Are you looking to grow your Instagram organically today? Have you seen the Instagram favorites feed, close friends or Meta verified feed to grow your Instagram audience?
Undoubtedly, Instagram is a potent tool for individuals, influencers, and businesses to gain visibility and engage with their audience.
However, the competition is getting fiercer by the minute, and, today, making your Instagram page stand out can be an intimidating process.
Table of Contents
Grow Instagram Organically
If you are thinking of using this social media platform as the primary channel to attract new customers, you could opt to employ a digital marketing agency.
However, here are 14 fabulous tips on how to grow your Instagram audience that is available to anybody, independently from budget and specific goals.
Of course, it takes consistency, time, patience, and trial and error to succeed on the Insta app and make money at it.
1. Instagram Target Audience
Understanding and targeting the right audience on Instagram is crucial for organic account growth. By identifying and connecting with individuals who are genuinely interested in your content, you can increase engagement, reach, and ultimately attract more followers.
When you focus on a specific audience, you can tailor your content to their preferences and needs, ensuring that it resonates with them.
This targeted approach allows you to build meaningful connections, foster loyalty, and generate more organic engagement, ultimately leading to the growth of your Instagram account.
2. The Instagram Favorites Feed To Help
Have you seen the favorites feed on Instagram yet? It is another great way to grow Instagram organically.
Here is a screenshot of how you can view it. Click on the favorites button to start adding pages to this Instagram favorites feed.
You can also choose from a close friends feed. On your mobile app, they appear at the bottom of your 3 lines on the right hand size of the app where you find your settings and much more.
Not only that but The “favorites” feed is a curated section that only shows posts from up to 50 accounts identified as a favorite by the user. Those selected “favorites” accounts get priority in the home feed, too.
Imagine being in an Instagram feed with up to 49 other accounts instead of 1.1 million. That surely can cut down on the competition for your posts.
However, do note the alternative feeds also won’t show Instagram Stories, which only appear on the home screen. Instagram is also testing a nearby feed for stories, stay tuned!
Did you know you can search for private Instagram users too?
3. Add Value To Expand Your Instagram Audience
This tip might seem obvious, but anybody can look at their feed and find ways to improve it, even established influencers. Trends change rapidly, and it might seem hard to keep up with several algorithm changes and fads.
However, focusing on how to improve your content can be an excellent starting point to craft a long-term strategy to grow your Instagram audience.
While different kinds of content might have value for other audiences, it is essential to understand what inspires your particular audience. To do so, you should be aware of who your customer persona is and what the ideal follower looks like.
This strategy is excellent for finding out what excites them and what they feel an affinity with. In turn, you will be able to craft content that not only has value but can also leave such readers an impression.
Lisa, Inspire To Thrive
4. Don’t Forget Power of Direct Messaging
Instagram DMs are a powerful tool for connecting with your audience quickly and directly. Through DMs, you can engage with followers on a personal level, build relationships, and even drive conversions.
By sending targeted messages, you can tailor your communication to individual interests and needs, increasing the likelihood of a positive response.
Additionally, the instant nature of DMs allows for real-time interactions, fostering a sense of immediacy and authenticity in your communication.
Leveraging Instagram DMs effectively can lead to increased brand loyalty, customer engagement, and ultimately, business growth.
Did you know IG users will now also be able to pin up to three chats to the top of their DM inbox? You can more easily access you most important discussions.
5. Writing Captions To Get Attention
To write the best captions for Instagram posts, follow these steps. Firstly, keep it concise and engaging. Captions should be short and grab the attention of your followers.
Use catchy words and phrases to make your captions stand out and grow Instagram organically.
Secondly, add relevant hashtags to increase visibility. Research popular hashtags in your niche and include them in your captions. This will help your posts reach a wider audience.
Thirdly, be authentic and show your personality. Let your captions reflect who you are and what you stand for.
Lastly, end with a call to action. Encourage your followers to like, comment, or share your post. This will boost engagement and increase the visibility of your content.
By following these tips, you can write captivating captions that enhance your Instagram posts.
However, you can also use an AI caption generator for Instagram to help you write the best captions to grow Instagram organically.
6. Select the Right Hashtags
If you have ever scrolled through any social media feed, you know what a hashtag looks like. However, not all hashtags will work in the same way, or they are relevant to your account’s needs.
Hashtags can be a potent tool that allows your account to be discovered by an increasing number of users – with the right strategy. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, so you should make the most out of them.
These hashtags should be specific and highly relevant to your post and caption. Do not use the same hashtags over and over again on your IG account.
Opting for long-tail hashtags can be a winning strategy if the short ones relevant to your business are used by an enormous number of people.
Indeed, while there might be fewer people looking at a particular long-tail hashtag, there are fewer chances that your post will get lost among thousands of others.
Don’t worry if you are not sure how to pick the right hashtags, who to like, and how to interact with your audience. You can invest in the services of a company that can do this for you.
7. Leverage Geotags to Grow Your Instagram Audience
Geotags are those tags that appear just above each post – if you select one. They work similarly to hashtags, just for locations.
Adding a geotag to your post or story allows other users to discover your picture when looking for that specific location.
If you are using Instagram to increase the visibility of a physical store or company, geotags can help you attract customers.
Indeed, users are likely to check out the posts relative to a specific geotag when in that location, and studies have proven that a simple geotag can increase engagement to opt to 79%.
In turn, users will be able to see the choices available to them – make sure that your business is on the list to grow your Instagram organically.
8. Understand Your Instagram Audience To Know When To Post
The foundations of engagement on social media are posting, liking, commenting, and building relationships with other users and influencers.
But when is the best time to do so? This varies, and you will have to allow for a little trial and error.
However, if you are using a business profile on Instagram, you can find out more demographics about your audience by checking out the “Insights” tab. Aside from gender and location, this dataset tells you when your fans are the most active.
This detail, as well as where they are from in the world, helps you guess the best time to post.
Posting at the right time of the day is essential because the Instagram algorithm benefits posts that generate high engagement during the first hour of being online. So you should ensure that your audience is mostly awake and active on Instagram at that time.
Another technique that can help you increase your posts’ outreach is to advertise them before and after publishing them through stories or countdowns.
9. Invest in Sponsored Content
Sponsored content might not be an accessible choice for all businesses launching today. Indeed, this strategy requires you to have a portion of the budget dedicated to this kind of marketing.
However, sponsored content is perfect for reaching out to a much wider audience. It can grow your organic reach as well.
Couple sponsor content with influencer marketing to improve your brand reputation while increasing your engagement.
10. Don’t Ignore Latest Instagram Trends
While you might have a precise idea of what your feed should look like, don’t underestimate the power of trends and fads. One of the latest ones is Instagram Reels, these are short 5-60 second videos you share on the Instagram network.
Another newer feature is the GoLive feature with more visibility. Profiles will get a badge with the information on the schedule live. Plus their followers will be able to opt-in to get a notification the moment the Live is available.
Like other social media platforms, Instagram is influenced by fast trends. These trends tend to change quickly from one month to another. (And sometimes, they change day by day!)
Keeping up with them is not easy, and you don’t have to change your whole strategy necessarily. Another less known feature is saving Instagram posts into a collection.
These help your Instagram posts be seen in the algorithm as it makes your content rank higher when someone saves your posts.
However, acknowledging them and including some details of them in your plan can help your account stay up-to-date and appealing.
11. Link Stickers For Instagram Stories
One of the latest updates from Instagram is being able to link your Instagram stories. Instagram is making a change to the way that external links are shared within Stories frames.
When you post a story, add a sticker and choose the link one, then paste into your external link. That’s it! People can see and click on your links from your Instagram stories.
Instagrammers no longer need to have 10,000 or more Instagram followers. This is a fabulous newer feature.
12. Consistency To Grow Instagram Organically
Due to the increasingly high competition and rising number of users, your Instagram growth is likely to be slow. However, giving up after the first few months means that you might never see the results you were expecting to increase your Instagram audience.
Being consistent doesn’t mean you need to post daily, just post on the same days every week, even if it’s Monday and Thursday only. Of course, adding stories daily may help to grow your Instagram audience.
Oppositely, being consistent and keeping posting, and creating engagement is crucial for organic growth. Being able to use Instagram on a desktop today can help you be more consistent on Instagram and help to grow your Instagram audience.
At the same time, this strategy allows you to build long-lasting relationships with other users and influencers in the industry.
Beyond social media, these networks might be essential for the development of your company
13. Run Contests To Expand Your Instagram Audience
If you have already started to see an increase in the audience you can generally reach through posts. As well as other engagement strategies to begin communicating with them. The easiest way to involve your users and viewers with your effort is to create contests and giveaways.
These don’t necessarily have to include a cash prize; you can run a successful competition by picking the best photo among the ones tagged with a specific hashtag.
Alternatively, create an online product and promotion to sponsor your creation and brand to help expand your Instagram audience.
14. Use Instagram Highlights
Creating stories is essential to maintain a connection with your audience during the day. Saving them on the highlights at the top of your profile allows fans to keep up with your current story.
They can even scroll through and find older ones as well. Don’t forget to delete older ones that are no longer relevant in your highlights.
Additionally, highlights will enable you to save promotions, information, tutorials, and products you can refer to through your contemporary stories.
Highlights also help to increase your Instagram audience further.
15. Don’t Forget To Check Your Competition
Your competitors, especially the successful ones, can work as the perfect benchmark for the first months. Check out their strategy and learn from it in particular if you believe they have invested in a digital marketer’s services.
If they have paid for this strategy, and it is working, it is worth keeping it into consideration to grow your Instagram audience! While your brand might differ from theirs on some levels, you can learn from their backlink strategy, hashtags, and keywords.
However, if they have a private account, there is a way here to view them.
Bottom Line: Increasing Your Instagram Audience
Unfortunately, there is no exact formula for any business to succeed on Instagram. Still, some strategies can help you increase your audience and reach out to a more significant number of potential customers.
Start from the ones above and include the tactics that better resonate with your brand – then, enjoy the results!
I’d love to know in the comments below how you are growing your Instagram account today and if you are using the new Instagram favorites or close friends feeds.
Grow Your Instagram Audience Organically: 14 Fabulous Tips Share on X- Blogging Trends to Boost Your Marketing Strategy In the Future - October 4, 2024
- How To Turn Off Vanish Mode on Instagram Chat With a Swipe - October 2, 2024
- 10 Tips on How To Build an Online Presence for Your Business - September 30, 2024
Hi Lisa, The last time I read your blog was in 2018 and 2022 and you are one of the experienced bloggers I started blogging to meet those days when I got to know Ryan Biddulph. Thanks for sharing these tips on growing your Instagram audience. Recently I have been able to grow a page organically to 1,500 followers and I was so excited for my business as I’ve actually not been an Instagram core user but a Facebook addict. With these tips of yours, I believe I can upscale further and perhaps become an Instagram sensation. Keep the good work going.
Hi Matthew, Thanks for being a reader of Inspire To Thrive. I guess you have missed a bit. That’s great on getting your page to 1500, it’s not an easy thing to do these days. What is your niche? Appreciate your coming by and have a great day.
Lisa: Thanks for sharing these tips. I have come to the insight after reading Brian Solis’s book, LifeScale, and other books on digital minimalism, that I will reduce my social media activities in a certain way. I will create at least one piece of content every day, and then pick which platform I will use. I will concentrate on the places I can control, e.g., my newsletter, my podcasts, and my blogs. It is easy to get caught up with scrolling your Instagram feeds, consuming an endless stream of photos, videos, and stories.
I am interested to create a team with content creators for some of my social media accounts. I will invite individuals who are on the same wavelength, that get my personal style. I don’t want to get burned out…
Best Premises,
Martin
Hi Martin, I like your thinking on digital minimalism 🙂 It can be an endless feed on the various social networks. It is easy to get burned out. I try to stay off for most of the weekend though it doesn’t always work. I also shut my phone off around 8 pm but I do start around 4 am. Social media can be hard and timely work. Thanks for your input on this one and have a great rest of the week Martin 🙂
Hi Lisa,
I saw on Instagram you posted growth strategies. I came right over!
1. I like how the background was dropped behind the cupcake. Cute! Do you know the tool that was used?
2. Speaking of Instagram tools, I’m still having trouble posting an Instagram Story from desktop and I’m thinking of deleting the Chrome Extension. Any thoughts? Is there a video that might demo this? A different extension?
Thanks!
Janice
Hi Janice,
1. Yes, that is Canva pro. Click on the image / link to try it.
2. I’ve used it and it worked. I’m not sure if there are other tools, I use Agorapulse to do stories too on Instagram now as I tend to schedule out. What type of scheduling tool are you using ? I believe the Buffer offered it too. Thanks for coming by Janice and have a great rest of the week.
Hi,
Thanks for answering my questions. Does Agorapulse have a free version? Buffer doesn’t post Stories for free in their prescheduler.
Janice
Hi Janice, they only have a 28 day trial that is FREE. Not many are offering a true free service anymore. I imagine it does a lot of money to provide the services.