Social Media 101: How to Grow Your Instagram Followers

Be consistent, use hashtags, like and comment on similar profiles, blah blah blah. That’s all great and to some degree it is true. BUT these “tips” are only as good as how we choose to use them. Sooooo let’s find out how to grow your Instagram followers, shall we?

Be consistent… with your timing

Believe it or not there are good and bad times to post on Instagram. 8-9am = good. 10-11am = bad. Why? Think about it, most of us check our phones in the morning when we’re getting ready for work or right when we get to work, between 8-9am. Another good time is at night time from 7pm-10pm. People are done dinner, winding down, and most likely in bed on Instagram.

Don’t discount certain days of the week either. Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays are slow times since it’s the weekend and everyone’s out and about and less likely on Instagram.

Your goal here is engagement. You want engaged and supportive followers so be mindful of when that’s happening. A great tracking source is Iconosqaure and if you want even more Instagram tips check out this article.

Treat Instagram like a work of art

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the most successful Instagram accounts are those that are aesthetically pleasing and tell a story. Instagram is not a personal photo diary and should not be treated as such. No one cares about a funny license plate you saw and no one cares about your brother’s godson’s sister’s engagement.

If you want to share your life on Instagram make it as artistic as possible. You can certainly photograph your shoes from an engagement party or a license plate with a map, camera, and sandals signifying your love to travel. Make it pretty, people.

Use appropriate #hashtags

Ok so you post an aesthetically pleasing picture of you and your significant other with your head on his shoulder overlooking the sunset on the bay. Adorable. What’s not adorable is when you use the hashtag #love or #inlove or #truelove.

How many millions of people use that same hashtag? Right now there’s 757,504,904 #love tags. Do you think anyone has a shot of seeing your picture for more than 5 minutes MAX.? No way.

Instead create your own hashtag, or use a specific hashtag by an audience or brand you’re trying to tap into. For example, on one of my pictures I used the hashtag #uoonyou which is Urban Outfitters’ universal hashtag for people like you and me to use when we wear one of their items.

For the record, #uoonyou has just 100,260 tags. This hashtag gained me 400 followers in 1 hour because Urban Outfitters reposted my picture. Yeah, I was shocked too.

Like AND comment on similar profiles

This is a necessary evil if you want to grow your Instagram followers. Every day you must like and comment on 100 pictures of people with similar profiles. It should take about an hour or so. It’s a pain, but hey success doesn’t always come easy.

You click on one of your own hashtags like #whatiwore and scroll through until you find something that interests you. Comment on and like a bunch of that person’s photos enough to get noticed. When I do this I get anywhere from 5-10 followers overnight. Times that by 5 nights a week and you got yourself 50 new followers, baby!

I hope this post was helpful and if you have any tips I missed please comment below!

In case you missed it here what this series looks like:
Week 1: What You Need & What You Don’t
Week 2 {this week}: How to Grow Your Instagram Followers
Week 3: How to Use Periscope to Build Your Brand
Week 4: Facebook Marketing that Makes You Money
Week 5: How to Create a Social Media Schedule that Works

xx