10 Effective Ways To Get Real Followers On Instagram

With 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram has emerged as the #1 place for people to keep up with their favorite brands.

While the platform presents an incredible gateway to reach a larger audience, it can be quite challenging to stand out or generate serious engagement. For many, this remains a struggle. A struggle that’s completely avoidable with the right strategies in place.

The main question we’ll decode in this article is: what is the best way to get real Instagram followers and engagement?

So building a strong presence on Instagram and reaching your target audience becomes an inevitable goal, you’re destined to reach, quickly.

1. Optimize your Instagram bio

Do Instagram bios seem too basic? Think again.

Bio is a great place to capture your visitor’s attention, set the right tone for your page, and lead them to take action.

Place your branded hashtags, website link, handles of founders, and call-to-actions in the bio. 

Here are a few tips for writing a catchy bio under 150 characters:

• Tell your brand’s story.
• Add a call to action to convert visitors.
• Add a clean link directing to useful pages.
• Use the handles of founders to add a personal and human touch to your brand.

Tasty Tie hits the nail on the head by writing an outstanding bio. It tells you how you can be creative with emojis, tell your brand’s story succinctly, and direct visitors to take action. 

2. Craft engaging captions

When it comes to content creation, people mainly focus on creating high-quality, attention-grabbing, and value-adding videos or images. 

Often overlooked, captions are a great place to capture your audience’s attention. 

Here are a few tips to optimize your caption:

• Have an attention-grabbing hook.
• Pick words that reflect your brand’s personality.
• Don’t be afraid to add emojis; at the same time, don’t go overboard with it.
• Don’t forget to add the call-to-action (CTA).
• Add relevant hashtags for maximizing visibility.

Visme does a great job of writing engaging, brand-promoting, yet non-salesy captions on their profile. 

This caption tells you how you can use Visme with a clear, crisp caption, having adequate white space and appropriate usage of emoji and hashtags, making it the #PerfectCaption.

3. Timing is the key to reaching more people

If you search for the best time to post on Instagram, you’ll find many reports and studies revealing them. 

For example, SocialPilot tells us that 6 am-11 am (PST) is the best time to post.

While this is a great starting point, a good practice is to figure out what time works best for you.

Demographics, audience, and day of the week are some of the factors that influence the best time to post on Instagram.

Instagram Insights can also reveal the best time to post; here’s how to access it on your profile:

• Tap on Insights
• Scroll down to Your Audience
• Then click on See All
• Here you’ll find the time when your audience is most active
• Tap on Insights
• Scroll down to Your Audience
• Then click on See All
• Here you’ll find the time when your audience is most active

4. Consistency is the name of the game

The key to getting real Instagram followers is to show up consistently and add value. 

But don’t fret; it’s not as daunting as it sounds.

Creating a content calendar is the first step. 

It allows you to align your brand’s objectives with your audience’s interests and strike the right balance between selling and engaging your audience. 

Keep this in mind when creating an Instagram content calendar:

• Chart your goals.
• Analyze trending topics and formats.
• Run audits and double down on what’s working.
• Decide publishing frequency and timing.
• Schedule your posts.

With Keyhole’s Publishing feature, you can schedule unlimited posts and find your best time to post, optimal post length, top posts, top hashtags, etc. This will help you plan your content and publish it consistently, even if you have a million things on your to-do list. 

5. Run contests to boost engagement

Although contests might seem like a tacky gimmick to get more subscribers, they have been a time-tested method to get real Instagram followers. 

Contests tap into people’s innate desire to compete and win, making them attractive. 

When done right, contests can spread the brand’s visibility like a forest fire.

Here’s how to do it right:

• Plan well in advance.
• Know why you’re running the contest. 
• Plan for the contest by preparing the prizes and the next steps.
• Write clear captions with actionable steps or directions to enter the contents.
• Create a special hashtag for the contest to make it memorable.
• Announce winners and celebrate. This is your time to shine and get real Instagram followers.

Aromatherapy Associates does a great job of creating a thumb-stopping image that clearly shows it’s a contest. 

It combines it with a fearlessly long caption explaining every detail of the contest and leaving readers with clear next steps.

6. Create branded #hashtags

Hashtags are like keywords on social media. They enable you to be discovered by the right audience, enhance visibility, and expand your reach beyond your followers. 

How many hashtags to add? Good question! 

Buffer suggests posts with 11+ hashtags get the highest engagement. 

But don’t sweat it. 

Instead of focusing on adding as many as possible, research and look for hashtags that are most trending or relevant. 

You can also use hashtag finder tools that make the task easier.

Additionally, you can create a branded hashtag. This will build awareness, encourage the generation of user-generated content (UGC), enable tracking engagement, and make your brand more memorable.

Keyhole recommends comprehensive hashtag tracking across multiple social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok for a complete picture of how your branded hashtag is performing.

Tips for creating branded hashtags:

• It should be catchy and sticky so it’s memorable.
• Write in the title case to make it easily understandable.
• Don’t use heavy words.
• Use phrases that empower or resonate with your audience.

Dove’s #WomenHistoryMonth is an incredible example where the brand leverages its values to create a campaign, its branded hashtag, and a crisp yet clear and engaging caption. 

The hashtag already has 1.8 million posts which is a perfect example of how influencing branded hashtags could be, when done right.

7. Leverage influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a proven and time-tested strategy to tap into a highly engaged audience, leverage trust, and connect in the most authentic way— an excellent way to get real Instagram followers.

And you don’t have to always aim for big influencers with millions of followers. 

Micro-influencers also have a highly-engaged audience and are a great way to target a niche demographic with a limited budget. 

For example, partnering with calisthenics athletes within the fitness community, digital nomads within the travel niche, or paleo/keto advocates within the nutrition community are all great examples of highly engaged niches where micro-influencers get the most results. 

Besides increasing sales, which is a clear benefit of influencer marketing, brands can build a real connection and foster a stronger relationship with their audience. 

Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Work with influencers whose values align with your brand.
• Before running any influencer campaign, understand what your ultimate goal is.
• As a brand, keep interacting and engaging with your community. 
• Make sure the influencer’s audience is your ideal audience as well; otherwise, you’ll be getting more followers only to see stagnant business growth.

The Instagram post from TheTravelBugFam shows how sponsored posts can be authentic. 

This simplicity and real-life usage of products by influencers is what connects with the users, increasing brand value.

8. Avoid fake followers

It might look tempting at first. 

Without putting any effort and simply installing a bot or buying followers, you’re now overnight an internet sensation. 

Or are you?

These tactics do get you more followers, but it’s only the increase in the number of followers without adding any significant value to your profile or brand.

These followers won’t contribute to any engagement, whereas any social media platform looks for engagement to boost posts.

So even if you do get more followers with these techniques, it will be mostly just the spike in the number without being of any use in increasing the brand visibility or boosting customers’ trust. 

It will eventually fade. 

Therefore, to get real Instagram followers, you have to put in some work to create content and execute strategies that build a strong connection with your followers.

9. Run Instagram ads

Instagram ads are a sure-shot way of targeting a predetermined audience.

You can get real Instagram followers and reach an audience beyond your current followers.

From photo ads to video ads, carousels, and boosting existing posts, Instagram offers excellent ad features with laser focused-targeting options.

Tips for creating thumb-stopping ads on Instagram:

• Talk about the benefits.
• Have a laser focus on why you’re creating the ad and what’s the conversion metric. 
• Focus on creating appealing and brand-specific creatives to attract more eyeballs. 
• Use copywriting techniques to grab attention.
• Leverage storytelling.
• Don’t be afraid to write long captions.
• Add subtitles to video ads so your audience can follow easily.

10. Harness Instagram analytics 

Finally, one of the most underrated ways to get real Instagram followers is to track metrics.

Not just vanity metrics but tracking engagement rates, follower demographic, and post-performance can give you valuable insights.

You want to understand what resonates most with your audience, which content types and topic works the best, and how you can improvise.

A healthy practice is to track your analytics once every month and strategize accordingly.

Besides the native analytics on Instagram, you can use various Instagram analytics tools to find out more about how your content is performing.

Final thoughts

Instagram offers a wealth of opportunities for businesses and content creators. While it’s getting harder to distinguish your voice on Instagram from a host of other posts, you can still win with these strategies and get real Instagram followers and engagement with the right tools.

Just remember to monitor your brand and analyze your competitors thoroughly. Plan out your campaigns with a solid strategy and well-monitored metrics. Something that’s easily done with a tool like Keyhole. 

Try Keyhole today for the best ROI on your social media channels.

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