How To Gain Instagram Followers Organically In 2022?

Instagram has grown into one of the largest social media platforms today, attracting more than 1.3 billion active users monthly.On average, Instagram users spend 30 minutes on the platform every day. This photo and video sharing platform has empowered many people to become Instagram influencers and earn a decent income by leveraging the massive volumes they attract to their IG accounts.

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While the outlook is optimistic, gaining followers on Instagram is not exactly a walk in the park. Like a lot of good things, it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and patience before you can reap the rewards. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow your Instagram organically without having to spend tons of money on paid advertisements to promote and grow your Instagram page. In this article we will talk about some effective tips to grow your Instagram follower base organically in 2022, without using paid ads or spending money! Excited yet? Read On!

1. Account & Content Optimization

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How do you stand out in a sea of a billion plus users? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a good place to start. You’ve probably heard of SEO, but do you really understand it? It’s a buzzword among influencers from all the social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook etc. Instagram SEO helps you get your posts featured in the users’ search results. Getting your posts featured when other Instagram users search for content will increase your chances of attracting new followers who are genuinely interested in your page since they were searching for related content when your page gets shown as a suggestion. Therefore, you should strive to SEO-optimize your Instagram profile and make it more easily discoverable to your potential followers.

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One way to optimize your page is to use relevant keywords. Include the relevant keywords in your posts' titles and catchy descriptions. Also include them in your bio and name plate. Yes! Your name / brand name and IG handle name should be optimized as well! If you are posting an Instagram video, you should also strategically mention your keywords several times to give Instagram's algorithms a better understanding of what your video is all about. You heard right! Even just mentioning the keywords as speech in your videos will allow Instagram's algorithm to understand what your video content is about and hence easily associate it with the relevant search terms used by users.

2. Create Catchy And Meaningful Content

Your success on Instagram depends very much on the content you post. The more compelling, insightful, engaging, and relevant your content is, the higher the chances of getting an audience to hit that 'Follow' button. To direct more traffic to your page, you need to consistently curate and post quality content to allow continual engagement with your followers and of course broaden the chances of your page getting shown in the search results by the Instagram algorithm. It doesn't matter whether you are getting followers at your desired rate or not, it’s more about consistency; you need to curate and post content consistently!

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Identify topics and create unique content addressing and resolving your audience's pain points. Make use of live sessions to conduct AMAs (Ask Me Anything) to interact with your audience and learn more about the type of content they prefer. Do not forget to make your content viewer-friendly! This is one of the most overlooked yet useful tips. You can improve your content presentation by adding subtitles, overlays or even verbalizing visual content on videos, reels, and stories so that they are more viewer friendly. By making it accessible, you will broaden your potential follower base.

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Remember to also use colors, graphics, and other visually striking elements to create an Instagram feed that resonates with your brand. Believe it or not, thumbnails, colors and attractive graphics play a huge role in increasing profile visits, video clicks and post engagement. These will not feed the algorithm with information about your posts, but they will still help you stand out by getting the audience hooked at first glance such that they will like your posts and want to see more of your posts and even end up following your page. 

3. Use The Hashtag Strategy

Hashtags are one of the most effective ways to attract an audience and grow your reach on Instagram. They are used to increase exposure, discovery and encourage audience interactions. They help an audience wade through tons of data on social networks by sorting posts into themes and categories.

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To effectively use them, research popular hashtags relating to your niche then choose and use the ones your target audience is likely to follow. Using the right hashtag for your brand will make your posts more easily discoverable to others searching for content using that hashtag. To widen your prospects of being discoverable using a hashtag and to reinforce your brand's identity, create a unique branded hashtag and showcase it in your bio to encourage your followers to use it. This way you have enough posts under that hashtag to cause potential followers to want to make their way to your page to find out why the hashtag seems popular.

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While Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags, we encourage you to use only the most relevant ones. It doesn’t always mean “more is better”. Relevance is more important in this case. Be careful in terms of how many times you use a hashtag on your posts because Instagram can penalize you for reusing the same hashtags for every post you create. Make it a point to customize your hashtags such that they match the content of each post. If you are having difficulties figuring out which hashtags to use, we encourage you to use Instagram hashtag generators or suggestion tools like Ritetag, All Hashtagetc.

4. Promote Your Account

Creating Instagram content doesn’t necessarily mean you are limited to promoting your content on Instagram only. Broaden your exposure by Tweeting, Facebook-ing, YouTube-ing or TikTok-ing it! This way you can reach out to more pockets of audiences and lead them to your Instagram page. So, the next time you decide to publish content on Instagram, or start a live broadcast, make mention of it on the other platforms and drive traffic from there!

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Here’s another idea; after publishing your Instagram posts, create snippets or previews of the most entertaining and engaging parts of your posts and post them on other social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok or other platforms that promote such short format videos.

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An alternative strategy is to collaborate with other Instagram Influencers and brands, including your own competitors! Collaborations can be done in the form of guest appearances in other Instagram influencer’s videos, or as simple as just getting a mention in one of their Instagram posts or videos. Collaboration will help to expose your brand to new pockets of audience and is likely to drive new traffic to your page and in the process, gain new followers. A strategic approach would be to identify and collaborate with Influencers with whom you share a similar niche with. The best part about a collaboration is cross-pollination; that is a win-win situation where both creators gain new audiences from each other’s existing pool of followers. However, this method is not the easiest for an Influencer who is just getting started and doesn’t seem to have a reputation because people may be less interested in the collaboration.

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Other ideas to promote your Instagram profile are hosting giveaways and creating challenges. These two strategies give you a chance to reach out to thousands of new followers because they get people talking about your brand. If your activity is interesting enough, you can motivate people to share your posts with people from their own social circle who may be interested in partaking in the challenge or winning the giveaway prizes.

5. Engage With Your Audience

Growing your profile doesn’t end at just attracting a huge following or large visit, it also involves continuously engaging your audience in order to retain them. One common mistake many Instagram Influencers make is treating their audience like statistics with no intention of engaging with them whatsoever. This will leave an impression that you are inauthentic and will cause your follower count to drop. So, if you want to retain your audience, make an effort to build a personal connection and a friendship with them. Be true and sincere to them!

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Building connections isn’t a complex thing, it can be as simple as responding to as many of your followers’ comments on your posts as possible. Or it could simply be replying to their DM to keep the conversations going. It could also involve you encouraging your followers to tag you in their posts when they perform an activity you suggested, for example, when they create videos of challenges that you may have started. When they tag you, spare some time to respond to them. This way your audience will feel valued and continue to engage with your content.

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Another tip is to leave thoughtful comments on other Instagrammer’s posts. This will maximize your profile or brand’s visibility and help you reach out to an audience who may otherwise be unfamiliar with your brand. However, this doesn’t mean you should engage with just any kind of post. Instead, you should only focus on posts that are likely to strike a chord with your target audience.

6. Create A Content Plan and Schedule

As mentioned earlier, your success on Instagram highly depends on the content you post, which is why you should consider creating a schedule for your posts. A schedule will help you plan how you can incorporate a mix of different content and when exactly to post it to gain as many views as possible. You can use Instagram insights to get a clearer picture on which time of the day your posts get the most engagement and plan to post during those times.

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If you want to grow your Instagram account, then focus on content that is more likely to consistently get you in front of a new set of eyes. This means creating a posting plan and schedule revolving around Reels, live rooms, sharable feed posts, collaborations features and more! The collaboration feature is one of Instagram’s newest features which allows you to create a post with another creator and when you publish it, it will appear in both your feeds, reaching both your audiences, theoretically multiplying your reach by two. Remember to map out your goals and define posting frequency in your plan. 

Conclusion

Growing your Instagram account organically can seem like an uphill battle, but it isn’t an impossible task. With the combination of posting creative and meaningful content, promotion strategies, SEO and tapping into Instagram's features i.e., the hashtag strategy, trends etc. you can grow your numbers organically. Having a strong presence on Instagram is crucial for your growth and success as an influencer and for your brand as well. So, make it a point to create as much quality content as you can to stay relevant. Just remember to keep engaging with your Instagram audience because they are more than just numbers, they are in fact your online community.

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