How To Get Followers on Instagram: From 0 to 10K followers
When you’re just starting an online business, it can be exciting to imagine how you can successfully sell your product through Instagram … once you’ve built a following. But how to get followers on Instagram is the million dollar question.
Your first 10,000 Instagram followers are the hardest to get. Why? No one knows who you are yet.
You’ve still got to prove yourself as a successful brand and influencer. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
If you follow this guide on how to get followers on Instagram, you could hit 10,000 Instagram followers in as little as six months. No jokes or tricks!
#1. Get Instagram Followers by Joining Instagram Engagement Groups
You can find engagement groups for travel, beauty, fashion and more.
In these groups, you can get followers and likes from people who have shared interests.
But if you’re serious about getting their attention, you should also return the favor by following fan pages for people who join the group.
I’ve had friends get 2,000 new followers in only a couple weeks using this strategy.
While it might not help with immediate sales, it helps you gain credibility early on so your Instagram page doesn’t show that you only have a handful of followers.
Remember, this is more of a short-term strategy for your first few weeks on Instagram, not a long-term one for getting loyal Instagram followers.
#2. Repost Others’ Content to Get Free Instagram Followers
When I was starting out with social media marketing and building my store’s Instagram following, my entire posting strategy revolved around reposting other people’s content.
While doing this, I made sure to credit the original poster in my descriptions, every time. It’s the only way to gain free followers without getting flagged.
One of the biggest home runs I had was when I re-posted a video that amassed 52,862 views, got 1264 comments and 9,147 likes. At the time, I didn’t even have 10,000 followers so this was a big freaking deal. The best part? I didn’t run ads or anything. I got Instagram followers free.
#3. Ask Customers to Share Their Photos to Build Instagram Followers
When you’re just starting out, getting followers on Instagram will be a lot easier with customer photos in your feed. Why? It helps increase social proof.
If you’ve never had a customer before, reach out to influencers in your niche with under 5,000 followers. I know the number seems low but influencers with few followers on Instagram want to monetize their accounts and will be willing to take pictures with your products at a much lower rate.
You can also offer them an affiliate deal where they’ll get a commission for every sale they score with their customer referral link.
If you’ve already had a couple of sales, reach out to customers and offer a free gift or cash incentive for taking quality images with the product they purchased.
Offering incentives isn’t going to be your long-term strategy but for the short-term, while you try to build your brand, this can help you grow.
As more customers start seeing customer photos on your Instagram, they’ll naturally start tagging you in posts when they receive their products.
In a nutshell, if you comment on customers’ posts, repost their content and follow them, you’ll likely get them to follow you back.
Though some will follow you after tagging you in their post on their own. Get that word-of-mouth going!
#4. Gain Instagram Followers by Having a Consistent Style
I know this sounds like one of those ‘blah, blah, blah’ ways to gain followers on Instagram. But it isn’t.
Here’s why: people don’t follow you because of the content you’ve posted but because of what they think the future content you’ll post will be like.
Say you have a Dog fan page, every day you post cute dog pictures and videos without fail.
If Instagram users keep seeing your posts,they’ll eventually realize that you always post the cutest dog content.
So they follow you with the expectation that your account will always be more of the same type of content.
Having a consistent style or theme is more than just a branding play, it’s about creating an expectation for your Instagram account that your followers or potential followers can count on. They want to see more of the same type of content, every day.
If you can maintain that consistency with every post, you’ll gain followers on Instagram fast while fostering confidence and trust in your brand.
#5. Use Hashtags to Get Followers on Instagram
Many experts will tell you to only use 5 or 11 hashtags or some other arbitrary numbers. But when I was building my store’s Instagram account, I ignored their advice and ran wild with it.
I’d copy and paste a list of hashtags from my phone onto my app. Then, I’d sometimes switch it up to try different hashtags. And eventually, I figured out which ones were right for my brand.
Usually, I’d go as close to or right to the max number of hashtags possible — 30. That’s the magic number.
Truth is, you add all those hashtags in the first comment. And as your page engagement grows, no one will ever see the first comment because they’re too busy tagging their friends in your post.
Sure, when you’re starting out people might see it. But if the goal is to increase visibility, the easiest way to do it is to add more hashtags. As you gain followers, your posts will rank higher for those hashtag keywords, giving you even more visibility.
If your hashtags are niche specific, you’ll increase your likelihood of being found by a relevant audience, which will help you grow your followers on Instagram as well.
So avoid generic hashtags like #love or #picoftheday if you’re selling fashion, for example.
#6. Use Location Tags to Get Followers from Your Vicinity
Did you know that it’s possible to make your Instagram Stories and posts discoverable by tagging your location? The “location tag” reveals the city you’re in or the venue where the video or the image was captured. Plus, it allows your posts to be categorized with all content tagged for that specific vicinity.
So if you’re a local business, you can use these geotags to make it easier for people to find and follow your Instagram account. Locations also have their own distinct feed, Story, and hashtags – you can contribute to these by using a location sticker in your own Stories.
#7. Follow People Who Like Competing Instagram Pages
To get that Instagram followers increase, you need to find people who follow brands.
Who are your biggest competitors on Instagram? Note them down. Then, browse their posts to see who’s commenting on their posts. Follow them and engage with them.
Keep in mind that when choosing competitors on Instagram, it’s better to go for the smaller brands.
Why? Because if you were selling makeup brushes and trying to engage people who comment on Sephora, there’s a good chance that they’re not the right audience despite being in a similar niche. Bigger brands tend to have more customer loyalty.
However, if you have a competitor who has 100,000 followers on their account, they may not be as loyal to that brand.
When commenting on posts of those you follow, try to not sound salesy
And never use the same comment for every person you message.
If they ask a question on their post, give them an answer.
You can also look at the types of comments others are posting for ideas and inspo..
As you keep following and engaging with people, you’ll start to build Instagram followers organically.
#8. Host Giveaways to Build Your Instagram Followers
Hosting giveaways is another effective way to get followers on Instagram .
If you host giveaways on your website and provide visitors with an option to follow you on Instagram and other social networks, you’ll have a much bigger reach.
If your audience size is small, you can post your giveaway in certainFacebook groups. Getting featured on giveaway blogs might also help spread the word about your promotion
When I first started working in marketing, I’d reach out to giveaway blogs. I’d send them some free products in exchange for a review post.
If you’re just starting out, giveaways can help you get more followers on Instagram. However, if you do them too often, you might not get the type of audience you want.
If your goal is to get sales, giveaways won’t necessarily help you get more of them. But if you’re only looking to get Instagram followers fast, this strategy can work quite well.
#9. Create Instagram Guides That Attract New Followers to Your Account
Instagram Guides are a new way to share educational and fun content with your followers. The content format gives users a simpler way to consume useful tips and recommendations. In an IG Guide, you can add an introduction, title, text, headers, and even curate videos and images (that you’ve published on your feed).
You can create a Guide about:
A place – review a city, sports venue, exotic location, etc.
A product – offer guidance on the products available in your Instagram Shop
A post – curate a thread of your existing posts with headlines and commentary
To get started, click the plus symbol in the upper right corner of your Instagram profile, choose Guide, and tap the appropriate option.
Instagram allows users to share Guides in DMs and across Stories, so if you manage to publish a few high-quality Guides, those who see them will be naturally inclined to share them with their social circle.
And because the Instagram algorithm favors posts with high engagement, if many people end up sharing your guide, it may even appear in more people’s feeds. As a result, you can potentially gain a lot of new followers by creating an Instagram Guide.
#10. Major tip to increase your following.
Engagement makes a difference. It’s important that your followers know that you appreciate them just as much as they do you.
For increased engagement, you should search the hashtags used to attract followers, find users that stand out, like a few pics and comment.
You’ll gain the curiosity of those you’ve engaged with, they’ll follow your page, and tag their friends on your posts.