Gaining followers on Instagram takes time and consistency, but the payoff of more brand visibility and engagement makes it worth the effort. As Instagram continues to dominate the social media landscape in 2023, creating content that resonates with your target audience is key. With over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, standing out from the crowd is more important than ever.
By defining your niche, posting high-quality content consistently, and employing a range of growth strategies, you’ll be well on your way to gaining genuine, engaged ig followers this year. Let’s explore some surefire ways to succeed:
Define Your Niche and Target Audience
The first step is clarifying your brand’s niche. Establish what makes you stand apart and consider what your ideal audience cares about. Reflect this niche in your Instagram bio, content style, and messaging so the right followers naturally gravitate toward your account.
Researching competitors within your industry is key here. What content best connects with your target audience? How can you do it bigger or better to stand out? Align your content strategy to your audience’s interests, needs, and pain points to offer real value.
Create High-Quality, Visually Appealing Content
Feed aesthetics are everything on Instagram. Creating consistent, eye-catching content optimized for mobile screens is how to best attract, engage, and retain followers.
Images and short videos under one minute tend to perform best, as long as they are cohesive with your brand identity. Leverage current trends like Reels as well. Consider investing in custom graphics, a logo, templates, or other visuals that make your posts pop yet seem professionally created.
UGC or user-generated content from happy customers makes compelling social proof too. Hashtag campaigns featuring followers using your product can help inspire the community. Just ensure visual consistency across all user photos.
Post Consistently, But Not Too Much
Posting once per day or every other day tends to be ideal for building momentum on Instagram without overwhelming your audience. Schedule posts in advance to maintain consistent content without constantly creating new images or videos as you build an audience.
Pay attention to what times and days your followers are most active and engage with your content the most – then make posting part of your routine. Staying on top of comments and DMs daily maintains relationships as well.
Use Relevant Hashtags and Location Tags
Hashtags and location tags help exposure on Instagram significantly, allowing users beyond just your immediate followers to discover your posts. Identify 10-20 broader hashtags and 10-20 niche hashtags related to your brand to incorporate. Using the maximum allowed 30 hashtags per post is recommended.
Location tagging posts, when relevant, connect your brand to places and local audiences. This drives more localized discovery, too. Frequently update hashtags and locations to identify what best resonates and performs over time as your account evolves. Consider what competitors use as well.
Engage With Your Audience
Building authentic connections with your followers is how to sustain growth long-term on Instagram, keeping people invested in your brand story. Engagement is reciprocal, too – to see more likes, comments, and new followers, you need to engage with others first.
Like and Comment on Others’ Posts
Take the time to not only post daily but scroll and actively like + respond thoughtfully to posts from accounts you admire or followers you want to build loyalty with. Go beyond generic comments – ask thoughtful questions, compliment what stands out, and relate it to your niche.
Following niche hashtags makes it easy to find relevant posts to engage with potential new followers. Take a vested interest in your broader community. Liking user-generated content featuring your products is important for encouraging more.
Respond to Comments and DMs
Nothing turns followers off more than ignoring comments and direct messages. Staying responsive shows you care about your audience. Answer feedback requests thoughtfully, thank people for tagging you or creating content featuring your brand, and resolve customer service issues swiftly.
Enable post + story notifications so it is easy to stay on top of replies. Scheduling time daily to respond will lead to more dialogue and demonstrated listenership.
Run Contests and Giveaways
Contests, giveaways, and hashtag campaigns are time-tested ways to spark major engagement and gain new igfollower fast. Collaborate with other brands in your niche to extend your reach through cross-promotion too.
Require users to follow your Instagram account + like and share the giveaway post for entry into the contest for maximum impact. Monetary prizes or big ticket items tend to perform best, though creativity, like free services for a year, can work too. Use a platform like Gleam to collect and select entries to make running sweepstakes seamless.
To inspire UGC, running monthly photo contests encouraging users to creatively feature your product works very well too. Offering the winning photo a repost and product credit motivates submissions.
Leverage Influencer Marketing
In 2023, the influencer marketing industry shows no signs of slowing down. Instagram remains the top platform for teaming up with creators who can expand your niche audience and social presence overnight.
Micro and mid-tier influencers are often more affordable yet highly effective brand advocates to collaborate with. Those with 5K – 100K engaged followers are easier to form personal partnerships with as well.
Work With Micro-Influencers
Look to rising stars and eager micro-influencers in your industry to set up organic partnerships. Gift them free products to feature in content and incentivize them to spread awareness in their distinct voice. Ensure their affiliate links for easy monetization or offer a tiered commission structure.
Original, dedicated posts sharing their true experience with your product or service pack the biggest punch for driving conversions and directing their loyal fans to check you out. Multi-post partnerships over weeks or months are ideal for sustaining new business.
Do Shoutouts
Shoutouts involve collaborating with relevant influencers to post Stories promoting your brand to their followers. A simple photo, text overlay about your product, + swipe-up link back to your Instagram profile or website is all it takes.
Compensating influencers equalling around $1 per follower they have is standard for single-story shoutouts. Batch packages bring the cost per Story down and save over time.
Casting a wide net of smaller influencers and exposing your brand to their combined millions of niche followers is extremely effective, driving huge amounts of traffic. Coordinate multiple shoutouts released across days or weeks alongside your best new Instagram content for amplifying impact.
Optimize Your Instagram Profile
Crafting an optimized, aesthetically pleasing, and conversion-focused Instagram profile beyond just your content is equally as important for attracting followers.
Fill Out Your Bio
Include your brand name, a few descriptive keywords about your niche, an email sign-up link through Linktree, and a brief value proposition or call-to-action driving clicks. Using emojis and humor in your bio makes it more approachable as well.
Linking to your TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, blog, or online store provides cross-exposure between platforms, too. Add contact info and customize with brand colors.
Select the Right Profile Picture and Theme
A branded yet vibrant profile picture represents your Instagram identity and content style at a glance. Utilize on-theme filters and design elements pulled from other branding across your grid posts for continuity.
Highlight templates, personalized link URLs, and Stories stickers extending your color palette and fonts convey professionalism through consistency too. Downloadable graphic assets allow followers to co-brand user-generated content as well.
Add Clickable Links to Your Highlights
Highlight covers featuring your products, offers, or content topics become clickable once you reach 10K followers or get verified. Strategically organizing key content types visitors want to easily discover into categorized Highlights drives valuable inbound clicks.
Promote your Highlights menu in your bio. Refresh with updated images and titles over time. Number each section consistently across covers, enhancing the visual experience.
Advertise on Instagram
Organic efforts form the foundation, but investing even small budgets into strategic Instagram advertising and follower growth services efficiently amplifies results.
Promote Your Account and Posts
Straightforward tools now built into the Instagram app make it simple to promote your posts and public profile to new users. Target interested accounts by hashtag, location, competitors, or lookalike followers. Custom audiences based on email lists work very effectively too.
Focus ad spending on your best-performing organic posts to lower cost per conversion. Link to your Instagram profile, website product pages, or even Facebook Lead Gen forms to drive targeted traffic across platforms.
Buy Instagram Followers
While slow to gain traction organically at first, buying small batches of 100 to 500 real Instagram followers instantly social proofs your brand. This sparks the Instagram algorithm and real users to take notice, fueling organic momentum long-term.
Vetted service providers can drip-feed high-quality, genuine, and loyal followers from your niche to grow your audience authentically month after month, too. Maintaining your content strategy keeps new followers engaged.
Use An Analytics Tool
Services like Iconosquare track real-time Instagram analytics beyond just likes and comments to optimize your approach. See which types of posts + topics perform best, your most engaging captions, when your followers are most active, plus more to continually improve. Sales directly attributed back to Instagram contact leads perfectly tie into your ROI.
Track Your Progress and Refine Your Strategy
Gaining Instagram followers does not happen overnight – the key is sticking with effective yet adaptable strategies that scale up over the months and years ahead.
Review your performance weekly and monthly rather than daily fluctuations. Identify what content themes and activities convert best to double down on going forward. Stay on top of evolving Instagram trends and features, too.
Maintain Engagement With Your Growing Audience
As your follower count grows into the thousands, maintaining intimacy in your relationships with fans becomes harder. But it remains the key to retention and higher engagement rates.
Like and reply to loyal supporters who comment on all your posts. Reshare their user-generated content. Send occasional DM’s to supporters sharing how much you appreciate them using your branded hashtag or mentioning your products to keep communication personal.
Incentivize your VIP supporters to remain brand ambassadors by providing exclusive early access to new product launches, discounts, or giveaways in return. Collaborate on co-created content like crowdsourcing testimonials or photos for Instagram story takeovers.
Continue Providing Value in Your Niche
Stay dedicated to regularly creating content that fits your brand identity yet offers true value to the Instagram community you want to see continually grow and diversify this year. Experiment, polish your content over time, and respond faster to feedback and viewership trends.
Ultimately, if you can solve your audience’s needs better than competitors, demonstrate authenticity in messaging, and form real connections – following and supporting your brand becomes a no-brainer for Instagram users in your space. Consistency compounds over time.
While gaining Instagram followers takes immense creativity and patience, you now have an expanded toolkit of 2023’s most effective strategies to make it happen. Define your unique voice, post intentionally and frequently, utilize analytics to double down on what works – and then watch your niche community grow.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best time to post on Instagram?
Posting early afternoon or evenings when Instagram user engagement peaks between 1-5 PM and 7-8 PM tends to work well. Pay attention to when your specific audience engages most, too, though.
How many hashtags should you use for Instagram followers?
The limit is 30 per post. To maximize discovery, use a mix of 10 to 20 niche hashtags + 5 to 10 broader hashtags for optimal exposure. Monitor the performance of each thought for relevance.
How many posts should be on your Instagram feed at once?
8 to 12 photos or videos posted to your Instagram profile feed present an ideal archive of content for new visitors to browse through without being overwhelming.
Is buying real Instagram followers safe and worthwhile?
Yes, when purchased through reputable growth services that take privacy seriously. Buy followers gradually in small batches from your niche to complement organic efforts. These realities self-perpetuate more discovery and momentum.
How much do Instagram influencer shoutout stories cost?
Average industry rates are around $1 per follower the Instagram account promoting your brand has. Many negotiate package deals for long-term partnerships, bringing per-story costs down over months together.
