Becoming an influencer isn’t easy. No matter how slick and beautifully edited your photos or videos, without a following, no one is going to see them. Knowing how to get more followers on Instagram is vital for making an impact within your target audience.

For businesses and entrepreneurs, the same applies. You have to build an audience to gain traction — but how can you get shares and comments when your current follower count is small?

Thankfully, there are plenty of tips and tricks for gaining a huge following in a relatively short time. Here are some ideas on how to get more Instagram followers, from buying followers to creating a business account.

Define Your Target Audience

For businesses with a dedicated marketing strategy, this might be relatively simple. Take your current target audience and promote your Instagram content to those demographics. To do so, you need to research the trends those people are following and the types of posts they interact with. Consider taking inspiration from a competitor. Never copy content, but you can look at the competition to see which posts gain the most interaction. For example, if another company within your industry gets a lot of shares from video explainers, you could try making your own.

If you don’t already have a target audience or ideal customer profile (ICP), it’s time to define that aspect of your social media marketing. Yes, you are marketing if you’re trying to engage with people online. While you might want to gain interactions to raise your profile rather than to sell products or services, you’re still marketing your brand.

Consider who you want to interact with. Think about their age, interests, and other products or brands they love. Use these insights as the core of your target audience and build out from there.

Remember, you can’t please everyone all of the time. Trying to market yourself or your business to the whole world is not how to get more followers on Instagram. Plus, it’s completely unsustainable.

Make Sure You Have an Instagram Business Profile

If you’re on Instagram to try and promote yourself, your brand, or business, opt for an Instagram business account. There are many benefits, not least the ability to instantly cross-post to Facebook, potentially doubling your impact.

Your business account gives you access to Instagram Insights. From here, you can quickly see how many new followers you’re gaining over a set period. You can also view some demographic details and the times your followers are most active. Use this data to hone your posting practices and build your following.

Business profiles also allow you to add a button so people can contact you. Connect this button to your business email and watch the leads flood in. Alternatively, you can switch this out for an action button, such as “Order Food.”

Another benefit of switching to a business profile is that you can add working links to an Instagram story. You can post a picture or video and some funky, stylized text that actually directs viewers to a product page or blog. However, there’s a catch. This feature only works once you have 10,000 followers. That’s a great incentive to follow a few of the other tips in this guide to boost your fan count.

If you’re concerned about privacy on Instagram, you should know that you can’t set your posts to private once you switch to a business profile. However, if you’re trying to build a brand, visibility is the name of the game. Consider creating a separate personal account for your private posts.

Keep Your Branding on Point

Branding is crucial for making an impact on any platform. Viewers get to know the look, feel, and tone of your posts and start to associate those qualities with you or your company. There are three main pillars of branding: what you promise, how you communicate that promise, and how you deliver that promise.

Incorporating these factors into your posts will help you build a cohesive brand that naturally draws more followers. As your brand becomes more recognizable, you organically gain more shares and other useful interactions that continuously drive your marketing efforts.

Buy Instagram Followers

Generating a following on social media is challenging. In some ways, it can feel like you need to have followers to gain followers. Instagram users may like your content, but see that you’ve only got a few followers and decide, “This is not the place to be.”

To mitigate this, you can buy followers from a trusted partner. These vendors supply Instagram users with followers, likes, or interactions for a reasonable fee. There are usually guarantees in place, too. For example, some companies will add more followers free of charge if the follower count drops within the first 30 days. This mitigates issues like accounts being incorrectly marked as spam and deleted.

Some providers differentiate between high-quality followers and active followers. Active followers often cost a little more, as they’re more likely to generate engagement and interactions.

With some suppliers, it’s possible to buy as many as 100,000 followers over a 30-day period. Of course, you don’t have to commit to that volume. You could start small and see how a few extra followers impact your overall reach.

Make Sure You’re Having Fun

While building a following on social media takes time, you should still enjoy the process. If you hate the photos you post or cringe at your videos, the likelihood is that you’ve created an inauthentic brand. Remember that by posting what you love, you attract followers who will provide genuine interaction and engagement. For businesses, this might mean content that incorporates your firm’s values or highlights your work in local communities.

Whether you’re buying Instagram followers or tweaking your branding, make the most of the above tips on how to get more followers on Instagram. Above all, make sure your Instagram content reflects the real you.

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