most interactions in the past, which can be a good indicator of audience interest. 

Conducting data analysis that looks into the best content formats can be a relatively easy way to get more Instagram followers since you can understand what formats your target audience most wants to see. You could, for instance, look at what specific content format is correlated with the highest post interaction rates. What can make this type of analysis especially powerful is when you can bring in not only your own data, but also the data of other similar profiles for analysis. This gives you a larger data set to analyze so you can get a more accurate understanding of your audience’s preferences. 

2. Write Attention-Catching Captions

Instagram is a highly visual platform, but the written captions are incredibly important as well. When considering how to get more followers on Instagram, remember that, with Instagram, it is not always what you show in your pictures or video, but also in how you describe something and generate interest in what you are showing. After all, one of the tricks of getting followers is to first have them consume your content so they see how valuable, informative, or entertaining it really is. The main challenge is getting them to see what you have created.

There are a number of different approaches you can take to write compelling captions on Instagram. What is most important is that you focus on writing captions that not only describe what you are showing, but also generate attention and interest. You may be creating amazing images and videos for your Instagram images or videos, but it can sometimes be that you experiment with different approaches to get people to actually look at or watch them. Don’t be afraid to try different things and then track the various metrics associated with each approach. 

3. Understand and Utilize the Power of Hashtags

When researching ways related to how to gain more followers on Instagram, you may not hear much about hashtags. However, they are an important approach to keep in mind in order to gain followers on Instagram. There are actually a number of important things to keep in mind related to the hashtags you use on Instagram, which includes finding hashtags that have a high post interaction rate, hashtags that have the most reach, and the number of hashtags you should on your posts. 

Hashtags are important because they make your content easier to find for people searching for it. When you use hashtags, you are marking your content as being related to a specific topic or topic area. For this reason, the first thing to be aware of is that you need to use relevant hashtags for your content, and you are not simply using trending hashtags, no matter what they are. 

Moreover, it is also important to keep in mind that you should look for relevant hashtags with the most reach. There are useful (and free) Instagram hashtag generator tools that you can utilize to help you effectively find hashtags you should use, and the reach associated with each hashtag. You can then create a comprehensive list of hashtags with high post interaction rates and reach. At the end of the day, the more prospective followers you can reach with your content the better, so finding hashtags with the most reach can be very helpful.   

Lastly, you should also not forget about the number of hashtags that are optimal for your posts. As an in-depth study showed, it actually is most optimal to use the maximum 30 hashtags on Instagram. However, as we already pointed out above, you should always make sure that the hashtags you are using are relevant for your content.   

4. Post at Optimal Times

Another important topic related to how to increase your followers on Instagram revolves around finding the right posting times. You ideally want to post on Instagram when there is the highest likelihood that people will interact with what you are posting. This represents a positive signal that can help you with the Instagram algorithm and get your post seen by more people. The more people who see your post, the higher the probability that they will follow you. However, keep in mind that researching posting times alone won’t automatically help you gain followers on Instagram. Rather, it is one of the many factors that you need to take into account, first and foremost being the overall quality of your content.  

Similar to hashtag research, there are data-driven methods to find the best times to post on Instagram that analyze data from both your profile and other you choose to track. This makes finding a social media tool that not only allows for best times to post analysis but also unlimited profile tracking so important. Once you specify the profiles you want to track as well as the timeframe you are interested in, you can find out what times you should consider posting. The example below was generated by the all-in-one social media tool Fanpage Karma and shows what a best time to post chart could look like. The posting frequency is represented by the size of the circle, while the post interaction rate of each timeframe is represented by the color (with green showing the highest post interaction rates).  

5. Use Persuasive (and Descriptive) CTAs

When considering how you can have more followers on Instagram, sometimes it pays to give people clear guidance on the actions you want them to take. In other words, it usually helps to tell people consuming your content, on any social media network, to remember to follow your profile. 

Creating persuasive CTAs is one of the best ways to gain followers on Instagram that really anyone can implement. This is because they remind those viewing your content that they should take some action. While telling them to follow your profile is one part of this, it generally helps to give a reason to do so. For example, you can tell them to follow to more easily keep up to date every time you post. There are many reasons why someone might want to follow you, so make sure you make it clear why that is. 

6. Take into Account Instagram SEO Best Practices

When going through approaches related to how to gain Instagram followers, you might want to pay special attention to social SEO best practices. While there are differences between search engines like Google and the algorithms that social media networks use, there are nonetheless several similar best practices to follow, such as keyword research, including alt texts for your images, and, as we just explained, posting at the right times. 

In terms of Instagram SEO, conducting keyword research is an especially important step to take. There are tools you can use to find the trending keywords for your industry that you can integrate into your captions and your alt texts. So if you are forming your own list about how to get more followers Instagram, make sure that you keep social SEO best practices on the top of it. 

7. Understand your Target Audience

One of the ways you can approach the question of how do you get more followers on Instagram is by clearly understanding your target audience. Sounds simple, right? In many cases, you might have a good idea of who is consuming your content. However, do you have a perfectly clear picture? And are you missing out on expanding your following?  

At the end of the day, one of the secrets to getting more followers on Instagram is to understand who you are making your content for. You may be concentrating on a certain content area, but there could be niches that relate to your overall topic that you haven’t addressed yet. Perhaps you haven’t created much content in a specific niche where you have previously seen high engagement rates and saw a spike in your follower count. For this reason, you may want to use a social media tool that can help you research your target audience, their preferences, and who may be interested in your content that you had not yet thought of. 

8. Research (Relevant) Trends

An effective way for how to get more followers Instagram is related to keeping up on the latest trends and talking about the most popular topics in your area of interest. This gives you a great opportunity to quickly create content that adds interesting insights to these trending topics. However, the social media world moves fast and trending topics come and go. While keeping up on the latest trends might sound fairly straightforward, quickly detecting new trends in your industry, content niche, or region can actually be more difficult than it sounds. 

Being able to consistently conduct targeted research about trending topics is an important approach to get more followers on Instagram. You can, of course, research trends ad hoc on social media by yourself, but it also may make sense to find a social media tool that allows you to research content social media trends by allowing you to zero in on the industries, content niches, or locations that interest you. 

9. Build, and Interact with, your Community

Managing your community on Instagram, as well as other social media networks that you are also active on, can really be time-consuming once you grow your following. There are messages and comments you have to reply to, as well as finding an approach for organizing everything you have to do. For this reason, it may make sense to find a specialized community management tool that helps you to organize your engagement activities as well as reply to messages more efficiently with AI integration and the option to automate tasks. 

10. Explore Cooperation Opportunities with other Profiles

With so many profiles and so much content on Instagram, sometimes the secret to gain followers on Instagram is finding relatively easy ways to boost your reach. So if you are looking to get more Instagram followers, it may makes sense to look beyond your own profile and look at cooperating with other creators. This can be a win-win situation since, if you are both promoting the other’s profile, then others may get a chance to discover your content and end up following you.  

Admittedly, this may not be the right approach for everybody. Many companies probably don’t want to cooperate with competitors in a specific industry or location. However, if there is not a direct competition between your profiles, then it may make sense to use each other’s reach to help one another. For instance, those who are looking to be influencers on the platform may find this approach easy to implement while having quite a lot of upside to grow their following and gain more influencer opportunities.   

11. Work with Influencers

If you own a company, you may be wondering specifically how to increase followers on Instagram for your business. Apart from the tips we have already presented, one of the ways you can approach this is to work with influencer who have the target audience you want to speak to. There are a large variety of Instagram influencers that you can research and potentially work with, depending on what you want to accomplish and what industries or audiences you want to reach. If done correctly, having an influencer help promote your own profile and content can help people discover it, and they may end up following you. 

The biggest positive to this approach is that you can relatively quickly select the influencer who can speak to your target audience. The negative is that influencers can be expensive and, because of this expensive, is most likely not a long-term strategy for everyone. It is important to note that if you want to try this approach out, it is essential to be sure that you find the right influencer for your business by researching different options thoroughly. 

12. Make Realistic Goals and Monitor your Progress

The last tip we have related to the topic of generating more Instagram followers is one that you may not immediately think of but is, nonetheless, important. This has to do setting realistic goals and monitoring your progress. This is essential since you need to make sure that your strategies are working and whether you need to adjust them. It also helps you to see how you stand in relation to other similar profiles. 

Benchmarking your own profile against other similar ones is a great way to set realistic goals for your Instagram account. You can always benchmark yourself against your competitors or others in your industry to get accurate idea of what goals you should set for your own metrics. Having a social media tool that allows you to track dozens or more similar profiles is important, since this helps you add more data points to your benchmarking analysis. 

As you go, you can always use content optimization approaches to help you discover new ways to optimize your content. This is in conjunction with monitoring your progress to see what is working and what may be holding your profile back. The more data you collect and analyze, the better understanding you have about what you need to do to improve. 

How to Get more Instagram Followers

Many people are searching for how to increase followers on Instagram organically and sustainably. As we have presented in this article, there are many different approaches you can take. At the end of the day, it is important that you study the best ways to gain Instagram followers based on your own analyses, experiences, and goals. It is important that you do your research and base your decisions on data so you can be sure you are on the right track. 

For this reason, those looking to get more followers on Instagram should consider using a social media tool to gain in-depth analytical insights, many of which we mentioned above. Fanpage Karma is an all-in-one social media tool that offers advanced benchmarking and content optimization insights that are enabled with unlimited profile tracking. This is in addition to community management, research, and publishing features. You can try a free 14-day trial to see how this tool can improve your understanding of your social media performance.

Fanpage Karma also offers a free weekly webinar that you are welcome to register for in order to learn more about using a social media tool.