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8 Ways to Grow Your Instagram Following

Instagram • Social Media 20 Comments

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I absolutely love Instagram and think it is one of the best and easiest (and most fun!) ways to grow your online following, get more loyal readers, and even convert leads to your email newsletter or sales of your products or affiliate products.

Here are 8 ways to grow your following on Instagram:

1. Post great content.

If you want people to follow you and stick around and recommend you to others, you need to be bringing value to their life every single week.

Value comes in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you’re helping them be a better mom, feel less alone, laugh more, be more intentional with their time, cook better meals, or organize their home.

Any time somebody follows you on social media, whether they realize it or not, they’re asking themselves, “What’s in this for me?”

Think about how you’ll answer that question by making their life better in some way.

2. Show up consistently.

You can’t expect to grow your following if you’re not consistently present for your community.

You have to show up, and you have to show up consistently.

Commit to show up more often and I can almost guarantee you’ll see your numbers grow!

3. Follow other people.

When I follow a few new people regularly, I find that I usually get a few new followers as a result. I won’t necessarily get followed back by those same people I followed, but it often triggers other people in similar communities to follow me!

Tip: Don’t just go out and mass-follow 2,000 people. Intentionally follow people that have the same kinds of audiences that you want to attract. And follow people that will teach you things you need and want to learn.

4. Use IGTV.

Instagram is rewarding people for using Instagram TV right now.

Not only will they show your content to your followers more, but they’ll also show your content in the “recommended for you” section — which gets you in front of a lot more people that aren’t already following you!

So if you aren’t using IGTV, definitely start experimenting with it regularly!

Tip: I save many of my videos that I do on Instagram Live and post them to IGTV. This is a great way to get even more return on my investment of time and effort — and get my account in front of a lot of new people! Note: If you don’t have 10,000 followers, you’ll can only upload videos to IGTV that are less than 10 minutes. You can either edit your videos or just make sure you are concise and keep your Instagram Lives short!

5. Promote Instagram wherever you are online.

Be sure to talk about your Instagram account anywhere you’re present online! People won’t know or assume you have an Instagram account unless you tell them.

Talk about your Instagram account on Facebook, in your blog posts, in your newsletter, on your podcast, in your welcome e-mail, etc.

I often tell people to be sure to follow me on Instagram, because it’s a more personal account and they’ll get more behind-the-scenes real-life stuff if they follow along on there.

6. Use Hashtags.

Experiment with different hashtags and change it up frequently.

I’ve been experimenting with this a lot on both of my accounts — @themoneysavingmom and @yourbloggingmentor — and I’m finding that it truly does work.

Just be sure your hashtags are legitimate and that they’ll attract the right kinds of people who will appreciate your post. Don’t just use hashtags that you know will attract the most people to your post, because that probably means they won’t stick around.

7. Leave comments on other Instagram posts.

Instagram is a community and engagement with other Instagrammers is encouraged and rewarded.

Also, when you comment on other people’s posts, they might appreciate it and follow you back. And other people will follow you when they see you comment, too!

Tip: if anyone comments on your posts or sends you a direct message, be sure to respond and engage with them. Want to take it to the next level? Consider responding with a video message (details on how to do that are here).

8. Host giveaways.

Giveaway are a great way to attract new followers!

I’ve done a lot of giveaways in the past, but a recent giveaway I did on my MSM Instagram account resulted in over 1,000 new followers!

Because of the engagement it got and how many followers I gained as a result, I decided to really reflect on what I did differently with this giveaway compared to past giveaways.

Here’s what I came up with and would offer as tips to you:

  • Post an eye-catching photo. This gets people’s attention.
  • Ask people to follow you, like your photo, and leave a comment tagging a friend. By doing this, you create more engagement and get more eyeballs on it.
  • Pick a giveaway product that will get people excited and that you yourself are genuinely excited about. In this giveaway, I picked books I’ve personally read and love. I also included a popular book that has gotten a lot of exposure online so that people would be really excited about it.
  • Give away an item that will attract people who would be interested in following you. This ensures they’ll stick around once the giveaway is over. Because I love books and frequently talk about them, I decided to give away a stack of books. I also posted intentional living books, since I often talk about intentional living on my MSM Instagram account.
  • Tag companies in your giveaway. This might give you more exposure. I tagged all the authors in my books giveaway, and some of them re-shared the post — which resulted in the giveaway getting even more exposure!
  • Promote it on video. When you show you giveaway products individually on live video, it gets people really excited! I promoted this giveaway on both Instagram Stories and Facebook Live.

I’d love to hear from you! What tips would you add to this list? What has helped you grow your Instagram following?

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Filed Under: Instagram, Social Media

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Comments

  1. Lisa says

    February 2, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing these tips! Growing Instagram is one of my goals this year, and I can definitely implement most of these right away.

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 4, 2019 at 2:02 am

      You are so welcome! I’m grateful this was helpful!

      Reply
  2. Jill says

    February 2, 2019 at 6:28 pm

    Great tips! Thank you!

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 4, 2019 at 2:02 am

      You’re welcome!

      Reply
  3. Shannon says

    February 4, 2019 at 10:35 pm

    I absolutely love Instagram! Thanks so much for the tips. I can definitely do these.

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 5, 2019 at 10:26 pm

      You are so welcome!

      Reply
  4. Dana says

    February 5, 2019 at 12:23 am

    Thanks so much for all the great ideas! I’ve been really focused on my Pinterest growth and FB business page growth lately, but I’m hearing you loud and clear! I need to take a serious look at Instagram!

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 5, 2019 at 10:27 pm

      Yay! I’m so glad this inspired you!

      Reply
  5. Minerva says

    February 7, 2019 at 12:30 am

    Thank you for the great tips. I have been wanting to find out how to grow my instragram followers since I am new to instagram. Now I can talk about instagram on my Facebook page once I am ready for the exposure for my future business. I am planning on retiring next year and will have the time to dedicate to whatever I decide to do with myself.

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 8, 2019 at 9:14 pm

      You are so welcome! I’m glad you found these helpful!

      Reply
  6. Andrea says

    February 9, 2019 at 5:22 am

    Thanks for sharing, Crystal! What do you recommend for reaching out to other influencers when you’d like to share your content? I have a quick guide to creating a family technology plan that I feel many parents will love. What is the best way to share it with other Instagram accounts that I follow? Thanks so much!

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      February 10, 2019 at 12:28 am

      My best advice is to build relationships first. Once you’ve built relationships, then you can occasionally let people know about things like this. I can tell you that I get SO many requests to share other people’s content and I rarely pay close attention unless it’s from someone who has first built a relationship with me! Because there’s a good chance if they haven’t taken the time to build a relationship, that they are sending the same query email or message out to 200 other people.

      Reply
      • Andrea says

        February 10, 2019 at 12:32 am

        Yes, that makes sense. There are a lot of people with whom I feel I have a relationship with because I’ve followed them for a long time, but they don’t know me because I’m not always commenting. But, yes, those relationships go a long way. They’ve helped me already in many ways. Thanks for the reminder!

        Reply
  7. Denise Rodriquez says

    April 20, 2019 at 2:36 pm

    I’ve been thinking about doing a giveaway with several books but just never followed through with it. But this is what I needed in order to feel confident going through with it. Thanks Crystal!

    Reply
    • Crystal Paine says

      April 22, 2019 at 1:54 am

      YAY! I’m so glad that this was helpful!

      Reply

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Hi there! I’m Crystal Paine, wife, mom of three, veteran blogger (12+ years!), New York Times bestselling author, speaker, business consultant, and founder of MoneySavingMom.com.

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