8 real ways to get new followers on Instagram

5 min read
25 July 2018

Every day, over 500 million people use Instagram. Every day thousands of them can become your targeted followers which are active, real, interested and willing to buy. What do you need for it?

Simplicity is genius as well as it is often a key to efficiency and does not require any special effort from you.

Use right hashtags

Proficient usage of hashtags will allow you to attract targeted followers rather than just new ones. The nuance is in the details, as usual: proficient means well-thought.

#instagram #nature #lol #cat #black #workout #flowers #wedding #friends #christmas #sweet #iphoneonly #gym #girls #instadaily #model #family #baby #work #art

Above you can see the list of the most popular Instagram hashtags to date. Which of them do you think are the most relevant to you? The answer is simple. None of them.

Popular hashtags usage can give you a few likes and a little bit of traffic, but no new loyal followers, which will stay with you, that is the most important thing.

It is vital to spend time on research and analytics to find relevant hashtags which will work for you. Such services as Websta or Iconosquare will help you make the first selection and check your ideas on hashtags. You can also find the most relevant popular hashtags on the very Instagram. Just use the keyword search of the app according to the purposes of your business.

Divide hashtags you use into several groups and keep a list in content plan notes. For example:

Brand keywords Keywords for goods of a definite category
Keywords for your city

Choose the right time for posting

Use Analytics for your account and carefully monitor your users’ activity – the hours when they read their feed most willingly. Notwithstanding Instagram does not show posts in chronological order, you will get most of likes, views, and followers exactly by posting during activity peak hours.

Turn Stories into Highlights

Common stories disappear yet in 24 hours, and the Highlights feature gives an opportunity not just to give them a second life but also turn your posts into a window to attract followers’ attention.

Use Highlights to:

  • Show your best goods
  • Divide your stories into theme categories to help your clients find all they need quickly
  • Tell about yourself, the company, the brand – clients trust those whom they know

Read more about how to use Highlights in one of our previous articles: https://onlypult.com/en/blog/how-to-use-instagram-highlights-efficiently

Use Geotags

Besides hashtag search, geotag search can also augment the popularity of your posts. You can tag a place both in common posts and in stories, this is an excellent method to attract the local audience and tell about yourself to people around you.

Agree on advertising posts and reviews with bloggers

Creating high-quality content, adding relevant tags, and generally observing all the SMM rules is undoubtedly good but this way you can only provide the ongoing but not very high audience growth. Need more and right now? It’s time to think of advertising. One of the most purposeful promotion formats to date is, most likely, the advertising post published by an influencer whose audience is relevant to your brand. It’s better not to hurry when making a choice: do not take into account just the number of followers because it can be misleading, pay more attention to the blogger’s feed and assess the engagement level. The more likes, comments, and discussions you see – the better.

? Tip

How to choose the right advertising format for Instagram: https://onlypult.com/en/blog/size-matters-advertising-on-instagram

Where to find influencers : https://onlypult.com/en/blog/business-social-media-5-non-obvious-tools-for-your-toolkit

Take followers from your competitors

A quick and simple way to find new and already interested followers – to make the followers of your direct competitors pay attention to you and pave the way for them. Instagram allows to do it in several unobtrusive ways:

  • Follow a user
  • Like user’s posts
  • Comment on user’s posts

Like+ comment + follow-scheme will provide you with the biggest number of new followers.

Set up competitions

When a user mentions his/her friend commenting on your post, it is supposed to be the most valuable thing. And here are the reasons:

  • Social media algorithms interact with recommendations very well (and this is exactly a recommendation).
  • A client which is gained like this is several times more loyal than an occasionall one.
  • The chance that a visitor will become a follower is considerably higher in this case.

Of course, you can use different schemes: for example, a request to repost, but a request to tag a friend and follow to participate in the competition will bring better results.

? Tip

How to set up the best Instagram competition: https://onlypult.com/en/blog/how-to-hold-a-contest-in-the-instagram

Remind your audience that they can become your followers

This piece of advice seems trivial but, perhaps, it works exactly for this reason. The users may be interested in your content, but it does not always lead to the right decision – to become your followers. And nothing is easier than remind them that this is important to you and you expect it: do not hesitate to write about it in your posts. Remind that they need to follow you not to miss the new content.

Do you still doubt? See several videos of famous bloggers on YouTube and appreciate the tactics in action.