How to Get Followers on Instagram: From 0 to 10k Followers
When you’re just starting out, it can be exciting to imagine how many followers your Instagram account can get. But truth is, your first 10,000 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 can probably hit 10,000 followers in only six months.
#1. Join Instagram Engagement Groups
Some Instagram influencers who are just starting out have seen their Instagram followers increase fast. What did they do differently? They joined engagement groups.
While it can be tempting to join the biggest Instagram engagement groups, truth is you’ll get a more targeted list of followers by sticking to your niche. You can find engagement groups for travel, beauty, fashion and more.
In these groups, you can get followers and likes from people who have shared interests. But if you’re serious about getting the attention, you should also return the favor by following fan pages for people who join the group.
I’ve had friends get 2,000 new followers in only a couple weeks using this strategy.
While it might not help with immediate sales, it helps you gain credibility early on so your Instagram page doesn’t show that you only have 38 followers. This is more of a short-term strategy for your first few weeks on Instagram not a long-term one for getting Instagram followers.
#2. Repost Others’ Content
When I was building my store’s Instagram account, my entire posting strategy revolved around reposting other people’s content. The only way to do this without getting flagged is to credit the original poster in your description, every time.
When I first started, I’d take screenshots and add the pictures onto my Instagram. What really helped my page take off was when I bought the Repost app. It allowed me to start reposting video content on Instagram. One of the biggest home runs I had was when I re-posted a video that amassed 52,862 views, got 1264 comments and 9,147 likes. At the time, I didn’t even have 10,000 followers so this was a big freaking deal.
Why’d I repost other people’s content instead of posting my own?
Because I knew that it was easier to repost content and that my visual and video content would never be as good as someone else’s. Hey, at least I’m honest about it!
How did I know what to repost? I’d look at the numbers.
I was pretty active on Instagram so I’d browse the list of hashtags I came up with and used daily to find the top performing posts that weren’t posted by other fan pages (so not my competitors) but by individual people. I’d then watch the videos and look at the pictures to see which ones I had the biggest reactions to. If I felt the urge to share someone else’s post, I knew I had to repost it onto my page.
#3. Get your Instagram Account Promoted on Buzzfeed
To get that Instagram followers boost, you need to find a way to tap into a massive audience. And no one embeds Instagram posts into their content as much as Buzzfeed.
A Buzzfeed staff member wrote an article about how she grew her personal brand as an Instagram influencer. She currently has almost 6,000 followers but the article she wrote on the platform might’ve helped. Buzzfeed does have a Community section where anyone can post their own content onto their platform, though you’ll need to follow their guidelines to build trust and to get visibility.
Is Buzzfeed not right for your niche? That’s cool. You can also use a tool called HARO where you get emails three times a day filled with requests from reporters who are looking to get content and expert quotes for their stories. Most allow a website link and social links. So you can hit two birds with one stone by getting a link to your store and Instagram account.
When you’re just starting out, getting followers on Instagram will be a lot easier with customer photos in your feed. Why? It can help increase social proof.
If you’ve never had a customer before, reach out to influencers in your niche with under 5,000 followers. I know the number seems low but influencers with few followers want to monetize their accounts and will be willing to take pictures with your products at a much lower rate. You can also offer them an affiliate deal where they’ll get a commission for every sale they score with their customer referral link.
If you’ve already had a couple of sales, reach out to customers and offer a free gift or cash incentive for taking quality images with the product they purchased. Offering incentives isn’t going to be your long-term strategy but for the short-term, while you try to build your brand, this can help you grow.
As more customers start seeing customer photos on your Instagram, they’ll naturally start tagging you in posts when they receive their products. If you comment on their post, repost the content and follow them you’ll likely get them to follow back. Though some will follow you after tagging you in their post on their own.
#5. 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 at a faster rate over time.
#6. Ignore the Hashtag Rules
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. I’d sometimes switch it up to try different hashtags but eventually I knew which ones usually worked best. I’d usually 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 you’re hashtags are niche specific, you’ll increase your likelihood of being found by a relevant audience which will help you grow your followers as well. So avoid generic hashtags like #love or #picoftheday if you’re selling fashion, for example.
#7. Work with Influencers
Another way to get an Instagram followers increase is by getting influencer shoutouts or having influencers do an account takeover.
If an influencer has a loyal following, they can give you a shoutout that’ll result in new followers for your account and possibly a few sales.
Be sure to write up a contract that prohibits the influencer from sending fake traffic. We once worked with an influencer who gave us a shoutout and we got 2,000 fake followers on our account. It was obvious she used a bot. When you get a sudden rush of fake follower on your account you risk getting your account banned.
If you’re looking for a more effective approach to get new followers, ask the influencer you work with to do an account takeover on your Instagram Stories. That way, people will have to follow your page to view the story. You’ll need to get him or her to let their audience know a few days in advance.
