When you’re just starting out with an online business, it can be exciting to imagine how you can successfully sell your product through Instagram once you have built up your follower base. But truth is, your first 10,000 Instagram followers are the hardest to get. Why? No one knows who you are yet. You’ve still got to prove yourself as a successful brand and influencer. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. If you follow this guide on how to get followers on Instagram, you could hit 10,000 Instagram followers in as little six months.
1. Have a consistent style that hooks people in
I know this sounds like one of those ‘blah, blah, blah’ ways to gain followers on Instagram. But it isn’t. Here’s why: people don’t follow you because of the content you’ve posted but because of what they think the future content you’ll post will be like.
Say you have a corgi fan page, every day you post cute corgi pictures and videos without fail. If Instagram users keep seeing your posts eventually they’ll realize that you always post the cutest corgi content. So they follow you with the expectation that your account will always be more of the same type of content.
Having a consistent style or theme is more than just a branding play, it’s about creating an expectation for your Instagram account that your followers or potential followers can count on. They want to see more of the same type of content, every day.
If you can deliver that consistency with every post, you’ll grow your followers on Instagram at a faster rate over time.
2. Hashtags to Get Followers on Instagram
Many experts will tell you to only use 5 or 11 hashtags or some other arbitrary numbers. But when I was building my store’s Instagram account, I ignored their advice and ran wild with it.
I’d copy and paste a list of hashtags from my phone onto my app. Then, I’d sometimes switch it up to try different hashtags but eventually, I knew which ones usually worked best. Usually, I’d go as close to or right to the max number of hashtags possible. 30. That’s the magic number.
Truth is, you add all those hashtags in the first comment. And as your page engagement grows, no one will ever see the first comment because they’re too busy tagging their friend in your post.
Sure, when you’re starting out people might see it. But if the goal is to increase visibility, the easiest way to do it is to add more hashtags. As you gain followers, your posts will rank higher for those hashtag keywords giving you even more visibility.
If your hashtags are niche specific, you’ll increase your likelihood of being found by a relevant audience which will help you grow your followers on Instagram as well. So avoid generic hashtags like #love or #picoftheday if you’re selling fashion, for example.
3. Follow People who Like Competing Pages
To get that Instagram followers increase you need to find people who follow brands. Who are your biggest competitors on Instagram? Write them down. Then, browse their posts to see who’s commenting on their posts. Follow them and engage with them.
Keep in mind that when choosing competitors on Instagram it’s better to go for the smaller brands. Why? Because if you were selling makeup brushes and trying to get people who comment on Sephora, there’s a good chance that they’re not the right audience despite being in a similar niche. Bigger brands tend to have more customer loyalty.
However, if you have a competitor who has 100,000 fans on their page, they may not have a loyalty to that brand.
When commenting on posts of those you follow, don’t scare them off with a sales pitch or the same comment for every person you message. If they ask a question on their post, give them an answer. Look at the types of comments others are giving and use that as a guideline for what you can comment too.
As you keep engaging and following people, you’ll start to amass a strong following of your own. If you enjoyed reading this post please subscribe to my youtube channel for more tutorials.
