How to Get More Followers on Instagram Fast and Free

Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms today.

Reaching 1 million users in the first 3 months of its establishment, Instagram has more than 1 billion users according to July 2020 data and this number is increasing gradually.

Of course, having such a large user base, Instagram is of great importance in business life. There are countless opportunities for business owners on Instagram.

In this article, we will show you some important strategies that will allow you to get the most out of Instagram especially for business owners.

We will explain the ways to gain 300 organic followers per day by reaching your target customer base.

We need to immediately explain the difference between the real follower and the bot follower before writing. Some people tend to make themselves more popular than they are by buying followers for money.

It is very common to buy 5000 followers for 100 liras today. But most of these followers are fake, namely boots. So there is no other benefit than the number. So we are talking about fake accounts that have no contribution to Instagram, do not interact with people.

Especially for businesses, these fake accounts do more harm than good. Maybe your Instagram posts are liked more in number, your stories may be watched more, but these fake accounts do not buy anything.

Let’s look at ways to gain organic and real followers without further ado.

How to Get Followers on Instagram?

1. Identify Your Expectations From Instagram

If you enter Instagram only for entertainment and socializing, you can skip this stage.

However, if you are entering Instagram in terms of business and marketing, you must determine the main purpose of your account.

50% of Instagram users follow the pages of their favorite brands. You should also act through this channel and target your customers and people who can love the products and services you offer.

So…

You should determine your main purpose and carry out your activities on Instagram for this purpose. In this way, you can measure the number of followers you earn, for example, when you advertise with money. In other words, you should act in line with a basic target to get your investment worth.

Because everything from your content strategy to the number of posts per day will depend on this goal.

So make your expectations and plans for Instagram as specific as possible. Make your goals measurable.

E.g…

• Engaging more with users
• Increase sales
• Drive more traffic to your website
• Enabling people to subscribe to your e-mail list
• Earning income from the affiliate
• Promote your company and ensure that successful people apply for a job
• Creating an exciting atmosphere for a product launch
• Attract their attention to cooperate with phenomena

It would be great if you would combine these goals with certain numbers.

For example: “I sell 4 products daily from Instagram. I want to increase the number of sales I made on Instagram to 20 within 2 months. ”

2. Create a Content Strategy

Content, content, content. We can’t even talk about social media without content.

The most important element of success in Instagram is content.

If you produce random content, you attract the attention of random people. These people have nothing in common with you. So in terms of marketing, the chances of these people reviewing your business and shopping from you are almost zero.

Therefore, you should produce your content by adhering to a certain strategy and targeting certain people. In this way, you can have the people you want to follow you.

When it comes to “content” for social media, most people don’t know what it means, but we will explain it to you.

First of all, we should talk about content and context issues.

Content is what you create. Context, on the other hand, is the meaning integrated with this content.

In other words, content marketing target is to offer quality things to your customer base. Context marketing is to present the right content to the right person at the right time.

To establish this balance, you should ask yourself the following questions.

• What content should I produce?
• Who is this content for?
• Where will people see this content?
• When should I share this content?
• Why do I want people to see this content?

You know that Instagram is a visually weighted social media platform. Things like photos, videos, Insta-stories are the basic desire of Instagram users.

Speaking of context, we said it was a temporal thing. Even in a very specific market, people can react differently to different contents. In addition, the context changes rapidly as the agenda changes.

It is imperative that you constantly interact with your followers to find the right answers to the questions we have listed above. So, you should not share a content and disappear.

He should carefully examine comments and messages from people; you should check the general trends of your followers.

Only in this way you can learn to share correct and successful content.

So what kind of content should he share?

We can talk about 4 basic types of content such as human oriented content, product or service oriented content, text oriented content, user oriented content.

People-oriented content: It is very important to present yourself and your brand with humanitarian aspects on Instagram. Photographs with a human face get 38% more likes than photographs without.

If your aim is to show and promote your company culture, this method will be very useful for your business. It will be very useful for you to share photos from the activities in the workplace, to introduce your employees, to explain their successes, and to talk about the methods you use in the workplace.

Because human stories create emotions and help users establish an emotional connection with your business.

• Everyday squares from the office
• Photos from a meal or event visited by the company
• Photos of your employees participating in the social responsibility project
• Photos of pets living in your office
• Agenda-oriented photos that your employees choose personally are good examples of people-oriented content.

Product or service oriented content: If you want to increase your sales, you should focus on sharing content related to your products and services.

Being sales oriented does not only mean sharing a product image.

What you need to do is to tell your products by telling them in a story.

For example, Nike excels in this regard. It exhibits its products together with athletes and establishes a good balance of product promotion-life philosophy.

As an example of product-service based contents, we can also give the following examples:

• Images from the products you are preparing to release
• Photos describing the production process of your products
• Photos of people using your products or services ( shotoniphone such as a very good project in this regard)

Post-oriented content : It is very common to share things like quotes, quotations, statistics, and infographic as posts on Instagram.

In which sector can you benefit from the content?

If you do not have time to take photos and produce visual content for Instagram, it may be great to share post-focused posts.

For example, Yeniisfikirleri.net shares a great deal of statistics, data, and infographic on Instagram. In this way, it informs users and teaches them useful things.

• Inspirational quotes, quotations
• Customer comments
• Famous people’s words
• Up-to-date information about your business and industry
• Interesting and surprising information

User oriented content: Social networks work according to the principle of user experience.

In this respect, you can take advantage of user-oriented content to stay ahead of your competitors.

For example, you can share content produced by users. This is also called user-generated content .

As the name implies, users produce not your content but you. Customers, followers, non-followers, site visitors, phenomena… Almost everyone can produce these contents.

When we look at the 20 biggest brands in the world, 25% of the contents related to these brands were created by users (customers).

People read reviews about the brand on the internet before purchasing something, they care about the opinions and experiences of customers. At this point, the content and reviews produced by users contribute to the increase in sales.

If you share the content produced by people as a brand, you will draw a more intimate brand image in the eyes of people. This improves your interaction with people.

So how can you get people to produce content for you? It’s pretty easy actually.

• Specify what you want from people as specifically as possible. Announce that you will share content produced around a certain theme.
• We talked about the target. Request content based on what you are targeting with your Instagram account.
• Specify the name (Instagram account) of the people whose content you share. Thus, you will both win the hearts of these people and develop more positive relationships. In addition, people enjoy being recognized and shared. This increases the number of people who want to produce content for you.
• Reward people who produce quality content. For example, give a gift to the person who wrote the most creative description (caption) under a photo within 24 hours.

You can also encourage users to do certain things if you want to increase the interaction rate. For example, Southwest Airlines says in this post, “Where are you going on the Halloween holiday?” He asked a question.

Remember, it is easier for posts that receive many comments to fall into “Explore”. Falling into Explore allows more people to follow you. You can also ask people to make more comments by asking questions about your business and industry.

• If you are a florist: “Do you think rose bouquet is more elegant or orchid?” you might ask.
• If you are a wedding photographer: “Who gets married in 6 months?”
• If you are the owner of the gym: You can share the photo of two people working in the hall and say “Tag the friend you want to bench press together”.

So if we add up the content strategy issue;

1. Set your theme and goal. (Product sales, company culture promotion etc.)
2. Look for answers to “Who, What, When, How, Where and Why” on this theme.
3. Then create and share your content around these ideas.

3. Edit Your Profile with Maximum Interactivity Focus

Your Instagram account should be remarkable at first sight.

Your profile picture, your username, the explanations in the bio section… These are important elements.

It all starts here.

You should choose the most appropriate name for your business by entering the “Edit profile” section, make the correct visual profile picture, and specify the phone number and website that you can reach.

“Half a century of experience” must be the motto of your business, telling you.

So how can you make your Instagram profile appear more?

There are several ways to do this.

• For example, share the link of your Instagram account on your e-mail list and even in your e-mail signature.
• Put icons of your social media accounts on your website.
• Let me add your account to your business card, stickers for your business. For example, you can write your Instagram account to the wet wipes you give to your customers.
• You can promote your Instagram account on non-Instagram social media platforms and enable people from different channels to discover your Instagram.

4. Share Interesting Photos

Interesting, amazing photos are the lifeblood of Instagram.

The most basic post of Instagram are interesting photos.

Therefore, in order to benefit from Instagram, you should share good quality and beautiful posts.

Let us explain step by step how.

First of all, it should be noted that the human brain is designed according to visual elements. Our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.

If you want to create memorable visual stories, your account must have a certain theme and style.

If you have a certain theme and style, your account, so your brand will be more memorable. If your images are in harmony with each other, your brand image will be reinforced with each new post. Just like that, if you share mixed images, you will get lost in 6 billion posts daily.

It is statistically proven that thematic and well-designed Instagram pages attract more attention and get more interaction.

Note that consistency builds trust. If you keep your content out of the same hand, if you keep a certain style, users will be more willing to follow you and your followers will be more loyal.

Of course, being consistent and maintaining the same style does not mean being boring.

Let’s give you a few tips on this.

a) Use the brand identity components you use on your website and other social media sites on Instagram as well.

So, when someone who follows you on Facebook or Twitter is logged into your Instagram account, they should not suffer from strangeness.

Your elements such as logo, font, color selection, style should be compatible with each other.

b) Find the grid design that suits you best. Once you enter your Instagram page, people will see that you have a certain style.

This example is very elegant and effective.

c) Or you can highlight a single color.

For example, if your brand’s logo is green, you can make all the photos you upload to your Instagram account green. This requires serious labor, but a monochromatic visual language is always interesting.

d) You can try using a single filter in the photos. So all your photos have a certain style and color language.

e) You can repeat certain themes.

For example, you can include your customers who pose the same for all your photos. You can repeat an essential element in all your photos.

For instance, the Instagram phenomenon, which has 4 million named Murad Osman, organizes all his posts on the same pose.

• Canva
• PicMonkey
• Stencil
• Photovisi
• BeFunky
• Recite

You can make your Instagram posts more creative and interesting by using tools such as….

f) Share original photos. Do not take photos or share stock photos from other accounts. Share original photos from you personally.

g) Write remarks to get people moving under the photos you share. Encourage them to something, comment, message, share your post.

h) Indicate where your photos were taken. Show where your photo was taken by selecting a location from the location on the photo. Photos with location information receive 78% more interaction than photos without. Even this little detail can make an enormous difference.

When choosing a location, choose a popular location. For example, Ankara, Turkey location of the Ankara Cankaya is more popular than home. Therefore, when you mark the Ankara, Turkey location, you have the potential to reach more people. 

5. Write Long Comments

The explanation part is very important for a photo to succeed on Instagram, but for some reason this detail is often overlooked.

You can increase the sharing, message, and follow-up performance of that post by writing a few paragraphs below your posts.

You have an area of ​​2200 characters in the description section. 2200 characters mean about 400 words.

It is difficult to explain your post on the phone. For this reason, it is better to write your comment in your phone’s notebook and copy it to the post description section. Thus, it is easier to read since your article is divided into 2-3 paragraphs instead of a big one.

Let us repeat: If you want a lot of comments to be written on a photo, if you want it to be liked, write a 2-3 paragraph photo related article under that photo.

But let’s also say that you don’t have to use them all because there is a 2200 character limit. However, we can say that a statement of 100-150 words is ideal.

Always add an action call to the description you write. So at the end of the article, you can ask people questions and invite them to tag their friends.

When a good photo combines with a good article, you can be sure that you will get a really tight interaction.

6. Develop Hashtag Strategy

You can post on Instagram all day, but people will find you with the hashtag.

There is no Instagram marketing campaign without hashtag.

Hashtag gives you visibility. People who travel from hashtag to hashtag eventually discover a page that interests them and stay on that page.

In this respect, your Instagram posts must have a hashtag.

So what kind of hashtags should you use?

You can think of hashtags as a category system. For example, you travel the world and share the places you visit. You will share the photo you took on a beach in Thailand.

Hashtags like #Digitalnomad, #Barefootwriter, #Thailand, #Beachbum are very good choices, for example.

In this way, you are much more likely to reach people like you who want to travel the world and think of going to Thailand.

A hashtag,

• It can be location based.
• It can be lifestyle-based.
• It can be brand or product based.
• It can be event based.
• It can be competition based.
• It can be community based.

So hashtag also has its own types.

Let us state this once: You have to write the hashtags in the description part, not the photo. It is very important to keep the explanation part simple and clean.

Remember, the hashtag makes you different from others; Hashtags are necessary for people to find you, not for people to see.

If you want to keep the explanation simple, you can share the hashtags as a comment.

It is useful to be specific when using hashtags. #happy, for example, is good under a positive photo and this hashtag has a high access rate. However, photos are shared with hundreds of thousands of #happy hashtags every day. It is not easy to stand out from so many photographs.

So it is most logical to use specific hashtags.

You reach a more specific audience with specific hashtags.

The emotional aspect of specific hashtags is stronger and emotion creation is a crucial force on social media.

No one may find you when you use ultra-specific hashtags. Therefore, you should choose neither too crowded nor too secluded hashtags.

How many hashtags are ideal?

In general, we can say that you should use minimum 5 and maximum 30 hashtags.

According to Buffer’s research, there are an average of 11 hashtags in posts that receive the most interaction. The more hashtags, the more chances of reaching people. But keep in mind that if you are going to use 30 hashtags, make sure that your explanation is long. In other words, the length of the description and the number of hashtags must be balanced.

It’s time to find the most appropriate hashtags for your account and post.

First of all, it is a good idea to note your favorite hashtags. Thus, you can avoid searching for hashtags in each post and save time.

Find general hashtags that appeal to your industry and target audience.

This is how you can find the most popular hashtags for #autowash.

These hashtags are extremely important for a business account that does a car wash business.

In addition, you should review the accounts of competitors and identify the hashtags that they frequently use. Because you aim to reach the same customer base with competitors.

Finally, you should analyze the metrics such as interaction, comment, message, follow-up, story watching provided by the hashtags you use and find the hashtags that contribute the most to you.

7. Prepare Shipment Schedule

It is difficult to gain followers if you do not share regular content on Instagram.

• 1-2 photos or videos daily
• 5 to 30 stories per day
• Sharing 1 live video daily is a good content strategy at this point.

Namely…

The most successful Instagram users frequently share photos.

There is the right proportion between how often you share and how many followers you have.

Sharing every day is essential to gain more followers and to be more visible.

Also, keep in mind that video is just as effective as a photo.

5 to 30 stories per day are also great. When you share an average of 10 stories, it takes 150 seconds, so you can tell a beautiful story in 150 seconds.

Broadcasting live is a good Instagram content strategy. When you broadcast live at the same time every day, an expectation occurs in people and the rate of entering live video increases. Throwing a story about the live time a few hours before going live will also increase the number of people who will join the live broadcast.

As long as the live broadcast continues, you will be in the first place in the story stream. In other words, the longer the live broadcast takes, the more people will join the broadcast.

You should find the ideal live time by trying it out. Time will change depending on the structure of your followers.

8. Track Target Persons and Competitors

If you follow the tactics we counted so far, you will earn at least 30 new followers per day.

Initially, the speed of gaining followers will be low, but over time it will increase. You can earn 5 followers in the first few days of applying the tactics in question, but this should not break your enthusiasm.

Your acceleration will increase in a few weeks.

Our current suggestion will allow you to follow the influx of followers.

First, identify your rival Instagram accounts. Especially examine rival accounts with a high number of followers and follow the followers of these accounts.

For example, enter “socialmediamarketing” in the search field. You will see 2,900,000 posts. The first 9 photos are the most successful posts about the hashtag. Click one of these posts.

As you can see, this photo has 7691 likes. So it’s a pretty good number.

Click on the account that shared this photo.

The account in question has 497,000 followers.

If you have an Instagram account in social media marketing, people who follow a successful account will want to follow you as well. Because you are an account operating in the same area.

Now follow the people who follow this account.

You can repeat this process many times throughout the day.

You can also review popular hashtags related to your domain, and follow new people by reviewing high-like posts and accounts with this hashtag. The rate of these people following you is quite high.

9. Follow Up To 50 People Per Hour

Instagram does not want users to abuse the tracking system. For this reason, for example, thousands of people in one go limit the following. This number is 7500 people.

It takes a lot of time to follow 7500 people in one sitting.

Instead, follow 50 people in an hour. If you try to follow 1000 people in one hour, your account may be temporarily blocked, the follow button may be temporarily disabled.

But it is quite easy to follow 50 people in one hour and it does not attract the attention of Instagram management.

When you apply this method, for example 3 times a day, you will follow 150 people and a significant portion of 150 people will probably follow you back.

10. Give importance to interaction

Instagram is not just a sharing platform. It is an ideal medium for learning new things, meeting new people and developing together.

For this reason, it is very good to use the time you spend on Instagram efficiently.

Let’s give an example:

• When someone follows you, follow that person.
• When someone comments on your post, reply to that comment.
• “Like” your favorite posts.
• Comment on posts you love.
• Like comments you like.
• DM people for questions you have in mind.
• Tag people in content you share.
• Ask people in your posts and stories, organize surveys.

So there is a difference between sharing something on Instagram and being an Instagram participant.

Share something but be absolutely active. Communicate with people.

11. Collaborate With Different Users

If you want to gain a big follower in Instagram in a short time, you have to cooperate with Instagram phenomena.

When people with high followers talk about you, a significant portion of these followers follow you.

For,

• People trust the advice of their loved ones.
• People are influenced by other people’s thoughts when making decisions.

These are among the basic elements of human psychology.

First you have to make sure that you are collaborating with the right people.

It would be great to choose people who are not your direct competitors but have a similar target audience. In this way, an equal value change occurs.

So:

You should search for accounts with a similar head to your account on Instagram. This research process takes time, but if you have a low budget or no budget, you have no choice.

Review the target hashtags you set and identify posts that receive a lot of likes, comments, shares.

Try to find people who promote other accounts, collaborate with other accounts.

Once you find the people (phenomena) you can work with, see what you can offer them. As a result, you are in need of their followers.

See what you can promise these people. But first, contact them.

Then try to improve this relationship. Identify the details of the agreement.

It is labor and time to get maximum benefit from mutual promotion. Share the contents of your collaborator on different social media networks and ask your followers to interact with them.

12. Organize Contests and Sweepstakes

Another important method to increase your Instagram followers is to organize contests and sweepstakes.

If you think people will follow you when you say that you will give them something for free, you are not quite right because organizing a successful contest requires a good preparation and strategy.

First of all, you have to decide what kind of competition you will organize. Each competition type has its own pros and cons.

Follow – win: People must follow you to qualify for the lottery. After the lottery, these people can unfollow you.

Like – win: They must like one of your posts to qualify for the raffle.

Write a comment – win: they must comment on one of your posts to qualify for the lottery.

Join the Challenge – win: It is the logic of rewarding the person who presents the most successful content among those who participate in a contest that you set and share photos about this challenge.

You can also organize contest-raffle by combining all this in a single format. In other words, in order to be entitled to the draw, from people; you can ask them to follow you, tag their friends, and share the photo for a particular theme with the hashtag of your choice.

You must determine and announce the rules of the contests and sweepstakes you have organized in advance. Otherwise, people say that “injustice” is done, etc. You may think. For this reason, it would be great to put the rules all over again.

• The duration of the competition, the start-end dates
• Procedure for how to choose the prize and the winner
• Conditions of participation
• Declaration of whether the contest is sponsored or not

You should write this information under the post you announced the contest as an explanation.

Let’s come to the question of how to choose the winner … There is a problem here. Many irrelevant people follow you just to win a prize during a competition. However, you want to reward people who are truly interested in your business or account.

For this reason, your rewards should be relevant to your page.

For example, if you run a computer course, give the winner the chance to attend a course with a 50% discount.

Or let’s say you have a page where you promote books. Give the first book a gift set. Thus, you reward people who are in the same mind as you.

To promote the contest and sweepstakes, create a hashtag that has the potential to go viral and ask your existing followers to share and use this hashtag.

Announce the raffle and contest on your other social media accounts and website.

13. Advertise with Money

Sometimes spending money to make money is the most effective method.

We are talking about paid advertising to Instagram.

You know that Instagram was purchased by Facebook in 2012. So advertising on Instagram is almost exactly like advertising on Facebook.

Let’s talk about advertising on Instagram step by step anyway.

First, link your Instagram account to your Facebook account. If you have done this before, you will not have to do it every time you advertise.

After saying “Add account”, you must enter your Instagram username and password.

Then you come across the question of which Facebook account you want to use for your Instagram advertising campaign. If you have more than one account, choose the appropriate one.

In the next step, click on Ad Manager and start creating your Instagram ad campaign.

Since your Instagram and Facebook account are linked, you can create an Instagram ad from your Facebook account.

At this point you need to determine your main purpose for the advertising campaign.

• Increased brand awareness
• Reach more people
• Traffic
• Interaction
• Watching video
• Product sales
• There are basic purposes such as website visit. Choose the purpose that suits you best.

After choosing your target, choose which audience to show the ad to. You can determine this using metrics such as age, gender, language, and location. For example, you can have your ad displayed only to people aged 18-35 living in the Anatolian side of Istanbul.

Then determine your budget for the ad and the time it wants the ad to show.

You can choose the ad format after choosing the budget and duration. You can choose whether the ad shows in stories or the main stream.

After you have determined a suitable image and description for the advertisement, you can say “publish” and publish the advertisement.

At this stage, it would be useful to say a few words about the retargeting campaign.

Retargeting campaign means reaching people who have previously interacted with your business in some way.

For example, a person may have entered your website, discarded a product, but did not complete the purchase.

It is extremely important to reach these people again.

The way to reach these people is through Facebook Pixel. Facebook Pixel detects people who have visited your website and helps you to see your ads seen by them.

You should definitely install Facebook Pixel as an add-on to your website, and have as much data as possible about the people entering and leaving your website.

You should enter the ad manager and click on the section that says “Pixel”. Here you can create Facebook Pixel account or learn the code of your existing Pixel account.

When you paste this code into the “header” section of your website, Facebook detects the people entering your site on your behalf. Thus, it is possible for you to come across with people who have crossed paths with you before.

14. Identify Your Instagram Account On Physical Objects

You don’t just have to use the internet to promote your Instagram account.

For example, you have an e-commerce site and let’s say you sell clothes.

For example, you can print your brand’s logo and Instagram account on the package you send to customers who order products from you.

Or you can print hashtags on the products. At the 2012 Olympics, Adidas and Nike printed their hashtags on shoes.

In other words, you can also print your Instagram account on physical products and gain followers through offline methods.

It may also be useful to offer small rewards to those who follow you. For example;

You can organize a competition for people who take selfies with your products every month. You can choose the first among these published photos using your page and the hashtag you specify and reward this person.

Or after your sale, you can ask your customer to take a video explaining why you prefer your product and upload it to Instagram. This person can get a discount on their next purchase thanks to this video, which tells you why they prefer your brand. As a result, both your sales increase and you can easily reach people who have the potential to follow you.

15. Analyze Your Performance

When you follow the methods we have listed so far, it will be quite normal to gain 250-300 followers daily.

Of course, it is imperative to remember that Instagram is constantly evolving and changing. Old features and methods may become invalid as new features arrive.

At this point, you should constantly monitor which methods benefit you more.

Having 80.000 non-interacting followers means nothing. Therefore, you should observe the results of each method you apply and monitor its performance.

• How many people click on your links? How is the click-through rate on the links you share in your stories?
• How many people visit your website via Instagram?
• How many people have followed you in the last 1 month? How many people have followed you? Which post caused you to lose followers? What was wrong with this post?
• On average, how many interactions do you get per post?
• How many times hashtag you created for your brand, how popular has it been?

Result

No matter how much effort you spend on social media, you may not be able to get the reward for labor.

But the situation is different now. Especially when it comes to Instagram…

Instagram is a great channel for brand promotion and marketing. Even an ordinary person can achieve great success on Instagram with the right strategy and efforts.

Yes, it is difficult to get a tight follower.

Yes, the competition is angry.

Only when you target the right people can you get a good audience.

By following the methods we have discussed in this article, it is highly possible to gain at least 300 followers daily.

Moreover, these followers are made up of real people. Not from fake or bot accounts!

If you produce quality and stable content and interact with people on Instagram, your content will gain momentum in a short time, and your followers will increase gradually.

So what are the tactics you use?

We would like to hear about your experiences and experiences!

We would be pleased to share it with us as a comment.