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Figuring out how to grow your Instagram followers in a competitive landscape can be challenging. Currently, Instagram stands as one of the most powerful tools for businesses in every industry looking to generate growth and new opportunities.
Around 90% of Instagram users say they already follow a brand on the platform, and 98% of marketers agree the channel is one of the most valuable ways to generate audience engagement. With the right strategy, you can attract new customers to your website, boost your brand reputation, and even outshine the competition.
However, with millions of other companies already vying for attention on Instagram, it can be difficult to grab your audience’s attention long enough to facilitate growth. That’s why we’re sharing our top tips for creatively growing your following in 2023.
8 Ways To Grow Your Instagram Followers In 2023
Learning how to grow your Instagram followers in 2023 means using the right combination of intelligent strategy and content creation to connect with customers.
You need to not only reach your audience with the right posts but also encourage them to interact and engage with your brand. Here are some of the best ways you can start paving the way for rapid and consistent growth in 2023.
1. Optimize Your Bio
The Instagram bio is still one of the most commonly overlooked components of an effective marketing strategy. It’s one of the first things your potential followers will see when they interact with your brand, and it’s a crucial tool for conveying valuable information about your brand.
Although you’ll have limited space to share information on your Instagram bio, there are ways you can enhance your presence and boost engagement. For instance, upgrading to an Instagram Business or Creator account will allow you to add CTA buttons directly to your bio, so customers can contact you quickly and easily. Other ways to optimize your bio include:
· Using a link tool: Use a link-in-bio tool so you can transform the one link available on your profile into a “link database” brimming with useful information for customers.
· Choose the right name: Ensure your name and @handle are connected to your brand name, so your customers can find you quickly.
· Include useful insights: Share information about what you do, and why people should follow you in your bio. Use emojis and bullet points to get insights across quickly.
· Find the right profile picture: Make sure you have a professional-looking profile picture. A logo image or a headshot is usually a good choice.
2. Use An Instagram Growth Service
If you want to learn how to grow your Instagram followers quickly, it might be worth looking into some extra help. People are more likely to follow you on Instagram if they already see you have plenty of followers connecting with your posts.
An Instagram Growth service is a tool which helps you to connect with your potential audience, and draw them back to your profile, so you can accelerate your path to success.
Notably, it’s important to ensure you choose the right service here. You don’t want to simply buy bot followers or fake accounts to make your follower count look bigger.
The right growth service should provide you with access to organic, engaged individuals who already have an interest in your product, service, or industry.
Look for a solution which focuses on organic growth, so you can preserve a positive brand reputation.
3. Create Great Content That Followers Want
Even with an Instagram growth service to help you, you won’t get a lot of engaged followers if you’re not producing relevant and interesting content.
Customers use Instagram as a way of researching brands, finding information, and sourcing entertainment.
This means you should be creating a variety of different kinds of content to appeal to different levels of intent.
Experiment with the different styles of content you can create on Instagram, from posting photos to your news feed to producing Reels and live videos.
If you’re not sure where to get started, it might be worth checking out some of the content produced by other well-known brands in your industry to get some insights.
For instance, Hubspot, the marketing company, produces posts, guides, and videos to help educate its audience and highlight the benefits of its service.
Once you start producing content, you can use your Instagram Insights to track which types of posts get the most interest and engagement.
This should help you to understand what sort of content you should be producing in the months to come.
4. Find Your Best Time To Post
Timing is everything on Instagram.
While the Instagram algorithm sorts through content based on a number of different factors, they also prioritize showing the most “recent” posts to their users.
This means you need to ensure you’re promoting your content when your audience is most likely to be online and scrolling through their feed.
Finding the best time to post on Instagram can be tricky, as there’s a lot of conflicting advice out there.
You can start by researching some common best practice recommendations for brands in your industry, but it’s also worth taking a deep dive into your analytics and target audience.
Think about the time zones of the locations where your customers are likely to be visiting you from, and check your analytics to see which times and days generate the most engagement.
Once you have a clear insight into when your customers are online, you’ll be able to create a content calendar.
You can even use tools to push promoted content to Instagram automatically, so you can ensure you never miss out on a chance to reach your audience.
5. Embrace Instagram Reels
As mentioned above, when learning how to grow your Instagram followers, it’s important to experiment with a wide range of different types of content, from Instagram Live, to videos and guides.
One of the most important tools you can take advantage of right now is Instagram Reels.
This is one of the most popular types of content on Instagram, with its own tab in the Explore page.
Instagram Reels are particularly appealing to younger audiences, but they’re also capturing the attention of countless other groups too.
The good thing about Instagram Reels is they’re extremely easy to create.
You can use Reels to share quick tips with your customers about how to use your products or services, or offer an insight into your day-to-day life.
You don’t need to spend a lot of time editing your Reels, and there are various tools built into the platform already to help you make your pieces stand out.
Here’s an example from @SecondShotCoffee, a company that uses Instagram Reels to demonstrate how customers can use their solutions at home.
6. Write Great Captions
Similar to the Instagram Bio, captions are commonly overlooked in the Instagram marketing world, but they’re essential to promoting your account.
Your captions give you a fantastic opportunity to connect with your audience on an emotional level, by sharing your brand personality.
Captions help to add context to your post, and can even encourage engagement by asking customers questions, or encouraging them to share your content.
They’re also a great place to showcase some of your hashtags, so you can position yourself in the right environment when customers are looking for relevant content on the platform.
Make sure your captions are emotional, engaging, and brimming with useful information like Airbnb does with it’s amazing captions here:
Remember, when adding hashtags to your captions, it’s a good idea to ensure you’re using a combination of different types, from trending hashtags, to niche tags.
This will improve your chances of reaching the right audience.
7. Collaborate With Creators
Sometimes, one of the biggest challenges of learning how to grow Instagram followers, is coming up with engaging and consistently great content.
A good way to expand your posting strategy is to consider working with some other content creators.
You can partner with influencers on both a micro and macro level to help boost your brand awareness, and create new content.
A good way to collaborate with influencers to build engagement and awareness for your brand, is to run competitions and giveaways.
You can team up with other brands to give something away in exchange for customers liking your posts, commenting, and @mentioning their friends.
Another option could be to allow a collaborating to take over your Instagram account for the day and post their own unique content.
Alternatively, you could ask influencers to review some of your products and services, and send customers back to your profile and website as a result.
Working with other creators will help to add some variety to your content while also giving you a new way of reaching customers from different environments.
8. Engage With Your Audience
Finally, if you want to encourage consistent growth that makes a real difference to your business, then you need to be willing to connect with your customers consistently. You can start by simply responding to your target audience when they leave comments on your posts, answering their questions, and thanking them for their input.
Another option is to encourage your customers to share user-generated content with the use of a branded hashtag.
You could create a tag for your brand and ask customers to share pictures and videos of them using your product or service connected to this tag.
Give them an opportunity to win something or get a discount on your products whenever they promote you.
One excellent way to engage your audience and learn more about their needs and preferences is to run Q&A sessions.
You can host these on Instagram Live as a way of connecting directly with your followers, and making sure they know everything they need to know about your brand.
Start Growing Your Instagram Followers
While learning how to grow Instagram followers in 2023 can seem like a complicated concept, it’s actually much easier than it appears.
If you have the right strategy, and you commit to consistently connecting with your followers through the right, relevant content, you’ll be on your way to success in no time.
Use a combination of all the strategies above to start facilitating growth.
Remember, it’s also helpful to keep a close eye on your Instagram analytics as you go, so you can gain a deeper understanding of what your audience really wants to see from you.
You may also like: How to Use Instagram for Business?
