Organic Instagram Growth: Guide To Hands-on Success

Is organic Instagram growth a lost cause? Should you even bother with organic strategies when your competitors pay for ads and influencer marketing left and right? Organic growth remains crucial to a brand’s content strategy. It can make or break your success on Instagram. It’s the bedrock you build the foundation for your brand’s credibility, social proof, and audience trust. You need to invest time and effort in organic growth strategies. These strategies help your paid campaigns deliver the desired results. Hit the ground running with this complete guide to creating an optimized Instagram growth strategy.

What Is Organic Growth on Social Media?

Organic growth on social media refers to a brand’s boost in visibility which leads to brand awareness. Brand awareness is typically followed by an increase in followers and stronger engagement rate. This growth can come from organic posts or unpaid distribution. Organic posts include any regular Instagram post you make without paying or getting paid. Therefore, organic growth is the page or brand growth you achieve at no cost. 

A business on Instagram can advertise products or services for free through organic posts. An influencer can promote their brand by sharing organic content. The audiences you reach with these posts and the follows, likes, and comments you get count toward your organic reach. Organic reach may include users who saw your content on their feed. These users may view your Instagram stories or reels, or visit and browse your page.

Is Organic Growth on Instagram Difficult To Achieve?

There is rising competition on the platform and algorithmic “restrictions” on the reach of organic posts. These aspects have made organic growth on Instagram increasingly challenging. Pay-to-play is the game’s name on Instagram and other social media platforms. You can put more dollars into your marketing efforts to improve your ranking on users’ feeds, searches, and Explore. Improved ranking means you’ll also reach more people.

If you have a professional account on Instagram, the platform’s algorithm typically limits the reach of organic or unsponsored/unpromoted content. Algorithmic feed ranking and visibility favor ads and sponsored posts. 

Content overload further curbs the already limited organic reach. Content overload occurs when there’s more content than the feed can hold. Instagram’s one billion plus monthly active users are continuously posting status updates and comments. It’s not hard to imagine why engaging your target audience with organic posts is challenging.

Why Is Organic Growth Still Important?

Organic growth on Instagram defines your success in relationship-building. It’s a more accurate measure of your brand’s credibility, strong platform presence, and trust in your audience. Developing an effective organic social media strategy will help you nurture a lasting and rewarding relationship with followers. You can attract potential customers and a greater Instagram audience. 

Consistent organic growth means you’re providing real value to your target audience. It means your audience genuinely appreciates what you have to offer. With a successful organic content strategy, you can grow your followers and maintain a high engagement rate. You can also convert more customers and achieve more goals with lower ad spending.

7 Organic Instagram Growth Strategies

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and assimilate these time-tested organic growth strategies. Whether you’re a small business or large brand, use our tips to grow your Instagram and attract potential customers.

1. Develop a Clear and Goal-oriented Content Strategy

If you want your content to perform well, you need to create content worthy of your audience’s attention and engagement. Put real effort and careful thought into your content strategy. Always go for quality and relevance when creating content. The first question you must answer is, “Who do you want to reach with your content?” This involves identifying your target audience based on their demographics and interests. Check out your competitors on Instagram. What types of content get the most likes and comments on their pages? Have they determined the best time to post?

It would help if you also visited other Instagram accounts whose audiences may overlap with yours. For example, let’s consider a coffee cart located in a business district. See what other businesses in the area are posting on their social media and when. You may get valuable insights about what the local consumers are into. Then, you can better optimize your content strategy to get their attention.

Establish realistic goals for your organic Instagram growth content strategy. Create content that helps you build your brand, audience, and community without being “salesy.” You need to post consistently but don’t just create content that sells your products or services. Share targeted, high-quality content designed to develop a meaningful relationship with your target audience.

2. Offer Something of Value To Nurture Organic IG Growth

Give people a good reason to follow you and engage with you. This is crucial to achieving organic growth on Instagram. Offering something of value to your audience also involves knowing their passions and needs. It also gives you a shot at the user-generated content (UCG) tactic. UCG is where followers create content about your brand. This basically gives you free organic Instagram promotion!

The value you offer may come from motivational or inspirational content, entertainment, or beauty or fashion hacks. Your brand’s value proposition has to be relevant to your audience’s daily routine, lifestyle, or cultural identity, among others. Lululemon is a good example. The company has positioned itself as more than just an athleisure apparel brand. It’s established itself as an authority by sharing fitness tips through Instagram Reels, Lives, and IGTV.

You’ll generate enough organic engagement in your post when you provide value through your content. You’ll also increase your chances of getting featured on the Instagram Explore page. Take the time to learn how to land on Explore, where potential new followers can quickly discover you. Value can also translate into organic shares. The more shares you get, the more people you’ll reach and the higher your engagement rate.

Feature Real People For Organic Instagram Promotion

A study on “how photos with faces drive engagement on large-scale, image-sharing communities” provided important insights. It revealed that images with human faces are 38 percent more likely to receive likes. They’re also 32 percent more likely to get comments than pictures without faces. Whether promoting a product or service, posting behind-the-scenes content, or sharing user-generated content (UGC), choose photos featuring real people. These are photos that audiences will find a real connection with.

Whenever possible, tag or mention other Instagram accounts in your posts. Don’t forget to practice common courtesy; always ask if you can tag or mention a follower or another brand. Know who to tag on Instagram to generate the organic interest you need. The more genuine the feature, the higher the likelihood your post will generate organic follower engagement and IG growth.

4. Actively Invite Engagement To Stimulate Organic IG Growth

Just ask if you want your post to get likes, comments, or shares. Place a call-to-action (CTA) in your caption or as overlaid text on the image or video. A simple but solid CTA can effectively stimulate organic growth on Instagram.

You can also invite engagement by asking a question in your post or starting a poll. Use questions, polls, quizzes, or sliding emoji stickers to encourage your followers to interact with your content. You won’t only get an increase in organic engagement; you’ll also learn more about your target audience. They’ll appreciate that you’re interested in getting to know them better or hearing their opinions.

5. Leverage Organic Marketing on Instagram: Brand Collaboration

Tapping into the power of influencers generates paid or sponsored content. This applies whether you’re paying the influencer with money or free products/services. But you can consider teaming up with like-minded creators, brands, or followers for a mutually beneficial collaboration. You’ll quickly reach a wider audience with a high likelihood of giving you a follow and active engagement.

Collaborations like account take-overs, cross-overs, or shoutouts have a high potential for engagement and exposure to similar audiences. Encourage members of your Instagram community to participate in a challenge or Live, for example. This will also help you strengthen your brand’s relationship with followers and potential customers. This, in turn, will motivate them to remain engaged with and invested in your brand.

6. Monitor Your Analytics To Improve and Sustain Organic Growth

Keep tabs on your content performance through your analytics. Monitoring your performance is the only way to identify what works and what doesn’t. With this information, you can adjust your content strategy accordingly.

Your analytics will help you establish and maintain a strong presence on the platform through consistent and well-timed posting. Your analytics will tell you what types of content format your audience prefers. You can figure out which sub-groups within your target audience relate well with certain types of content. Your analytics play a key role in helping you perfect your organic growth strategy.

Instagram Hacks for Organic Growth

In addition to proven best practices, these organic growth hacks give your Instagram strategy a sharper edge.

Organic IG Growth: Free Tricks To Generate Organic Interest

Paying to boost a post or run a campaign is not always the best solution to your Instagram woes. Add these free tricks to your overall strategy to generate organic interest in your brand and content:

• Tap into your active Instagram followers’ powers of engagement. For example, if you have a new product to announce, create a buzz by targeting your most engaged followers. Feature the post in your Stories daily or pin it to your profile. If you can get creative enough, organic content can be as effective as a sponsored post, if not more.

• Optimize your content for your Instagram audience. What works on other platforms may not work on Instagram. For example, Stories and Reels are super popular on Instagram. Adopt a content strategy that best suits your goals and audience on the platform to help you achieve organic growth. Stay up-to-date on what’s trending on Instagram. Learn how to use unique Instagram features, such as Instagram Shopping, to your advantage.

• Give engagement to get engagement. Reply to comments, DMs, and brand mentions as promptly as possible. Ask followers if you can share their content. Ask them for feedback after a purchase. Get their thoughts on what you should wear to a certain event or design changes you’re planning to make. Show them love and appreciation every chance you get.

Buy Organic Instagram Promotion

Can you buy organic growth on Instagram? If you buy followers, it may lead to real organic growth. If you buy an Instagram account for sale, you may get an account pre-packaged with organic and active engagement. Buying organic growth may seem contradictory because “organic growth” means you don’t pay for it. But what if you subscribe to a social growth management company to help you grow organically? You’re technically buying organic IG growth.

The right Instagram organic growth service will give you the advantage of having experts developing and implementing your growth strategy. You can do away with the trial period that comes with testing and perfecting your content and audience-targeting techniques. And you’ll get accurate and expertly informed insights about your performance, audience, and competition.

Get Expertly Guided Growth for Your Brand

These days, feeds bombard users with sponsored posts. As a result, audiences have developed a stronger craving for organic content. Get expert help optimizing your content strategy for your target audience. This way, you’ll be on the fast track to organic growth.

Give Path Social’s monthly plans for managed, organic growth a try. Path Social offers both advanced tools and professional, hands-on Instagram growth management. You’ll get the same precise audience-targeting advantage offered by boosted posts and Instagram ads. This is possible with Path Social’s advanced, proprietary AI technology. You can also leverage influencer power through the company’s immense network of industry influencers.

You can focus on managing other aspects of your business on Instagram or creating high-quality content. Rest assured that your brand is in the very capable hands of Path Social’s team of social media specialists. You can even opt for your own dedicated Account Success Manager.

Expect real, lasting, organic growth when you team up with Path Social. You’ll gain followers who are authentic users and genuinely interested in your brand. You’ll build a loyal community of actively engaged users who will help you sustain your success on the platform. Path Social only engages in hands-on, organic outreach and promotion to get you real, long-lasting, and highly engaged followers. Tens of thousands of brands from all industries trust Path Social. Boost your organic Instagram growth today!

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