How To Grow Your Instagram: 8 Ways To Get More Followers

For many brands and influencers, their number of Instagram followers is a testament to how well they’re doing on social media. The bigger your fanbase is, the more trustworthy, credible and successful you are. It also gives you way more career opportunities and sales. But not every aspiring business or content creator knows how to grow your Instagram.

So, today, we’re going to take a deep dive into the best strategies to reach your target audiences and grow your Instagram account. And no, we’re not talking about those quick fixes like buying Instagram followers who don’t even engage with your posts. We’ll teach you the most sustainable strategies to get real followers who will love and appreciate your content.

Ready to unlock the secrets to growing your Instagram account? Keep reading to see our top eight tips on getting more followers to grow and maximize your Instagram presence.

1. Have an Aesthetic Feed: How To Grow Your Instagram Organically With Beautiful Posts

Some people think that you have to pay tons of money to grow on Instagram. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You can definitely grow on Instagram without spending a cent and instead putting all your effort into making amazing content. Wondering how to grow your Instagram organically? Here’s our top tip: build an aesthetic Instagram feed.

Instagram is all about stunning visual content. The reality is that people follow accounts that consistently post beautiful, interesting photos and videos. So, if you want to attract your target audiences to your page and give you a follow, you must put out aesthetically pleasing content. That’s how to grow an Instagram account without burning a hole in your pocket.

Aside from capturing your target audience’s attention, visually appealing content also shows off your brand identity. If you have attractive content, it’s easier for people to remember and recognize you.

Visually aesthetic content is also more shareable and has the potential to go viral. When people share your content on Instagram Stories or to a friend in the DMs, it broadens your reach. As a result, you could reel in more followers, allowing your account to grow further.

But your content on Instagram can’t just be visually beautiful. The content has to be interesting, relevant and engaging as well. It needs to fit in your specific niche and be valuable to your community. Pretty isn’t everything—you need to be helpful to your potential followers, too.

2. Invest in Ads: How To Grow Your Business on Instagram With Paid Content

Instagram is home to millions of users, and God knows how many brands try to compete for their attention. If you’re looking at how to grow your business on Instagram and outshine other businesses, Instagram ads are the way to go.

Simply put, Instagram ads are digital advertisements you can put up all over the platform. You can do it on the feed, Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels and more.

These photos and videos allow you to reach people who don’t follow you yet. If they find your products or brand relevant, you may get a boost in your follower count.

The secret of how to grow your Instagram using ads is by selecting the right target audiences. While setting up an ads campaign, you determine what kind of people will see your content. Choose the right gender, age, location and interests to ensure that you gain followers that will engage with your everyday content.

Instagram ads also allow you to showcase your product offerings and services through stunning, curated visual content. They can also help raise brand awareness in the long run. If your brand and its products get more popular, gaining followers will come quite easily.

Note that you need to switch your page from a personal account to a business or professional account to run any ads. Then, you can start running paid campaigns to reach your target audiences. Ads you can run include image ads, Stories ads, carousel ads, Reels ads, shopping ads and collection ads.

Boosting Organic Posts: The Easiest Way To Put up Ads

Are you thinking of how to grow your Instagram with paid content but don’t have the time to strategize huge ad campaigns? Don’t worry—there’s a simpler way to run paid content on Instagram. That’s through boosting organic posts that you already have on your feed.

By boosting a post on your Instagram feed, you can essentially turn an organic post into an ad in an instant. You can boost feed posts, Instagram Stories and Instagram Reels. If you have a paid partnership with an influencer and they tag you as a collaborator, you can boost that too.

Just go to your profile to boost a post and look for the post you want to boost. Click on the blue “Boost post” button underneath the post. From there, you’ll fill in your target audiences, goals, and budget, just like when setting up an ad campaign. Confirm all the information, and that’s it! Your post will be run as an ad to reach your target audiences.

Boosting existing posts is a great way to have paid content up quickly. It’s also cost-effective since you don’t have to create content from scratch for your ads.

When choosing which posts to boost, always go for the ones that historically perform the best. Posts with the most views, likes and comments will do great when boosted since you already know people will like it.

3. Experiment With Instagram Reels and Stories

Posting beautiful photos is a must when you’re on Instagram. However, it’s not the only thing you should post to make noise about your brand. Today, people are really digging for vertical video content like Instagram Reels and Stories. If you plan how to grow your Instagram, consider adding these two formats to your content mix.

Instagram Reels are short and entertaining videos users make by stitching clips, photos and audio together. People can spend all day scrolling through Reel after Reel because they’re so addicting!

Aside from being relatable and relevant to most users, Instagram Reels also allow brands to be more discoverable online. Instagram has a separate tab for Reels they curate based on virality and each user’s interests.

If you create Reels that do well, they might push it out to more users. This lets more people discover your brand, allowing you to gain new followers.

Instagram Stories are also great for growing your Instagram page. Although only your followers will see these temporary videos on their homepage, you can pin them up as highlights after they expire. That way, if someone visits your profile, they’ll see your Story Highlights on your page. If they’re interesting or helpful enough, you may gain new followers from visitors!

Businesses can post Story Highlights for customer reviews, product highlights and FAQs. Influencers can post OOTDs, travel content and brand collabs. Create cute and aesthetic Highlight covers to make them look more exciting!

If someone stumbles upon your profile for the first time, these Highlights will tell them who you are and what you offer. Hopefully, this will help you reel in new followers.

4. Do a Collab: How To Grow Your Instagram Account With Influencer Marketing

Next, let’s talk about how to grow your Instagram account with the help of other brands—specifically, Instagram influencers.

One of the smartest ways to build relationships with other creators and simultaneously grow your brand is by collaborating with them. If your brand “sponsors” an influencer’s post, you can reach their massive fanbase. They can talk about your brand and show off your products through a paid partnership. And if their followers love your brand, you will get new followers.

Around 69% of people trust an influencer’s product recommendation over a brand’s advertisement. It feels more authentic like a friend telling you about their new favorite drink or lipstick. Partnering with creators boosts awareness for your brand while making it look credible.

When picking influencers to work with, choose those with the same target audiences as you. That way, you know they’ll be talking to the people you want to attract to your page and have as followers.

5. Encourage UGC: How To Grow Your Brand on Instagram With Your Customers’ Help

When it comes to how to grow your brand on Instagram, you don’t have to rely solely on your content creation. Once you get a significant fanbase, more loyal followers will start posting about your products for you. This is called user-generated content, and it’s incredible for growing your Instagram page.

So, let’s talk about how to grow your Instagram using user-generated content, also known as UGC. This type of content refers to organic, unpaid posts that customers create to showcase a brand they genuinely love.

UGC includes brand reviews and photos of them using your product. Some examples of UGC are OOTDs featuring a brand’s clothes and get-ready-with-me videos using a brand’s makeup products. When people post UGC, your brand will be visible to many potential new followers.

Here’s how your Instagram can grow with UGC. People will post about your product on their feed or Instagram Stories and Reels. Hopefully, they’ll tag you in their post so their friends and family know where the products came from.

Then, their followers will see their content and check out your brand since their friend has such good things to say about it. From there, you could get a couple of new followers!

Maximize how UGC helps grow your Instagram by encouraging your loyal followers to create user-generated content. Give discount codes or freebies on their next purchase if they post a photo of your product and tag you. Not only will you reach more people from it, but your brand will also look more trustworthy and credible.

6. Host a Giveaway: How To Grow Your Instagram Fast With Contests

Another terrific strategy for how to grow your Instagram fast is hosting a giveaway for your community. Run a promotional contest that gives your followers a chance to win a prize if they follow a set of mechanics.

No one will say no to a chance to win free stuff. So, you can count on engagement to be high when you post these contests. The best part is that you can customize the mechanics to ensure they get you a lot of followers.

Here’s how to grow your Instagram with a giveaway, step by step:

1. Choose what products you want to give way. It can be either products from your shop that you can ship out or discount codes and vouchers.

2. Decide on your mechanics. Entries can come in the form of sharing the post on their Instagram Stories or tagging a friend in the comments. You can even stipulate that each person joining the contest needs to follow you to be in the running for the prize.

3. Create a post to promote the giveaway. Clearly state the caption’s mechanics to ensure everyone adheres to the rules. Amplify your efforts by posting the giveaway on Instagram Stories.

4. Choose the winner based on a random draw. Be as transparent as possible with how you select the winner.

5. Lastly, announce the winner and thank everyone for joining the giveaway.

If you’re lucky, the winner of your giveaway might love the prizes so much that they post about them. That automatically gives you user-generated content that will make more noise about your brand, thus gaining more followers.

7. Use Hashtags: How To Grow Your Instagram Followers With Strategic Captions

Racking your brain about how to grow your Instagram followers easily? You don’t always need to run ads or promos to boost your follower count. Sometimes, something as easy as using hashtags that are relevant to your target audiences is enough to lead them to your profile.

Hashtags allow your posts to show up not just on your followers’ feeds but also on hashtag pages. Using simple hashtags like #fashion for clothing brands or #athomeworkouts for fitness influencers can make you more discoverable. If someone were to explore those hashtags for fun, they may stumble upon your page and give you a follow.

You can also use trending hashtags you know are currently gaining much traction. Popular hashtags will have tons of people lurking on their pages. Make the most out of this traffic by being present in trending hashtags for a chance to get more followers.

Note that Instagram captions will only allow 30 hashtags at a time. Choose only the best hashtags to include in your post. Having too many hashtags can look spammy.

8. Tag Your Location: How To Grow On Instagram and Get Travel-Loving Followers

Our last tip is to tag your location on your Instagram posts. If you’re a travel content creator wondering how to grow on Instagram, geotagging your posts will help out a lot.

Like hashtags, location tags have their dedicated pages. People can lurk and scroll through that page to find photos and videos of a specific place. It’s awesome for content inspiration if you have an upcoming trip to a certain city and want to see what photos you can take there.

So, when you tag your location on your posts, you’re more discoverable to people interested in the places you visit. If they like your content, they might visit your profile and hit “follow” to see more posts about the location you tagged.

Geotagging is also excellent if you want to boost brand awareness among local customers. If you’re a business with a physical store, it’s even more helpful. If people stumble upon your posts online and see that you operate in their city, they might follow you. It also can drive foot traffic to your store since they already know you’re near them.

Bonus Tip: How To Grow Your Instagram With Path Social

All the tips above will make a huge impact on your Instagram growth. Remember to consistently create beautiful content, experiment with Instagram Stories and Reels, invest in ads, and use geotags and hashtags. And if you want to build your brand’s relationships with others, think of doing collaborations, running giveaways, and encouraging user-generated content.

If you follow these tips to a T, you’re sure to reach your target audiences. Then, when they see your relevant content and hit “follow” on your page, you will see your Instagram account thrive.

But we do have one last tip on how to grow your Instagram account—working with Path Social. Our proprietary targeting algorithm doesn’t just push out your best content to your people for more engagement. It also makes your brand discoverable to your target audiences. This allows you to quickly and efficiently gain real followers that will be an asset to your fanbase. Start growing your Instagram with us today!