Organic Marketing on Instagram: Get Fans Without Paid Ads

With millions of creators active on Instagram, this website has undoubtedly become one of the most competitive social media platforms. Because the competition there is so fierce, many assume that the platform is primarily pay-to-play. They think without paid effort, you have no skin in the game. But that’s simply not true. Organic marketing on Instagram is still alive and kicking.

Yup, you can still promote your content the old-fashioned way without paid content. In a world where ad campaigns and buying followers have become the norm, promote yourself organically. It’s much better for your online presence and can let you grow at a steady and sustainable pace. In this blog post, we’ll show you organic growth strategies to help you do just that.

Why Organic Instagram Promotion Is Important for Creators

Organic social media marketing—aka promoting your page without paid efforts—is a must for striving influencers for many reasons.

First and foremost, organic marketing strategies get you organic followers from within your target audience. When you buy followers or run campaigns, you may end up with spammy “fans” or followers outside your target market. However, with organic methods focused solely on perfecting your content strategy, you get authentic fans who actually love your content.

Organic marketing is also the only way to get spontaneous, unprompted engagement from your audience. With paid methods, you’ll most definitely see a spike in likes and comments on your content. But that is a result of either hard-sell ad campaigns or buying fake engagement online.

Organic promotion, on the other hand, entices and lures users to engage with your content. You get engagement not because you pay extra money to make it more likely to happen. Instead, you drive high engagement rates because people actually go out of their way to interact with your posts. That makes the likes and comments you receive much more meaningful.

Organic marketing is also a lot more sustainable than paid methods. It’s easy to become reliant on ads and buying fake activity for Instagram. But as soon as you stop, your growth and engagement become stagnant, too. Meanwhile, organic promotions allow you to continue that growth over time without having to constantly spend money.

The Dark Side of Ads: Does Promoting Instagram Posts Lower Organic Reach?

Running ads and boosting posts are excellent paid strategies for instantly and accurately reaching your target audience. That’s undeniable. However, these paid posts have a detrimental downside—and it’s a big one you can’t ignore. It’s that as you increase your paid reach, your organic reach lowers tremendously.

This poses a huge issue for creators who want their content to go viral. Because their organic reach is lower, authentic engagement declines as well. Sure, your paid reach is high. However, many people scroll through ads and dismiss them immediately without interacting with them. Because real, meaningful engagement is low, the post gets deprioritized on the platform.

How To Do Organic Marketing on Instagram: 8 Sustainable Promotion Tactics

Paid Instagram efforts are terrific for a quick boost of followers and engagement. But if you want steady, sustainable growth and activity on your page, organic marketing is the way to go.

Convinced that an organic strategy is the best option for marketing yourself on Instagram? Congratulations on the epiphany! If you’re ready to roll and get more followers organically, check out these Instagram promotion strategies that are absolutely free.

1. Create High-Quality Content That Will Engage Your Target Audience

The best way to market yourself on Instagram is by coming up with fresh, impactful, high-quality content. After all, if you have interesting content, people will naturally gravitate to your page and give it a follow. Plus, the more people engage with your posts, the more they will share them with their own followers. That means more eyes on your page without paying a cent.

When planning your content strategy, think of the kind of posts your target audience will enjoy. If you’re a food account targeting dessert lovers, make sure to have weekly recipes for sweets. If you’re a beauty guru who wants to attract skincare newbies, create a series focused on skin basics. By tailoring your content to your niche target market, it will be easier to lure them in.

2. Use Instagram SEO Strategies To Optimize Your Profile

Show up on the Instagram search results when people look up keywords related to your niche by optimizing your profile. This practice is called Instagram search engine optimization, or SEO.

The goal is to include as many buzzwords and key phrases as possible in your bio or display name. That way, when people search those words, phrases, and tags, your name will appear at the top of the results.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a fitness influencer focused on yoga and mindfulness. Include words in your Instagram name and bio that your target market might search for often.

Maybe you can change your display name to “Vinyasa Yoga with [your name].” In your bio, add phrases like “meditation,” “breathwork,” “yoga teacher,” and more. You can even use popular yoga hashtags, like #yogainspiration and #yogalove. When yoga lovers look up these phrases on Instagram, there’s a high chance your profile will appear in the results.

Optimizing your profile for search is one of the most underrated hacks for organic growth, but it’s super effective. So, don’t sleep on it!

3. Prioritize Reels Over Other Content Types

According to new data from Buffer, Instagram Reels drive way more reach than other types of feed posts. Specifically, Reels get 36% more reach than carousels and 125% more than image posts. Wowza!

If you want more people to discover your page, it might be a good idea to produce more Reels. It seems like the Instagram algorithm prioritizes these bite-sized videos. So, coming out with a few of them per week may be a terrific game plan for boosting your visibility.

There are many ways you can come up with Reels on your page. You can create funny, entertaining, relatable skits that people might share on their own page. You can also go the more informative and helpful route with tips, how-to’s, and tutorials. To show off more of your personality, make creative, vlog-style videos showing what a day in your life looks like.

4. Include Relevant Hashtags and Location Tags in Your Posts

Another way to get more people to discover your content on Instagram is by using hashtags and location tags.

IG hashtags help categorize posts on Instagram according to niche. This makes it easier for the algorithm to distribute content to people they think are interested in those lifestyle topics. There are tags for every niche out there, from #travelgram to #fashionstyle.

Adding relevant hashtags to your post captions gives your content a chance to reach people who are likely to find it interesting. When these posts reach your target audience, and they check out your page, they may follow you.

Location tags allow you to “pin” the location of your post. These tags can help attract people interested in that city or country to your content. These may be users looking for photo inspo in that particular location or locals who follow their hometown’s location tag.

For example, let’s say you’re a travel influencer and you’re posting a selfie you took at the Louvre. You use hashtags like #wanderlust, #europe, and #solotravel in your caption and tag “Paris” as your location.

This helps draw in travel lovers who are interested in exploring Europe solo and have an affinity for Paris. And when they see that your travel content lines up perfectly with their interests, they might follow you!

5. Create a Unique Hashtag for Your Community of Fans

Another way to use hashtags to market yourself online is by creating a special one for your fans. These tags should be relatable, niche-related, and unique to your persona.

For example, if you’re a makeup guru who specializes in glam look tutorials, your hashtag might be something like #BoldLooksBy[Name]. This encourages your followers to use the tag should they post content recreating your looks.

When other people stumble upon their content and see the tag, they might get curious and click on it. There, they’ll see all the posts published within your community, all leading back to your page.

Unique hashtags are a terrific first step to building a close-knit community among your Instagram fans. They also let you easily go through every piece of content your fans post that is inspired by your own. Consider reposting some of your fave posts under that tag. It’s an awesome way to acknowledge and appreciate your fans, strengthening your bond with them!

6. Mount Your Own Social Media Challenge

Aside from a community hashtag, you can also promote your page organically by creating your own fun Instagram challenge. Encourage others to participate and post their photos or videos partaking in a specific activity. Then, ask them to challenge others to do it, too. The more popular the challenge becomes, the more you can boost awareness for your page.

The challenge you make doesn’t have to be too difficult. If you’re an art account, it can be as simple as a #NovemberDoodleChallengeWith[Name]. You can also challenge your target audience to do something a little harder. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you can mount a #30DaySquatChallengeWith[Name].

Not only do challenges like these get your name out there, but they also allow you to build a community. It’s a fantastic way to engage not just your followers but also their friends, their friends’ friends, and so on.

7. Host Q&A Sessions on Instagram Stories or Live Streams

Marketing yourself organically doesn’t always mean attracting new potential followers to your page. It can also mean enhancing your image by strengthening your relationship with your existing fanbase. One way to do that is by connecting with them on a deeper level through a Q&A session.

There are a couple of ways to go about taking and answering questions from fans. You can do the session through a series of Instagram Stories, one after the other. You can also have a sit-down session with your loyal fans through Instagram Live. That way, you can chit-chat a bit with them in real time, too.

The goal of these Q&A sessions is to let your fans get to know you more. It allows you to show off your authentic personality, talk about your personal life, and connect with your followers better.

8. Post User-Generated Content Featuring Popular Brands

Do you love trying out new products and posting about them on Instagram? What if we told you that by doing so, you increase the chances of brands reposting and promoting your content?

Brands love it when happy customers post user-generated content (UGC) showcasing their products. After all, it’s hard, cold, social proof that their goods and services are worth trying out. So, when a creator posts content featuring their products, the brand will typically repost it to their page. This exposes that content to the brand’s huge audience.

So, if you want to reach wider audiences on Instagram, consider creating UGC for popular brands and tagging them. If they love your content, they might just share your post to their Story or maybe even their feed. This gives you extra exposure to their fanbase, allowing more people to discover your page.

For example, let’s say you’re a hair care influencer. You notice that Sephora often reposts UGC featuring their latest hair products. So, you create a Reel demonstrating how you use the product and showing how it makes your hair shinier. Sephora then reposts your content to their page, where they have millions of followers, exposing your content to potential fans.

Having Trouble Implementing Organic Growth Strategies? Path Social Can Help!

Organic strategies are the best path to take for steady, sustainable growth on Instagram that lasts. But unlike paid growth methods that have near-instant results, organic growth can sometimes feel like the slowest uphill battle.

Need help getting the ball rolling? Work with Path Social. We use organic promotion strategies to get more eyes on your page, except this time, you can be hands-off. Leave the heavy lifting to us as we use organic marketing on Instagram to get you more followers and engagement. Before you know it, you’ll see significant growth, all without automated methods or paid ads.

We’ve enhanced so many brands’ Instagram presence, like the Beauty of Baking. With our tried-and-tested techniques, their page saw a 394% increase in engagement and almost 20k new followers. Want to see similar results for your profile? Take your Instagram page to the next level and grow with organic strategies with the help of Path Social!

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