Nearly half of all internet users are active on Instagram. As of 2021, its community reached 2 billion active users. Plus, Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social platforms with the most engaged user base. So you need to know how to grow your Instagram following, and engage your user base once you grow it.
Recent research also claims that the average Instagram user spends 29 minutes on the platform daily, so it’s no wonder that Instagram is so influential when it comes to people’s purchasing decisions. The days when Instagram was primarily a photo-sharing app are long gone.
Source: eMarketer
These days, 53% of internet users are active on the platform and people discover and buy products in-app, read news, communicate with brands, and follow opinion leaders. It has become one of the most preferred communication channels, so opportunities for businesses, influencers, and content creators are growing.
However, it’s not enough to have an Instagram presence to succeed. It’s also important to put time and effort into growing Instagram following and user engagement, as having an engaged following allows you to boost visibility and get support from users in the form of their likes and comments.
In this article, you’ll read about the top reasons to grow your Instagram following and user engagement as well as find six actionable tips on how to do it without going an extra mile.
Why Should You Grow Your Instagram Following and User Engagement?
When Eloi created his tattoo Instagram page Original Tattooz seven years ago, he put much time and effort into growing it organically. Having amassed over 1.5M engaged followers on the platform, Eloi was able to sell the page to a buyer from Australia for $55,000. Pretty good, huh?
At first glance, given that having a larger audience is key to success, it might seem that buying Instagram followers is the best way to quickly boost your account and get in front of millions of people. But your follower count is a vanity metric, as user engagement is the key to delivering ROI (return on investment). Moreover, buying followers violates Instagram’s policies, and more often than not, these followers are fake accounts or inactive profiles who won’t support you or interact with your content.
Here are three proven reasons to grow your Instagram following (attract real followers) and user engagement:
- Make more money on the platform. It’s no secret that Instagram influencers and content creators can make money in-app these days. But when you have a solid following and a high user engagement rate, it proves that your audience finds you as a reliable source of information. As a result, you can secure collaboration options with bigger brands or companies who are ready to pay more.
- Increase your Instagram account’s value. Here at Flippa, users buy and sell their businesses and digital assets. Estimating the value of your Instagram profile is hard, but the more followers and the higher engagement you have, the higher price you can set when selling your account. Once you decide to sell your Instagram account, you can make good money if your profile is well-established.
- Gain more influence in your niche. Your Instagram following and user engagement serve as a sign of trust and authority. When people follow your account in-app and they interact with your content, this means they support you and therefore you have influence in the niche.
Now that you know about the importance of Instagram following and user engagement, here is the list of tips on how to grow your following and user engagement without buying fake followers or likes.
6 Tips to Grow Your Instagram Following and User Engagement
1. Optimize Your Account for Discoverability
To promote your business on social media and attract the right audience who wants to interact with your content, it’s also important to know your potential followers well. When your account attracts the right audience who have interest in your content, it’s easier to grow following and user engagement. The solution is simple: optimize your account for discoverability.
First, keep in mind that people have a short attention span, so your Instagram bio is a business card that represents your brand on the platform. Thus, it’s important to optimize your Instagram bio with the following actions:
- Make a stunning profile picture
- Describe your brand in brief
- Include a keyword
- Write compelling calls to action
- Add a clickable link
- Provide contact details (email address or phone number)
Check out a good example of a well-optimized Instagram bio:
Source: Instagram
Second, it’s important to optimize Instagram content by adding relevant hashtags and locations. Hashtags and location geotags help users discover your feed posts if they have interest in a specific topic or location, and you can now make these clickable when included in your bio blurb. Aside from using popular hashtags, you can always create a branded hashtag that represents your company online.
If you’re a local business like Trash Island, using both tactics at once can help to optimize your account for discoverability and attract a targeted and qualified local audience of potential customers.
Source: Instagram
After all, when your Instagram content attracts the right audience, it’s more likely to turn visitors into followers and give them a solid reason to interact with your posts to increase user engagement.
2. Invest in Eye-Catching Visuals
It’s no secret that most people are visual learners. They have a photographic memory and perceive information through visuals better.
As a highly visual platform, Instagrammers upload 95 million visuals each day, so it’s important to invest in eye-catching visual content to stand out from the crowd, grab the attention of your audience, and give users a reason to like or comment on your awesome post.
Photo editing apps make it easy for non-designers to create stunning visuals with a few clicks. With Photoleap by Lightricks, not only can users edit layers, add texts, or apply creative filters, but it also allows users to add motion to visuals or even bring old photos back to life with its AI enhancing. All in all, your photos can become works of art.
Сheck out a profile of one artist, Madi Arteaga. The combination of her creativity and the power of Photoleap, makes her Instagram profile eye-catching and appealing.
Source: Instagram
People engage the most with high-quality content, and the numbers speak for themselves. With 44.3k followers, an average post on this profile gets 8,736 likes and 71 comments. As a result, the profile has an engagement rate (ER) of 15.17%, while the average ER for this following count is 2.15%.
3. Give Instagram Videos a Try
Video remains the prominent trend in the digital marketing world for the past decade. When it comes to Instagram, videos grab attention and encourage viewers to interact with content. In fact, 91% of Instagrammers watch videos on the platform weekly.
With the popularity of Instagram videos, when users pay close attention to video content in-app, the importance of using this content type is undeniable. In other words, give Instagram videos a try if you want to achieve audience growth and boost user engagement.
Instagram videos come in different shapes and forms: Instagram Story videos, Instagram Reels, live stream, and IGTV.
Source: Animaker
Whether you want to create short-form Instagram videos for Instagram Stories or Lives, long-form IGTV videos, there are many options to use the right Instagram video type that suits your needs, wants, and preferences. You can also take the next step and create a guide on Instagram to gather content around a specific topic.
Let’s take a look at the example from Lancome. In honor of International Women’s Day, the company invited popular actress Lily Collins and beauty expert Kahlana Barfield Brown to speak about the importance of building self-esteem. The video quickly got over 58k likes and 240 comments.
Source: Instagram
4. Leverage Instagram Influencer Marketing
People crave social proof, so word-of-mouth marketing has always been the most effective form of marketing.
With the popularity of social media influencers, when 92% of people trust opinion leaders more than ads or celebrity endorsements, brands often leverage the power of Instagram influencer marketing to promote their profiles and spark interest in content.
When a favorite influencer spreads the word about your profile, people are more likely to check it out, follow you on the platform, and become loyal fans. Once you find the right influencer for your brand, you can stand in front of thousands of people and enter an already-established community of loyal fans who pay close attention to recommendations from the opinion leader.
For example, Nails Beauty Gram often turns to Instagram influencers to offer paid partnerships and then reposts influencer endorsements to its profile, just like in the example below.
Source: Instagram
When you leverage Instagram influencer marketing, you get a chance to reach a wider audience of target users fast and find people who have interest in your niche which means these people are more likely to become followers and interact with your content. What is more, it encourages user-generated content as people draw inspiration from influencers and copy their actions.
5. Organize or Sponsor an Instagram Giveaway
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get something valuable for free? It’s human nature to love free stuff, so it’s no wonder that social media contests have become an effective marketing tool for social media growth. Moreover, giveaways help to create an engaged community.
No matter what your business goal is, whether you want to boost awareness, drive web traffic, or get more leads, a giveaway can help you achieve it. Just make sure to emphasize whatever type of activation you’re after as a call-to-action in the contest’s “how to enter” terms.
Believe it or not, Instagram giveaways can also be one of lead generation ideas, as you can target B2B buyers and add something like “sign up for a free trial” as one of the participation requirements.
In fact, around 67.5% of marketers include Instagram giveaways in their content strategy to achieve their business goals, and practically every contest aims at growing a following. What’s more, giveaway participants are active current followers, which helps to boost user engagement.
To grab the attention of your audience and boost activity on your profile, it’s a good idea to organize an Instagram giveaway and offer incentives to attract more participants. However, you can also team up with other brands or influencers in your niche and sponsor a giveaway to stand in front of a target audience fast.
Check out an example of this strategy from Cobble and Dough Doughnuts:
Source: Instagram
To make it easy for you to run a giveaway, you can rely on Instagram tools that help to schedule posts, analyze performance, or even boost promotion–all in one place with a few clicks.
6. Run Instagram Ad Campaigns
The competition in Instagram is getting higher: brands, influencers, and creators crave attention from audiences. The Instagram algorithm always prioritizes content from friends and families, so it can be hard to reach out to your target audience unless you invest in paid ad campaigns.
Instagram uses personal data like contact information, date of birth, hobbies, purchase history and interests to allow for highly targeted advertising capabilities. When you run Instagram ad campaigns, you can set them up to surface for specific viewers, so you can reach ideal audience: people who are similar to your most engaged followers or your best customers. It allows advertisers to create effective ad campaigns that grow following and user engagement.
For example, when Daosin decided to reach more people in Germany, the company created eye-grabbing Reels ads that delivered great results. During its ad campaign (from March 15–April 24, 2022), the ad reached 2.3 million people and got 100,000 video Thru Plays for Reels ads.
Source: Business Instagram
If you want to make stunning Instagram ads that meet your brand identity without hiring designers, you can always find a reliable tool and create Instagram content with templates–just find what suits you and customize it.
The Bottom Line
The days when having an Instagram presence was enough to achieve success are long gone. Today, Instagram following and user engagement are the top important social media metrics that measure people’s interest in your Instagram profile and its content.
The more real people follow your IG profile and show interest in your content, the better. It gives you an opportunity to become more influential and make money on the platform or even sell your account for a better price.
Although there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that helps to grow your Instagram following and user engagement, the above-mentioned tips can boost your Instagram presence and bring your profile to the next level.
