5 Practical Ways to Get More Instagram Followers

Instagram has emerged as one of the leading social networks, with over 600 million active monthly users.

Traditionally used for socialising and sharing purposes only, Instagram has now become a noteworthy platform for digital marketing. Subsequently, Instagram marketing is on the rise.  Marketers prefer Instagram due to the growth and ROI maximisation potential offered. Also, the noiseless and convenient Instagram experience makes it the ideal platform to market brands and engage with consumers.

The engagement rate offered on Instagram is also considerably higher than that offered by its closest competitors.

Locowise 2015 study concluded that average engagement on Instagram posts was 2.81% of the total audience, that’s over ten times greater than the average engagement on Facebook posts.

Followers are the key to successful Instagram marketing. Understanding the relationship between engagement and followers is no rocket science.

In order to maximise ROI and boost engagement, you must have a considerable number of followers, regardless of your operational scale.

To begin with; you must have a decent Instagram brand page. By ‘decent’ we mean well maintained, active and professional.

Your Instagram page must appear professional. For a brand, a well-crafted, informative and actionable bio, decent profile picture and the Instagram business profile must be on the checklist.

Once you’ve set up a profile in the appropriate manner, you can utilise various methods to increase your followers’ base.

Below are the five most practical methods to get more Instagram followers.  

1. Table of Contents

   Purchase Followers

There’s an easy way to jumpstart your Instagram followers’ base, without putting in much efforts and resources. There are tons of Instagram Marketing tools that can be utilised to purchase audience for Instagram. These tools provide ‘genuine’ followers, likes and views for your Instagram account. You can get followers for a reasonable amount and get them delivered instantly. Another alternative would be to buy real Instagram followers.

Startups and businesses, struggling with their marketing, can make the most out of this method. Not only will the higher number of followers make their pages look professional, but it’ll also encourage more people to like your brand page, triggering organic growth.

2. Contests and Campaigns

Contests and campaigns are the most efficient ways of utilising your current audience to approach and gain more followers.

Conducting contests and giveaways can assist you with stimulating audience and driving engagement. You can announce contests and add CTAs in contest posts such as like, share, tag your friends, sign-up etc. You can increase brand awareness and get your brand some exposure by conducting contests as consumers with diverse interests may join your contests.

Also, you can use information from insights to mold your contests according to the preferences and behaviour of your target audience.

Running campaigns is the smartest way to obtain user-generated content and use it for the promotion of your brand. You can initiate a campaign and associate it with any ‘trending’ subject.  For example, GoPro was able to incorporate Inspiration and a healthy lifestyle into their Instagram campaign. They encourage consumers to share inspirational and adventurous content and utilise it for the promotion of their brands. In return, they credit the producers of the content. GoPro’s Instagram feed is all about inspirational contributions from the consumers, and their Instagram marketing strategy is completely based on UGC.

Running campaigns to utilise UGC will assist brands in achieving a higher rate of engagement. The brands can also approach larger audiences by manoeuvring their campaigns.

Marketers can make their campaigns and contests more rewarding by integrating hashtag campaigns into them. Hashtags will enable marketers to boost the discoverability of their brand, which will aid the popularity and growth rate of the brand.

3. Sponsored Promotion

Sponsored promotion is particularly common in mainstream marketing, but you can leverage it for your Instagram marketing strategy. You can contact and collaborate with individuals such as celebrities, Youtubers or famous athletes with higher influence and greater interaction level.  

Sponsoring the most appropriate individuals according to your target market will enable you to approach larger audiences including the audience of your sponsored person.

4. Promotion through Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is everywhere, and small businesses/startups can promote their businesses via affiliate marketing.  You can pay ‘affiliates’ to fuse promotional content into their Instagram posts and stories. Affiliate marketing can prove to be quite fruitful if you’re able to fabricate an efficient affiliate marketing strategy.

5. Socialise and Disperse Positivity

The influence of socialising and spreading positivity cannot be measured through analytics. However, considering the human psychology, these methods are extremely functional while promoting your brand.

Here, Socializing refers to addressing the society. Brands can address social causes (in a non-controversial way) and exhibit their intentions for the welfare of the society.  This is likely to portray a positive image of the brand and consumers are more likely to trust the brand.

Posting ‘positive’, ‘motivating’ and ‘inspiring’ quotations also triggers similar behaviour in consumers.

If you cannot target consumers with your products, you can approach and address them through your ‘social stance’.