Instagram is such an amazing tool for influencers and business owners to reach their ideal clients/audience. Growing a following can feel challenging, but it doesn’t have to feel that way. These tips on how to grow your Instagram following to over 10,000 should help! Follow these tips and you’ll have the swipe up feature in no time.

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1. Host niche-specific giveaways

Reach out to other influencers and brands in your niche to collab on a niche-specific giveaway. For example, if you are in the fitness space, you can team up with fitness bloggers and brands to giveaway 3-5 fitness related items.

How to do this?: Email brands to ask if they’d be interested in gifting products to be featured in the giveaway and ask everyone involved to share the giveaway post to their pages to reach a larger audience. To enter the giveaway people will have to follow all brands/accounts involved.

2. Collaborate with others in your niche

Collaboration really is the key to growth. DM people you admire and/or people with a similar following size to ask to if they’d be interested in working together on content.

For example: You can go on ig live together to discuss relevant topics, you can share different ways to use/style an item, or you can do an Instagram story takeover on the other person’s account.

3. Use niche-specific, location-specific, & community-specific hashtags

Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags. So consider using 10 niche-specific hashtags, 10 location based hashtags, and 10 community based hashtags (hashtags that will get you featured on a larger account or a hashtag people from your niche already follow).

For example: I would use #thriftblogger (niche-specific), #losangelesblogger (location-specific), and #alwaysplaydressup (community specific). If you’re a thrift blogger – use my community-specific hashtag, #GiveThriftingAChance, to get featured on my account.

4. Be involved in the community

Make sure to actually connect with your community – meaning respond to DMS and comments, comment on other people’s pages, and share other people’s content to your IG stories. Really focus on being active in the community.

5. Be consistent

Post on a regular basis. People do not want to follow an account that hasn’t posted in months because it seems like it’s inactive. Try to post once a week to your feed and a few times a week to your Instagram stories. Consider using Plann to schedule out content in advance to help with consistency.

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6. Create quality content

Focus on quality over quantity. If you are posting nice photos and providing value to your community, your following will grow. You don’t need a super fancy camera for this. Good lighting goes a long way!

Also, make sure your caption is more than just an emoji or a hashtag. Tell a story or provide useful tips in the caption and always add a call to action (CTA). My favorite call to actions are asking my audience a question to encourage discussion or asking my audience to share the post or to tag a friend.

7. Don’t buy fake followers, join loop/hidden giveaways, or join comment pods

These three techniques will grow your following, but they usually result in a following of people who will not actually care about or engage with your content. Sometimes referred to as “ghost” followers – these followers hurt your account overall because it tells the Instagram algorithm that people are not actually interested in the content you provide. I’ve read horror stories about people gaining followers this way and regretting it.

7. Nourish your current following and shift your mindset

Show up for your current audience and focus on providing them with value. If you have a loyal community of 50 people, that’s better than having an uninterested community of 10,000 people. If you shift your focus from how to grow your following to how can you provide value to your current following, you will be much more satisfied (and probably grow because of it).

8. Create shareable and savable Content

Quick, digestible content is performing well on Instagram right now. Especially inspiring quotes and educational infographics made in Canva*. Create content that someone would want to share with a friend or save to reference again.

9. Share your IG posts to Pinterest & Facebook

Share your Instagram posts on other platforms to reach more people. The people who follow you on Pinterest or Facebook may not know you have an Instagram. Sharing your content on other platforms can help new people discover your account.

10. Show your face on IG Stories

Video content is doing really well right now because it helps create a deeper connection with your audience. People want to get to know the person behind the account. Showing your face and talking on stories is a great way to show your personality. Your audience will feel an authentic connection with you if you show up this way.

Bonus Tip: Don’t be scared to try new releases on the app such as IG Reels or IG guides. Instagram is promoting that content more than ever right now. If you are an early adopter of a new feature, you are more likely to get discovered on the platform. With that little bonus tip, I hope this post was helpful. Remember to focus on quality over quantity and that consistency is key!

Do you have any tips to grow your Instagram following?