When it debuted in 2010, Instagram was presented as a hipper, more exclusive and overall more aesthetically minded social network than contemporaries like Facebook and MySpace. As a result, it attracted a creative community eager to share high-quality visuals and engage audience members who wanted something fresher than what they found on other social media platforms.
Having a few hundred Instagram followers was a big achievement in those early days. Back then, an impressive follower count was rare, and the Instagram algorithm was relatively simple, making early growth tactics quite straightforward.
Today, the bar for success is much higher, as brands and influencers need thousands of fans if they want to realize ROI on their social campaigns.
Instagram itself has evolved from a walled garden photosharing community into a pivotal platform for advertising and content marketing, making sustainable follower growth there a priority. If you want to grow Instagram organically and expand reach, you have to treat it like any other critical marketing channel.
Why Your Number of Instagram Followers Matters
While Instagram is a hub for gorgeous shots of sunsets, flowers and – of course – food, it’s also so much more.
Increasing your follower count unlocks advanced features, gives brands social proof and boosts social media engagement metrics that advertisers love.
Subscribe to
The Content Marketer
Get weekly insights, advice and opinions about all things digital marketing.
Thank you for subscribing to The Content Marketer!
The Quintessential Influencer Marketing Platform
Instagram remains the main platform of focus for many digital enthusiasts. If you’re in an influencer niche, you already know that growing your Instagram followers is key to landing lucrative partnerships.
Influencers use Instagram posts to build awareness and increase engagement, often with assets on other channels, such as podcasts or books. Also, some may use an IG Bot Tool to make themselves look more attentive to their followers.
However, leaning on bots rarely delivers authentic follower engagement, and it certainly won’t help you grow your Instagram account credibility for the long term.
Every day, more than 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories, the platform’s service for live broadcasts and for video snippets and photos that are available for 24 hours after being posted.
Stories are perfect for creating snackable content that encourages quick reactions, boosts reach and nudges users to follow accounts they find interesting.
That level of engagement puts Stories well ahead of comparable features on networks like Snapchat. By experimenting with a variety of formats — including Instagram Live, Reels and carousel posts — brands can discover which media marketing mix sparks the highest growth rate.
An e-Commerce Frontend
For years, Instagram served as a de facto storefront for many businesses, which would showcase products on their Instagram profiles and then use messaging apps such as WhatsApp to transact with interested buyers.
Now, shopping on Instagram enables direct selling in some regions, complete with a display of an item’s price and a link to the seller’s website. This feature seamlessly marries social media marketing with conversion-focused commerce, demonstrating how growing your Instagram followers can translate directly to revenue.
In this context, having a substantial Instagram audience provides material benefits.
A large followership can lead to more:
- Advertising dollars: More followers means more user engagement with your account, which translates into possible earnings from ads. Once you have a large audience, it probably makes sense to upgrade to a business account to enable such monetization. Business accounts also have access to special features such as analytics, letting you track follower growth rate and other social media analytics in real time.
- Subscribers and customers: As a high-follower account, you’re well-positioned to become an influencer who can get subscriptions to newsletters, signups for webinars, preorders of new products and more.
- Website traffic: Including a link in your bio is always prudent, as it helps turn Instagram engagement into website visits that can increase conversions and build domain authority. Instructing viewers to swipe up on a Story is another effective, Instagram-specific tactic for sending viewers to a particular link. This approach helps you grow organically across channels and not just within the Instagram ecosystem.
Organic vs. Paid Follower Growth on Instagram: Growing Your Audience the Right Way
Ideally, you will earn most or all of your Instagram followers organically. That means using authentic engagement loops, hashtag analytics and compelling content to draw people in.
Buying followers via third-party Instagram automation can seem like a shortcut to greatness, but it’s almost always a waste of money.
Popular social media management platform HootSuite ran an experiment in which it paid $9.95 for 1,000 Instagram followers. Sounds simple enough, right?
One month after that purchase, though, HootSuite hadn’t seen a single like or comment from any of the new followers.
It goes to show that when you pay for followers, you don’t know exactly what you’re buying into and will often end up with lots of bots or other accounts uninterested in your profile.
That’s why organic growth is so valuable!
It’s more difficult than purchasing followers, but it pays much greater dividends in the form of higher engagement, more likes and comments, increased monetization and heightened website activity. In short, organic growth produces higher-quality follows/followers.
Let’s look at a few of the many proven techniques for boosting organic growth.
Post More User-Generated Content
User-generated content is the opposite of branded content; it’s produced by regular accounts instead of marketing teams following specific brand guidelines. Because UGC is raw, authentic and community-centric, it naturally drives higher follower engagement and helps brands grow account trust.
Many companies have run successful social campaigns featuring user-generated content that surfaces in the lucrative Explore page and attracts more followers.
According to Buffer, they managed to increase their Instagram followers by 400% just using a UGC strategy. This type of content works in large part because it encourages audience participation.
To further amplify your efforts, consider finding ways to display your Instagram feed on your website, which allows your visitors to see real-time content and stay connected with your brand.
Another great example of UGC strategy is Aerie’s #AerieReal campaign. The clothing company asked users to submit their unretouched photos, each of which would spur a $1 donation to the National Eating Disorders Association. Such purpose-driven initiatives are content that Instagram users love to share, further boosting organic discovery.
Some user-generated content campaigns even have prizes, which provide additional incentives for engagement.
KONG Box organized one such contest that required participants to like a specific post, follow its account and tag a friend – a perfect recipe for gaining more followers without seeming overbearing or resorting to paid placement.
Finally, user-generated content builds trust.
Followers who see a high-quality photo or video from someone like them or get tagged in a post by a friend often put a lot of weight into that interaction.
Post-COVID-19 studies show that 90% of users trust user-generated content to influence their purchase decisions. From a marketing strategy perspective, this statistic alone makes UGC indispensable for anyone intent on growing their Instagram organically.
Create and Follow a Consistent Posting Schedule
If followers really like your Instagram profile, they’ll likely return to it regularly to see what you’re posting. They expect consistency, so you should avoid posting only infrequently or on an ad hoc basis.
Consistency sends the right signals to both your target audience and the Instagram algorithm, helping more of your content surface in feeds.
By setting a consistent posting schedule, you give followers a reason to return each day. Moreover, regular posting ensures you maintain a predictable growth rate that’s easier to analyze and optimize.
There are numerous tools out there, including eClincher, Buffer and HootSuite, that let you schedule content far in advance so that you never miss a day. These platforms also provide social media analytics dashboards so you can refine future posts based on real performance data.
As you draw up your schedule, pay close attention to when you’re posting, as not all times are equally good. Buffer and Sprout Social have both examined how Instagram engagement fluctuates over the course of a typical week; the two charts below may be helpful in your planning.
As a bonus, consistent posting can help you break into the Explore page on Instagram, which rewards popular content that sees significant engagement.
It’s a virtuous cycle: A steady flow of high-quality posts will build your audience, whose engagement then boosts your presence and visibility in the Instagram app, making it easier to gain even more followers.
Include the Right #Hashtags
Speaking of Explore, there’s an entire science to getting your posts to appear there. Its algorithm seems to like videos (which autoplay in Explore) and original posts (as opposed to reshares or controversial uncredited content) in particular, plus it rewards judicious use of hashtags and geotags.
Posts with at least one hashtag see 12.6% higher engagement than ones with none.
Overall, the average engagement rate for brands is 1.16%. However, posts that include certain hashtags (such as #giveaway) can perform 50% better than those that don’t feature any hashtags.
Most of these hashtags – 70% of them to be exact – are branded, showing the high level of brand interest across the platform and the opportunity to reach numerous users who might not go looking for your Instagram profile in particular but are seeing what’s tagged with a specific hashtag and may follow accounts that are targeting it.
At the same time, overdoing it with the branded hashtags can come off as sales-y and off-putting.
Balance those hashtags with ones that are location-based (like #chitown for Chicago or #hotlanta for Atlanta) or trending. This blend of broad and niche tags helps you cast a wide net while still resonating with the right people.
Also, include a geotag to provide more context; geotagged posts get almost 80% more engagement.
Enormously popular hashtags like #love and #nofilter might be worth including since they can’t really hurt your post, but remember that they’re difficult to rank for. Pairing them with mid-tier or long-tail tags can prevent your content from getting buried.
Practice Your Caption Writing
If hashtags and geotags are like chocolate, then Instagram captions are like peanut butter – the other half of what should be an irresistible combo.
While Instagram is obviously a highly visual platform, all of this text matters, too, since it provides important context and helps guide your would-be followers on how to interpret each post and give them a sense of if it’s worth their time to follow you in the first place.
Well-crafted captions can dramatically boost social media engagement and help convert casual scrollers into devoted followers.
Here’s what to keep in mind as you craft your captions:
1. You Have a Lot of Characters To Work With…
This isn’t X (Twitter).
Instagram allows more than 2,000 characters per post, meaning there’s plenty of room to describe what’s in a photo or video, ask questions, include calls-to-action and load up on relevant hashtags.
Even extended ruminations, broken up nicely into paragraphs (write in a notes app first, then copy/paste), can be included, like in the example below.
2. …But It’s Usually Good to Keep Things Short
Sometimes a long caption like this will work, for instance, if you’re looking back on a major achievement or telling a story that requires a lot of background.
Most of the time, though, you will want to get to the point by including important information right at the outset, describing what’s being shown in the image, explaining the contest or campaign you’re running or otherwise quickly summarizing what your audience should take away from the post.
Rapidly conveying value helps maintain attention spans and encourages followers to share your post, further growing your Instagram reach.
This Intel post works well by leading with hashtags and the simple statement that the depicted robot needs a name.
3. Emojis Are Everything
Don’t like the prospect of bombarding your audience with big blocks of text? That’s basically the problem emojis were meant to solve.
You can say a lot with very little using the right icons, whether that’s a pumpkin and some ghosts for a Halloween update or hearts and a rainbow flag for LGBT Pride Month.
Even something simple like using an arrow emoji in a call-to-action, like in this Dunkin’ post, can be super effective.
Plus, a well-placed emoji can humanize your brand voice and make your Instagram account feel more approachable.
Dive Into Video Formats Like Instagram Live
Instagram built its initial audience with photos. However, it’s become one of the biggest video platforms, too.
As a matter of fact, brands tend to see about 38% more engagement on video ads.
Accordingly, growing your audience organically will require a sensible video strategy, one that can take advantage of the short-form Instagram Stories format and livestreaming via Instagram Live, in addition to videos that appear on the main feed.
Incorporating a variety of video types into your content strategy can help you meet your target audience wherever they are on their journey.
Between the three of them, you might want to try ideas such as:
- Question-and-answer sessions.
- Guided tours.
- Walkthroughs, explainers and how-to’s.
Instagram Live in particular is excellent for directly engaging with your audience and cultivating followers, like in this real-time Q&A on makeup:
Tap Into Instagram Insights
How do you know if your posts are connecting with your audience and netting you new followers? The built-in analytics tool, Instagram Insights, is the place to start.
From within Instagram Insights, you can see:
- Details such as how many followers you gained on a specific day.
- The number of impressions that came from the home.
- Explore and profile pages.
- The percentage of accounts that you reached that didn’t follow you.
Knowing this granular information can help optimize a strategy that’s already working, or recalibrate one that isn’t.
You can quickly pull up analytics if you have a business account, which also allows for promotion/advertising of a post, as shown below.
Become Verified
The ol’ blue checkmark: It’s an unmistakable signifier of authority across social media as well as a great way to gain organic followers. Verification also signals to potential partners that your Instagram account is legitimate, which can be invaluable in media marketing negotiations.
You can request verification from within the settings menu in the Instagram app.
You will need to complete a few forms and provide relevant proof of identity, such as government ID (if an individual) or company documentation (if a business).
Verified accounts are more trusted and usually have an easier time getting their posts in front of large audiences. Verification shouldn’t be the centerpiece of an organic growth strategy, but it’s a useful measure that serves as a credibility badge, significantly accelerating your growth rate.
Ultimately, It’s About Follower Quality — Not Quantity
Huge Instagram followings, like the ones in the image above, are undoubtedly impressive. But what matters more than the numbers themselves is the quality of the interactions that come from those followers.
Are they commenting on your posts? Following the link in your bio? Converting into sales and subscriptions?
The goal isn’t merely to increase your Instagram followers; it’s to foster meaningful social media engagement that aligns with business objectives.
As you pursue organic growth of your Instagram followers, focus on these quality metrics above all. If quantity were all that mattered, spending a few dollars to get thousands of bots to follow you would be the only advice we’d need to give.
Don’t buy followers. Rather, devote your Instagram strategy to crafting posts that resonate with your audience and take advantage of all that Instagram has to offer. Grow your Instagram organically, monitor your social media analytics and refine your marketing strategy to ensure sustainable success and a vibrant community that loves to interact, share and convert.
Editor’s Note: Updated December 2025
