If you sit with your Instagram account and hope it will grow engaged Instagram followers by itself (without thinking about how to get more followers on Instagram), you will wait for a long time.

Looking at the statistics, about six-in-ten U.S. adults who use Instagram you can try these out use it every day.. This platform has the highest level of engagement for brands, with 2-7% percent of users interacting with each post. It may seem like you just need to jump in and post beautiful brand photos, some quote graphics and a Reels or two. But building a truly engaged following that’s ready to buy your products and services still takes effort

There are plenty of tips on the Internet on how to grow an Instagram account. However, many of them work with bigger accounts and won’t work well with a couple hundred followers.

Getting your first thousand followers on any social media platform is usually the hardest number to hit because people are barely paying attention to small accounts.

Most people who follow you are usually your friends. That’s fine if it’s your personal account, but for growing your business or personal brand, that’s not enough.

You can buy followers, but those are just numbers, and they’re useless with the way the Instagram algorithm works. Actual engagement (that is, how many people like your posts, comment on them, save them, share them with others and bookmark them to look at again later) is way more important than a vanity metric (a number that makes you “look good” without actually impacting your success on the platform) like the number of followers you have.

But if you can increase your number of engaged followers, well that’s not vanity. That’s more people who really care about what you have to say = more people who engage with your content = more people who will see your content (reach) = more engaged followers (growth) = more people whom you can convert to an email subscriber or a sale.

In a nutshell, trying to increase your number of engaged followers (vs. number of total followers in general) makes complete sense. And if you’re just starting out with one to two hundred followers, learning how to get more followers on Instagram (who are engaged!) is a great goal to set.

In this article, we’ll go step-by-step to show you how to get your first 1000 engaged followers on Instagram.

1. Complete your bio
There are two parts that you can take advantage of when you create your profile:

Your Username
Your Name
They both can appear in Instagram search results.

Your Username
If you create a brand around your name, then your Username should be your name. If your business name is different from your name, then your Username should be the name of your business.

Your Name
For the Name field, include your keyword: something that briefly describes your business or your target audience.

There is no need to double-write your name in the Name field, but you can do it if you like and still add 1-2 keywords for your business.

Let’s look at my bio as an example. My Username, marinabarayeva, is my name. Since my name’s already in my bio, I don’t repeat it in the Name field and instead added my keywords, Photographer + Social Media.

The rest of your bio isn’t searchable. However, introduce yourself and what you do, so people will get to know you better.

2. Connect to your friends
Follow people whom you know. Search through your Facebook and Contact list. They will get the notification about your follow and may follow you back. They are your first followers.

3. Look for your audience
From the beginning, describe your potential ideal audience for yourself (create an avatar).

Then, look for other accounts that serve your audience. (Not your competitors, but those who focus their posts on people you want to attract, too.)

If you are a designer of kids’ clothes, then accounts for moms, kids’ training centers, kids’ events, or other kids’ fashion accounts may fit your audience criteria.

If you are a fitness trainer, then fitness centers, sports stores and healthy lifestyle accounts in your area may have the audience you need.

How do I find accounts to help me get followers on Instagram?

Find accounts that post on a regular basis and get good engagement with their content (since you can’t see saves and shares for other people’s content, look at comments and number of likes on posts).

The key is to find existing, established accounts where your ideal audience is already hanging out so you can leverage their audience. Using hashtags related to your business or your ideal clients’ problems or interests is a great way to find these accounts.

Create a list of such accounts for your brand and then start engaging.

Go to their profiles. Comment on their posts. Follow their followers and interact with those new people. You need to get their attention and get connected before they will be willing to buy from you.

4. Consistency is key for how to get more followers on Instagram
Obviously, not every follower sees every one of your posts. As Later explains, “If you follow a lot of people, then Instagram has more options to choose from, so you probably won’t see all of the posts from every account.”

So what can you do to get your content in front of more of your followers and actually stay top of mind?

Post consistently to your feed, your Stories and to Reels. The more high quality content you share, the more people will engage with it. The more people engage with your post, the higher it appears in their feed or at the beginning of their Stories feed on their homepage. All of this helps to expand your reach, helping you gain more followers.

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5. Post content that’s interesting to your audience
Testing the variety of posts on different small business accounts, I found that besides just posting product pictures or sales, there are several other types of posts that work well:

Before/after posts using your service or product.
Sharing your clients’ stories about using your service or product. Whenever you have a chance, share success stories that help your potential clients picture themselves in your clients’ shoes, experiencing that success.
Testimonials. Don’t be shy to ask past clients for a review or a testimonial. Or if they post something on social media about working with you or using your product, ask if you can share it on your Instagram, too. Every time you want to share someone’s experience, ask for their permission. Most of the time people won’t mind, but if they don’t want it to be shared, then you will avoid unnecessary problems.
Educational posts about your product or service. Sometimes people don’t know what they’ll be getting, what to expect or other ways they can use your products/services.
Including questions or CTAs (call-to-action) to the post can increase engagement.
Quotes that are relevant to your business message or your ideal clients’ desires or fears. Providing inspiration via a quote from time to time can help further engagement. Just be careful not to post too many too often since that can tend to look spammy.
Implement a branded hashtag and encourage your followers to use it in their captions and stories for a chance to get featured on your account.
Remind your followers and past clients to tag you when sharing about your services or products so you can re-share on your account, giving them free press and exposure.
Sharing behind the scene photos or videos showing the process of your work.
Hold your social media to the highest standards in terms of the content you produce. You can even think of it as an online magazine that represents your brand. Before you tap the ‘Post’ button, always ask yourself if it fits your social media ‘magazine’ and would you engage with this post? Is it worth sharing? If the answer is ‘No’ or you doubt if you would engage with the post, then the post is weak. Think about how you can improve the post and implement those edits before sharing it.

6. Be consistent
Be consistent in your posting even if it is just a few times per week. Pick the comfortable schedule for yourself. Don’t try to run a marathon from the first day or you will get burned out fast.

Once you get used to your optimal schedule, you can start to post more. When you post regularly, you consistently get on your follower’s radar, staying top of mind with your ideal clients.

When you don’t post for a while, you stop showing up on peoples’ feed and even if you start posting again, you may lose your connection with some followers (because remember: not everyone sees every post; they see posts from accounts they engage with the most).

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7. Start a conversation
If you engage with your followers, start writing a simple open-ended question in the post. Ask them about something. In your stories, you can use a poll or a question sticker to ask a question.

In the beginning, they most likely won’t write anything. However, keep doing that even if it looks like you are talking to yourself for now. The important part is that you want people to start engaging on your feed and in your stories.

You can also go to your ideal clients’ profiles first, comment on their feed for a period of time, watch their stories and leave comments. Don’t forget to shoot them a DM to introduce yourself and let them know what you like about their content.

Yes, it’s time-consuming. But when you do that, you will see that people start replying to your questions and the interaction with your other posts will grow.

8. Use the right hashtags
Hashtags help you get discovered by other people. On Instagram, you can add up to 30 hashtags. Use many or all of them.

Search for relevant hashtags for the topic(s) you post.

Then, create lists of them for each subject you post about. Pick ones with 500,000 or less existing posts. Those search results update slower. You can also add 1-3 top, bigger hashtags to get ‘quick’ engagement for the post for the first few minutes.

Save them in your phone app. When you publish the picture, just copy and paste them to the caption or the first comment.

Don’t forget to use hashtags in your Stories!

9. Get to the Instagram Search Top Results
You can get more exposure and followers when you get to the Instagram top posts for certain hashtags. This is the area at the top of Instagram search results.

While Instagram doesn’t tell you the algorithm of choosing pictures to feature, there are some things you can do to increase your chances of your content showing up.

The point is to get more engagement with your post within 1-2 hours after it’s published.

Here are some tips:

– Post at the time when more of your followers are online. If you have a business account, then check your statistics to see when that is.

If you don’t have a business account, you should consider getting one. But for now, look at your posts and see which posts got the most engagement and try remembering the time you posted them. Is there a trend? If so, that’s likely when most of your followers are online.

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