How to Increase Followers on Instagram for Real

Instagram is one of the world's most popular social networks. You can post photos, videos, and ephemeral stories on Instagram, and it's proven to be one platform where many big brands have found success in reaching their audience. It's not easy to increase Instagram followers but if you follow these tips, and form a strong strategy, you will see the results. At the heart of Instagram lies quality content — you just can't succeed without it, but there's a lot more to increasing your Instagram followers than meets the eye. Here are our best tips to help you increase Instagram followers.

1. Know why you are on Instagram
This sounds really simple, but it is the most important thing if you want to increase Instagram followers. What are you on Instagram for? Is it to drive traffic to your website? Is it to reach a new audience? Whatever it is, you need to define your goal and then form a strategy towards achieving that.

2. Quality matters
You can't get away with low-effort, half-hearted posts on Instagram. If your strategy revolves around photos, make sure you take great pictures of whatever you're trying to promote. For instance, you could post a picture of a book you're reviewing with a coffee mug next to it on a plush wooden table — this will immediately attract more people towards your photo caption and that is a big win. If you are posting videos, make sure you edit them properly and if possible, add either subtitles or text on the video because videos are muted by default.

3. Post detailed captions
We've seen accounts posting detailed accounts of how a picture was taken, detailed recipes and cooking methods, and even whole book reviews posted as Instagram captions. All of this on extremely popular accounts on Instagram, which shows that along with quality content, you should post detailed captions too. This is not something you should do every single time, but every time the caption adds a lot to your photo or video, you should post a detailed one.

4. Post Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories allow you to jump the news feed queue by default, and they even have a prominent slot on the Discover page. This is reason enough to make good use of Stories. We've found that people love sending their tech-related queries to us via Instagram Stories' QnA feature, and we're sure you'll be able to find a better way to engage with your audience via Stories. You can even add links to Stories if your account has that feature, so it's another reason to use this as much as possible.

5. Engage with others
Don't just make Instagram a one-way street where you post quality content but never engage with anyone. To increase Instagram followers, you should interact with your audience and popular accounts in your field. Comment on their stories or posts, or simply like the ones relevant to your account.

Another overlooked aspect of this is to keep an eye on what's trending and hop in. For instance, the 10-year challenge made waves recently, so find ways to make relevant posts about such topics for an even better chance of engaging with your audience.

6. Don't forget the hashtags
There's no need to spam hashtags to increase Instagram followers, but you should definitely use three or four popular hashtags relevant to your audience. There are niche hashtags for various communities or interests and you should definitely target these to boost your reach.

7. Use your bio to your advantage
Your bio is your identity on Instagram. If you're hoping to increase your followers, you should update this regularly. The bio is the only place where you can add clickable links, and this means that you should frequently update this to direct people to your website.

8. Every post should have a call-to-action
You posted a great photo or video of your product, wrote a great caption, but there's one more thing for you to do. Tell your followers to check your bio for a link to find out more. This is a simple but effective thing that every account should do. If you shared a great post, it also doesn't hurt to ask your followers to tag their friends who can relate to your product.

9. Instagram-exclusive offers
You can definitely do giveaways and contests on your page to increase Instagram followers, but as a brand a more sustainable strategy could be discounts. You could offer a discount coupon to your followers on Instagram and be creative about it. Perhaps once a week you could have a contest with a question about whatever you want to promote and share the coupon with those who get the answer right. This has been observed to be a good tactic for early growth on Instagram.

10. Don't put all eggs in one basket
This is very important. Make sure you have a presence on multiple social media platforms or at least have a website outside of Instagram. In the quest to increase your Instagram followers, you should never forget that it can cut your reach at any point and if that happens, you don't want your hard work to go to waste.

Finally, we strongly advise against buying Instagram followers. While there are several services that allow you to increase Instagram followers at a small cost, it's best to avoid these. If Instagram ever decides to crack the whip, your account could be suspended or permanently banned. There's no point risking that.

What are your tips to increase Instagram followers? Let us know via the comments.