Instagram remains one of the top social networking sites for all different types of users, and for many
reasons. Its especially popular for brands, businesses, influencers, creators, and entrepreneurs to
reach more users in their target audience and further their endeavors.
Instagram offers access to 1 billion + monthly active users, showing its huge potential in increasing the reputation of a brand if they can tap into their target audience on the platform. It’s also valuable for brand awareness, lead generation, conversion, and revenue growth.
For these reasons, Instagram is invaluable to those looking to expand their efforts on social media and use it to generate real-world results. Because of this, there is a large amount of competition, making it tough to get more followers quickly.
It is a long, tiresome process to attract real followers, and while there are a lot of shortcuts out there in the way of buying bulk followers, wouldn’t it be great to know how to attract real IG followers the right way?
When you invest your time into a long-term Instagram growth strategy, you will not only see quick results in the short term, but you will continue to grow for a long time to come. This is the ultimate goal, so in this guide we’re bringing you the easy way to attract followers for instagram with 10 must-do steps. Let’s get started!
Get Real Followers Fast
Most people looking to establish their Instagram presence are trying to get followers for Instagram fast. How you define “fast” is the main consideration here.
While we’d all love to find Instagram stardom overnight with thousands of followers coming in and super viral content, the reality is that this isn’t something that happens frequently, and it’s impossible to predict.
You should always be realistic about fast Instagram followers and know that you can do some things to speed up your Instagram growth, but it still takes some time and some dedication on your part.
It’s not impossible to get IG followers fast, but you’ll have to be realistic about your Instagram growth and focus on quality, not quantity. You need to have OG followers that care about your content, brand, and will help you to boost your engagement and ultimately tangible results.
The following 10 steps to get followers the right way will help you grow and maintain that growth over time, building an Instagram profile that thrives in the long term. Let’s get it!
10 Steps to Getting Followers the Real Way
The following 10 steps to get real followers will allow you to understand how Instagram growth works, how to utilize different content features to help you along the way, creating a lasting presence on the platform. Let’s get started.
1. Determine the Purpose of Your Account
The first thing you absolutely must do if you want to get followers is to establish the purpose of your Instagram account. If you’re on Instagram simply to be social, this won’t matter much, but if you’re reading this article, you’re likely using Instagram for business or marketing purposes, so read on.
Instagram is a hub for business and marketing, and 90% of all Instagram users follow at least one business on the platform. You need to have a purpose and a goal for your Instagram account so that you can track your progress, measure results, and understand your return on investment.
Some potential goals are:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase product sales
- Improve audience engagement
- Generate income with affiliate marketing
- Drive traffic to an external website
- Connect with niche influencers
- Convert people to email marketing
- Attract superstar new hires for your company
- Generate interest about an upcoming product launch
All of these are great examples, and you can solidify them more by adding measurable numbers. For example: convert 1,000 people to email marketing by January 1st.
These goals can change and evolve as they are met, so keep them in mind as you design the rest of your Instagram strategy to get more Instagram followers.
2. Create a Content Strategy
Instagram is a visual platform, and now that you know what your purpose is, you must consider what you will offer to your audience in terms of content.
If you don’t have a strong content strategy, it doesn’t matter what else you do your Instagram simply won’t become successful and you will fail in your efforts to get more real Instagram followers and retain them.
To create a solid Instagram content strategy, you need to think about the five Ws:
- Who: who is this content for?
- Where: where is your target audience?
- When: when will they have access to the content?
- Why: why is this content valuable to your target audience and why do they need/want it?
- What: what kind of content are you creating?
You have to create a strong connection to your audience through your content and give them a reason to follow you in the first place. There are many different types of Instagram content, and nothing should be posted by accident.
You need to always be purposeful in your content creation and post types so that you can generate the best results possible and get real Instagram followers.
Instagram Content Formats
One of the most important things you can do is create content for Instagram in a variety of content formats. Instagram has evolved greatly since its early days in 2010, so you now have a range of formats at your disposal:
- Instagram in-feed posts: you can post photos and videos to your content feed, as well as carousel posts. This includes shoppable posts as well.
- Instagram stories: one of the most popular features of Instagram, you should focus energy and time into your Instagram story creation.
- Instagram reels: a new feature meant to combat the popularity of TikTok, you may gain more reach with this new feature and attract users that enjoy TikTok.
- IGTV: this feature allows you to create longform videos that will widen your video creation efforts to how-tos, in-depth interviews, guides, and more.
- Instagram live: connect with your followers in real time for Q&A sessions, behind the scenes, feedback sessions, tutorials, product launches, interviews, and more.
When you take advantage of a range of content formats and keep them on brand, you can build a strong reputation, offer your target audience a lot of value, and get more real Instagram followers that turn into real-word results.
3. Optimize Your Instagram Profile
When a new viewer comes across your Instagram profile, what do they see? Your Instagram profile must be optimized with all of the relevant information and branding in order to attract real Instagram followers.
These basic elements include your username, Instagram bio, profile picture, call to action buttons, Instagram story highlight album covers, and the overall aesthetic and visuals of your Instagram profile.
You should work to ensure that all of those elements create a cohesive image for your brand and can easily translate into a reason to follow you.
In addition, consider having an Instagram story active at all times. A colored ring will appear around your profile photo when you have an active Instagram story, attracting users and giving them even more content to check out, keeping them on your profile longer and increasing the chances that they will follow you.
4. Define Your Target Audience
If you want to attract real followers, you must understand who you are creating content for and what they want, as we mentioned in section two. If you don’t define your target audience, you’ll be unlikely to get the long-term growth that you need.
Consider a few questions to help you:
- How old are they?
- Where do they live/ where are they based?
- What do they do for work?
- When do they use Instagram?
- How do they prefer to use Instagram?
- What are their pain points, challenges, and needs?
When you can answer these questions, you’ll know who your content is best suited for and how to interact with them. If you try to attract any and all Instagram users, you’ll be sorely disappointed. You need targeted Instagram growth.
Instagram insights can let you know your current follower demographics and active times, so start there, answer the above questions, and get more specific about who your audience is. Also check out competitor accounts and see what type of users follow them.
5. Use Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags are the bread and butter of discoverability on Instagram. First used on Twitter in 2007, hashtags have become a beacon that helps you get more real Instagram followers.
So, can you just slap on any hashtags and see huge results? Unfortunately, no.
One of the main problems in terms of hashtags is that people just use any random hashtags on their content and hope for the best. This is an ineffective strategy that also ignores your target audience and their behavior on Instagram.
Here are some hashtag tips:
- Avoid overly-used hashtags: when you use widely popular hashtags like #instagood or #beach, you’re likely to go unseen because these hashtag feeds refresh so quickly and the content gets pushed down the feed due to the sheer quantity of posts. Ineffective and a waste of a tag.
- Skip generic hashtags: if you use generic hashtags, you’re unlikely to get the targeted results you need. Focus on hashtags that are specific and deeply connected to your niche. Think about tags that your audience is likely to follow.
When you create a targeted hashtag strategy for Instagram, you’ll be much more likely to attract IG followers. Your content will be more visible and those users will come across it and check out your profile if your content strategy is on point.
You can use up to 30 hashtags on an Instagram post, but if your hashtags are well planned, even using between 4-11 can be enough to see results.
6. Cross-Promote Your Instagram
Instagram isn’t created in a bubble, and because the typical social media user has an average of 8 social network accounts, you can leverage the platform to direct users to your Instagram account.
If you have a presence on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms, be sure to send users to your Instagram account and you can gain followers that way. You can also create a better reputation for your brand when you have a solid presence on multiple social media networks.
Use the same brand aesthetic and profile image on other social networks so that people can find you easily.
7. Tag Your Location
Location tags on Instagram can help you to attract real followers because it’s another place that your content can become discoverable. Users can search for locations on Instagram and all posts that include the location will appear in a feed.
If you have a physical location for your business, make sure that you tag it in your posts so that you can create another feed for people to reference and also offer users the chance to tag that location, creating user-generated content and boosting your reputation through social proof.
You can add geotags to Instagram stories as well, which gives your story the chance to be featured as a part of the official Instagram story of that location.
8. Create a Posting Schedule
Staying consistent is also another vital element to grow your Instagram account and attract more real Instagram followers. It’s also a key component in increasing your Instagram engagement, which can also lead to more content reach and follower growth.
Know when your target audience is online and make sure to keep your posts consistent and on schedule. When you post at a time your audience is likely to see your content, you will have a higher chance of engagement, which keeps your content at the top of their news feed and also may get you to the explore page.
You can use an Instagram scheduler to keep track of your posting schedule or shoot all of your content at once and post it as the week goes on. Most businesses keep an active Instagram presence by posting at least once per day, but you may be able to alter that a bit as long as you stick to a consistent schedule.
9. Interact with Users
Another absolute key in attracting real followers is to be authentic and connect with them personally. When a user likes your content or leaves you a comment, you should respond! Create opportunities for your followers to communicate with you or even send DMs to introduce yourself and your brand.
You can leverage Instagram stories to boost engagement on your Instagram profile and even get feedback and do market research using Instagram live and Instagram story tags like polls, questions, quizzes, and more.
You can also use the follow/unfollow strategy to get more followers; when you interact with a user on Instagram or follow their account, they get notified. This notification will catch their attention and they’ll likely check out your profile and even follow you if your content is attractive.
This is the known #1 way to get more real followers and if you have the other items on this list in place, you’ll be able to grow your Instagram account through interaction.
10. Work with a Reputable Instagram Growth Service
While many Instagram growth companies simply sell you fake followers and deliver them to your account, there are a handful that will help you in the way of engaging with users, creating hashtags, automating your post scheduling, and more.
If you can find a valuable and reputable Instagram growth service that helps to streamline your workflow and take over some of the more time-consuming and tedious elements of Instagram follower growth, they’re a viable option that can help you to attract more real followers.
Do your research and make sure the company is transparent about how they operate and what the service provides.
Does Instagram Automation Work?
One misconception is that using Instagram automation is the easy way to attract real followers; in fact, Instagram has many restrictions in place to combat automation, and front-facing Instagram automation that employs bots to like content, comment, follow, send DMs, and more, will get your Instagram account flagged, blocked, or disabled.
You can, however, use Instagram automation on the back end, such as Instagram post schedulers, auto-posting, and Instagram analytics automation. When a service offers you Instagram automation, be cautious and make sure that it won’t get you in trouble with Instagram.
Final Thoughts: The Easy Way to Attract Real Instagram Followers
So there you have it! 10 must-do tasks that compose the easy way to attract real followers. Instagram mega influencers and celebrities make Instagram look easy, but there is a lot of work, creativity, and strategizing that goes into a successful Instagram platform and marketing strategy.
Take a moment to break open your Instagram efforts, implement these 10 items, and youll get more real followers fast and over the long term.
