A curated Instagram feed will go to waste if it cannot reach its target audience. Growing Instagram followers seem easy.

The most organic way is to share your post and ask your existing followers to “tag a friend who…” or “like and tag this post to…” You can also come up with contests to up your numbers.

There are IG accounts who even resort to buying followers. These methods may give you the numbers, but the followers you gain are insignificant.

People who your followers tag usually aren’t interested in what you’re saying. Followers you gain through a contest leave after the contest period. Followers you buy are often dummy accounts.

Ouch! Is your website costing you sales? Find out with a free audit.**

Book a Strategy Call

Leave your details here

** Not another disguised sales pitch. No strings attached. Applicable tips.

Strong coffee and nearby seating is highly recommended, but not mandatory.

You cannot optimize your followers in Instagram the way Facebook allows you to, however, you can use paid promotion to grow your followers. Here’s how we recommend you do it.

1. Develop your target audience – It goes without saying that you should already know who you want to target. You want followers who engage with your brand through comments and shares.

You want them to view your stories and follow the links you post. These are the followers who are interested in what you put out.

Consider these tips in making this targeting campaign:

Promote yourself to your followers in other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. They may want to follow you on IG, too. Make sure though that you’re not replicating your posts from one platform to another.
Look for similar audiences. Your followers may have friends that are like them. Look at their profile and you may just find new followers to target.
Consider audience layering. If, for instance, you are in the business of selling healthy meals to homes, aside from targeting athletes who live a healthy and active lifestyle, you may also target people who are dealing with medical conditions like heart problem, diabetes, osteoporosis, etc. who will benefit from having healthy meals delivered in
their homes.

2. Maximize your top-performing posts – Identify the posts that have generated the most engagement and use them as the basis for your advertisement. Hopefully this post can be revised to meet your goal of increasing your Instagram followers.

4. Always know that to say – Generic ads fail to engage followers. Know what your audience wants to hear. If, again, you’re in the healthy meal delivery business, you want your ads to speak to healthy eaters and not to an audience who enjoys deep fried cuisine. Once you have established this communication line, keep it open through content that speaks to them organically.

5. Tweak your strategy for future use – Now that you have an idea what works and not, use this knowledge in your future campaigns. This may mean turning off certain channels, disregarding some ad types, or even excluding certain audiences. While Instagram cannot show you which paid post brought in followers, you can make intelligent assumptions based on performance trending. Whenever you see high cost per clicks or low engagement rates, you may disregard the particular ad in favor of better performing ones.

Whenever you see high cost per clicks or low engagement rates, you may disregard the particular ad in favor of better performing ones.

But what kind of posts get attention? It’s still imperative to remember that the main foundation of growing your followers, whether it be Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or a combination of all of them, is that you are showing your best self. Authenticity is key – gone are the days of heavily edited and airbrushed photos.

All you have to do is:

Be Relatable – Thinking about your specific niche, whether it be makeup, fitness, cars or life as a nurse, what are some moments that everybody in your specific niche would understand? You can take a comedic route or a more serious approach, but keep in mind that you have to be relatable.

Be On Trend – With videos , reels and lives being prioritized on social media’s algorithm, take this as a sign to prioritize these forms of content. Use trending sounds, filters, edits and hashtags to generate organic interest in your content.

Have Space For Open Communication – Leave a question in the caption or use a call to action… whatever it may be, make sure that you interact with your followers. It can be as simple as liking their comments.

Have fun – whatever your version of fun is, do it. Whether it be dancing to the latest trending song, showing off your morning routine, your mindfulness meditation techniques or singing along your favorite musician, this will show your followers your most authentic self. Who knows, maybe you’ve got some secret skills you’re wanting to flaunt!

Once you’ve ticked these boxes, you’ve got the perfect recipe for growth! Growing your Instagram followers via paid promotion is a wise investment. The things you will learn can be applied in improving your overall engagement performance. Instagram’s growth cannot be denied, and the platform is becoming crowded with brands fighting for more customers. Make sure to get a significant chunk of this audience and don’t be stingy about it.

Paid promos will put you at the top of the list amongst a bucket-load of creators just like you. However, it is still imperative that you create engaging organic content that keeps the followers that you've gained tuned in to your channel, page or profile. Authenticity is key - who you are and what your values are must resonate with your audience as paid promotions only go so far.