Wondering how to increase followers on Instagram? Instagram serves as the cornerstone of the social media presence of many brands. Instagram marketing has been shown to increase customer engagement, boost sales, and increase traffic.
However, you’re not alone if you’re frustrated with the engagement of your Instagram account.
There is intense competition on the platform. Additionally, it can take time to figure out Instagram’s algorithm.
However, taking steps to build your audience is highly worthwhile. This is because there are more chances to satisfy these customers when your audience is bigger.
This blog will look at some effective strategies to improve your Instagram presence and gain more followers.
13 Proven Strategies to Get Followers on Instagram
Growing your Instagram followers requires a strategic approach that involves optimizing your profile, scheduling content at the right time, and much more.
These proven strategies can help you boost your Instagram profile and increase your followers effectively.
1. Optimize Instagram Account
Optimizing your Instagram account is crucial as it will be the first impression users have of your page and likely lead to immediate interaction.
Optimizing your Instagram profile is crucial for securing followers and maintaining a lasting impression, so it must match your website and social website theme.
When optimizing Instagram profiles, everything from your profile picture to your Instagram bio is important to attract users.
Think of your Instagram profile as the front page of a book. It’s the reader’s first interaction with you and captures your brand voice.
Ask yourself:
- Does your profile encourage others to hit the follow button?
- Is your profile easily reachable?
- Does the profile match with your content feed?
2. Create a Detailed Content Strategy
Once you optimize your Instagram profile, the next big step is to create a detailed content strategy. Instagram success takes clear strategy and planning, highlighting your brand’s marketing goals and target audience. 
When you implement a clear and detailed content strategy, followers increase, posts go viral, and reach skyrockets. However, lacking creativity and fresh ideas can cause audience interest to wane over time.
A successful content strategy defines your brand identity, understands your target audience, and creates a posting calendar that maximizes visibility and engagement during peak activity times.
The best times to post on Instagram are weekdays between 7-9 AM, 12-2 PM, and 6-9 PM, and weekends between 4-6 AM and 1-3 PM.
3. Reels as a Key Part of Your Content Plan
Social media is buzzing with short-form video content. Following the success of TikTok, Instagram launched Reels, which enables greater reach and viral potential across Instagram’s Explore page.
Not to mention, Instagram Reels have their own tab, where users can endlessly scroll and stumble upon your content, increasing chances of going viral.
Instagram users spend 50% of their time on the app watching reels, making Reels essential for creators aiming to grow.
To create engaging Reels, consider these practices:
- Captivating Hook: Start with a strong hook that immediately grabs the viewer’s attention. This can be a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question.
- Concise and Snappy: Keep your Reels short and sweet, ideally under 30 seconds. People’s attention spans are short, so get to the point quickly.
- Strong Call to Action: Encourage viewers to interact by commenting, sharing, or following your account.
4. Produce User-Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC) is any content, such as videos, photos, reviews, and audio, which is created about a brand or a product by an influencer, customer, or fan. 
Moreover, reposting a picture or Reel from a happy customer shows potential followers that real people trust and value your product or service.
Some best practices for creating UGC content:
- Add a UGC call-to-action hashtag to your Instagram bio
- Create your own brand’s hashtag so users can post using it
- Reach out to Instagram influencers and offer them free products
5. Collaborate with Creators and Influencers
In addition to encouraging UGC on Instagram, collaborations with creators and influencers play a major role in helping users increase their followers. 
Partnering with established creators who already have an audience can help you out, as it will give your brand a wider reach of potential followers by having their fanbase.
Prime examples of brands using influencer partnerships include Nike and Coca-Cola. Cristiano Ronaldo and Serena Williams are just two of Nike’s athlete and sports personality partners who showcase their products in authentic and aspirational ways.
6. Engage With the Audience
For the growth of your Instagram followers, focus on building genuine connections with your audience.
By engaging with your audience, you can make sure your content aligns with your brand through meaningful interactions, such as responding to comments and participating in discussions.
Many Instagram post ideas revolve around asking questions and engaging in a dialogue for a reason such as story polls, Instagram Live, or making use of Instagram’s recently added channel feature.
7. Use Relevant Hashtags
To increase your Instagram followers, focus on using relevant hashtags.
Consider trending hashtags with plenty of mentions and choose appropriate, low-volume hashtags that fit the marketing strategy you’re using to maximize the impact of your brand’s campaign.
In your Instagram app, you can type in the relevant keywords to find the right hashtags and discover those that suit your business account.
8. Post at the Right Times
A proven strategy to get Instagram followers and growth on the platform involves analyzing your audience behavior and your account’s performance to understand what content works at what times. 
While Instagram’s built-in tool provides insights about your audience, social media management tools such as SocialBu provide detailed analysis of your followers and post insights.
Plus, you can also learn the best times to post on Instagram based on your audience demographics. However, if you serve a diverse audience globally, a generic method may not suit your needs. That’s why it’s important to have an approach that best fits your brand.
9. Schedule Content for Seamless Social Media Management
Scheduling helps you to stay consistent with your posting strategy, by scheduling your content you can plan ahead of your Instagram strategy. This allows you to keep on top of your follower’s activity and gives you a headstart with the Instagram algorithm.
To optimize Instagram content growth, schedule posts based on frequency, type, audience engagement, and weekly posting of quality content relevant to your audience.
Moreover, with a scheduling tool like SocialBu, you can plan your Instagram content ahead of time by scheduling posts in advance and it even allows you to preview how your posts will appear on the feed.
10. Add Stories for Real-Time Engagement
If you are wondering how to increase followers on Instagram quickly, stories are a must-use feature. Posting polls or using the question sticker in your stories helps foster a connection with your audience. 
Additionally, focus on consistently posting engaging behind-the-scenes content, sharing updates about your product, and leveraging interactive story features such as location tags and adding links to your newer product launches.
Fun Stories strategies, like running Q&As, hosting polls, sharing “this or that” games, or doing countdowns, can significantly boost audience interaction and engagement.
Since Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, leveraging the highlight feature becomes essential for extending the lifespan of your most valuable content and keeping it visible on your profile. Story Highlights allow new visitors to your page to gain a better sense of your brand, content, and products.
11. Run a Giveaway to Boost Brand Visibility
Another effective way to get free Instagram followers is running a giveaway. Brands and creators use the strategy of running giveaways to followers, for instance, by asking users to follow their page and tag their friends to get a chance to win the giveaway prize.
Giveaways help grow your Instagram followers and align with the platform’s growth dynamics. By encouraging users to tag their friends, you attract new followers and see a noticeable rise in post engagement.
12. Cross-Promote Content to Drive Traffic
Learning how to gain more followers on Instagram involves strategies like cross-promoting content across platforms. You can build a strong presence and gain diverse followers by cross-promoting content to different social media platforms. 
To automate the task on multiple platforms, consider using a social media scheduling tool to automatically publish your posts when your audience is the most engaged—even when you’re unavailable.
13. Leverage Instagram Ads for Growth
50% of Instagram users have visited a site or shopped after seeing a product or service on Instagram. The growth of your Instagram followers using ads on Instagram is the most efficient way to reach your audience.
Instagram offers targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and lookalike audiences. This allows businesses to reach specific customer segments precisely.
The Wrong Approach to Building an Instagram Audience
Are you looking to learn how to increase your Instagram followers for free? It’s important to understand that there’s no quick hack to increase Instagram followers. However, knowing the wrong approaches can help you prevent mistakes that can jeopardize your brand.
Let’s look at some crucial ones.
Buying Instagram Followers For Growth
One of the most common bad practices for gaining Instagram followers is buying fake followers. This practice can go against community guidelines and hinder your Instagram growth.
Furthermore, today’s users are quick to identify bots and spam accounts. An unexpected spike in followers can appear suspicious, negatively impacting your brand’s reputation.
Therefore, your “follower count” doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t contribute to driving engagements. You may have a big following, but at what cost?
Spammy Hashtags for Maximum Reach
Hashtags are good for increasing reach only when there are not too many. Spamming your posts with hashtags can have a significant negative impact on reaching a wider audience.
It can make your captions less compelling by distracting users from the main content, which can make your caption appear less impactful. In addition, it may appeal to an audience that might not be interested in your content, which can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement.
Low-Quality Posts or Unauthentic Content 
Instagram is a visual-based platform that is all about high-quality visuals. If you share low-quality and uninteresting content, users are likely to neglect your brand.
An unorganized feed with inconsistent branding or mismatched colors not only fails to capture attention but also weakens your overall credibility.
Use of Bots for Likes and Comments
Many content creators use third-party tools to gain likes and comments on Instagram to achieve quick success. However, this can lead to severe consequences, such as the banning of their accounts.
Instagram’s ‘Terms of Use’ prohibit the using bots that can create a negative impression of your brand.
Such as the use of third-party services or sites to gain likes, comments, and followers. As discussed earlier, using bot tools can create a negative impression of your brand, damaging customer trust.
In A Nutshell!
Understanding how to increase followers on Instagram in 2025 requires a mix of creativity, consistency, and strategic engagement. If you are aiming to grow on Instagram, it is crucial to make high-quality, specific-to-your-niche posts, use hashtags, and create interesting reels and attractive stories.
To increase your Instagram followers, create a social media content calendar, start producing Instagram posts, and plan to target new audiences. Remember to interact with your current followers and improve your social media approach when trends shift and new Instagram features become available.
Streamline your Instagram growth with SocialBu, the ultimate tool for scheduling posts, analyzing performance, and effortlessly boosting engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How to Get Fake Followers on Instagram?
To get fake followers on Instagram:
- Purchase followers from third-party services.
- Use bots to automate following and unfollowing accounts.
- Join follower exchange groups or apps for mutual followers
2. How to Get More Followers on Instagram Free?
If you are wondering how to increase Instagram followers for free, follow these strategies:
- Post engaging content
- Use relevant hashtags
- Engage with others
- Run a contest
- Utilize Instagram Stories
- Promote your account
- Collaborate with others
3. How to Get Followers on Instagram Without Following?
Gaining Instagram followers without following other accounts requires a calculated approach focused on quality content and productive interaction. To increase your Instagram followers size, create visually appealing posts, relevant to your niche, and appealing to your target audience.
4. How to Get More Followers on Instagram?
Not sure how to grow followers on Instagram? Follow these simple steps
- Optimize your Instagram profile.
- Create a detailed content strategy.
- Utilize reels for more reach.
- Analyze insights to improve your performance.
- Promote your Instagram on other platforms.
4. How to Get 1000 Followers on Instagram?
To get 1000 followers on Instagram, build a strong online presence by consistently posting high-quality content and utilizing relevant hashtags and geotags to increase your visibility and reach a wider audience.
