In the ever-evolving landscape of social media, mastering the art of gaining followers on Instagram remains paramount in 2023. This guide unveils strategic insights to navigate the dynamic algorithm, captivate your target audience, and amplify your presence. Emphasizing genuine engagement over superficial metrics, it delves into crafting compelling content, leveraging trending hashtags, and fostering authentic connections. From optimizing profiles to utilizing interactive features, discover actionable tactics to organically expand your follower base. As Instagram continues to shape digital interactions, this guide equips you with contemporary techniques to foster growth, enhance visibility, and forge a meaningful digital community.
Use hashtags:
You sit there and think, “Really? Is that your advice? But listen to me. Hashtags are always an important tool for Instagram users. Yes, Instagram has a reputation for offering annoying and smug hashtags like #nofilter, #iwokeuplikethis, or #selfielove. But beyond what is generally ridiculed, many are used directly by people in the target group. In fact, whole communities are built around some hashtags that work almost like small forums.
Finding the right ones isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Instagram finally rolled out an autocomplete feature that makes suggestions every time you type #. One useful aspect of this is showing the number of posts for each hashtag. You can finally see where users are spending their time.
#UseGood:
But even including removed hashtags in your posts isn’t necessarily the best way to get noticed. You need to use hashtags that are truly relevant to your brand or a specific audience. Assuming you’re looking for followers to promote a new client’s handmade guitar website, you can definitely use #music. But it’s too general. It has a wide reach and 181 million public posts at the time of writing, but there is plenty of competition. Too loud to notice. You can use #guitar, but that’s about 22 million posts, which is still a lot of noise. With #guitars, on the other hand, it is a little more manageable 1.9 million.
But like SEO, the deeper you dig, the more good stuff you’ll find that actually leads to conversions. Auto-suggests alone showed the tags #guitarshop, #customguitar, #customguitars, #handmadeguitar, and #handmadeguitars in 80,000 to 200,000 posts. This is where your target users reside. The more often you are there, the more people will follow you. You can probably get some of the best posts in your niche. I would like to reiterate the communities that are emerging around hashtags. Would you like to know where people are hanging out, for example at #guitarplayers or #indierockabama? These are areas where tons of potential followers gather and become friends.
And because they’re not as crowded as #music, your posts stay up longer, so more people can see, follow, and like you.
Add hashtags:
The final two things to consider when using hashtags to find followers are how often they are used and where they are placed. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but you shouldn’t always use that many (it looks like spam). Some case studies have shown that interaction often stabilizes after 10 beacons.
Even adding a lot of hashtags to a post can look like spam. You can get around this by putting 5 simple dots on 5 simple lines to make the post hide from user feeds. You can also add comments to your photo, which are nothing more than hashtags, and IG will always index your photo with those. But it has to be the first comment, and due to how IG’s algorithms work, you have to post that comment right after it’s published. Otherwise, you risk losing energy and losing some potential followers.
Omg, and you can also use the hashtags in the Stories. So if you’re documenting your day or doing something silly or funny, type the hashtags in the text box. They are searchable! They might not look good in your story composition, so you can narrow down the hashtag and hide it behind a big emoji. An instantly expanded audience (or is it an expanded Insta audience?) who will see the real you and follow you, because your story proves you’re too awesome not to follow.
Be social:
Instagram is a social network. So you have to be really sociable. It’s really easy to scream at night, but if you really want to learn how to get Instagram followers, you have to be someone they want to follow. Like other people’s photos and comments: This activity will be visible to your followers and create a circular network. You like their post, they click and like yours, and someone else sees their activity and likes you enough to follow. It’s the number one way to get followers these days, but it also means you need to be active on IG and not just schedule posts and hang out. You can’t expect a million shares and retweets on IG like on other platforms. Work is needed here. Forgiveness!
Comment and chat with others: When you receive a comment on a post, reply! Start a conversation with people. Have a conversation about someone else’s photo. People actually read conversations in comments, and having followers doesn’t mean much if they’re not engaged. So get them involved. Tag people in posts and comments: Again, IG’s circular nature shows itself when you start tagging people in your posts or comments. It’s a way of showing that you’re involved in the community, and as you make friends and get to know them, you’ll see or post things you want to show them. For example, check out this awesome design I made with Divi!
@elegantthemes. Whether it’s a brand or an individual, sometimes they see these things and share them on their Page (which can get you lots of followers and engagement).
