Attracting more followers on Instagram is important when it comes to scaling your marketing efforts. But how do you do this organically, especially if you have fewer than a thousand followers?
Well, unless you’re famous, it can be hard to attract a massive following on Instagram without some form of hard work. And it can be especially difficult if you’re a small business with a small following relying on Instagram marketing to get more clients. So how do you get started?
There are a few things that you can do right away to attract at least 1000 quality followers for your Instagram business account. The first is knowing where to invest your time and effort.
In this blog post, we’ll reveal some strategies that you can use to attract your first 1000 followers on Instagram. From creating a profile worth following to using competitions to grow and stay true to your brand.
But first, let’s discuss the types of followers you’ll typically find on Instagram, and look at which ones you want to attract and which ones you don’t.
Types of Instagram followers
There are three main types of followers and spoiler alert, the first two are ones you want to avoid.
Fake followers
These followers mostly consist of bots or fake accounts that just add to your follower count and not much else. They don’t engage at all, which is a problem because engagement is a big part of the Instagram algorithm, and oftentimes how new users discover your feed.
Ghost followers
Ghost followers are those inactive users who don’t engage with your content. They are usually accounts created by scammers who create fictional profiles and use them to target and scam others. Sometimes these accounts are created by real people who just end up not using or abandoning their account. But most of the time, they’re social bots with no actual users behind them.
These accounts exist because users who want more followers are willing to pay for them, which creates a market for fake follower accounts. Most, if not all, fake follower accounts are automated.
These types of followers can lower your engagement rate. So it’s important to clean up your account and get rid of ghost followers if you’re looking to grow.
Organic followers
These types of followers are the best kind because these are your active audience, the people who find your profile and engage with your page and content. Within this organic group, there is a subset of followers that are also great for your brand and your account, as you’ll see below.
Customers
These organic followers are those users who have purchased from you. They follow you on Instagram mainly for product or service updates, launches, specials and discounts. To engage these types of followers, it’s best to feature your products or services frequently and educate these users about the benefits of using them.
Another thing you can do to encourage growth is advertise exclusive offers, available just for Instagram followers.
Prospective customers
Some of your organic followers may be following other brands similar to yours and in the same niche. They are most likely researching and shopping around before they make a decision. To engage these types of followers, take inspiration from your competitors and adjust your content accordingly. You also may want to use specific hashtags and location hashtags to improve brand recall and visibility.
Influencers
To attract influencers, it’s best to produce high-quality, consistent content for one niche audience. Once influencers start to follow your brand, reach out to them and ask if they’d like to partner with you to promote your products or services. Look for influencers who align with your niche, i.e. influencers who talk about the same or similar topics that your products and services fall into.
Now that we’ve covered your ideal audience, let’s talk about how to get their attention.
How to To Attract Your First 1000 Followers On Instagram
Before you start optimising your Instagram page, you’ll want to create an Instagram strategy that will help you to hit the ground running.
1. Use a social media content calendar
The first thing you’ll want to do is create a social media content calendar to plan all of your Instagram posts ahead of time. There are loads of free templates out there that you can use to plan ahead.
Here is an example of a HootSuite one that you can download for free below.
Believe it or not, most of the work of increasing your follower count on Instagram happens before you even open the app.
Yes, you heard us right, and oftentimes it involves publishing new Instagram posts consistently and not just when inspiration strikes. It’s important to identify a rhythm and stick to it because, as your account starts to grow, followers will come to expect posts from you at specific times, which will ultimately help in nurturing your community.
Consistently planning, writing and publishing your Instagram posts requires an exceptional level of organisation. So it’s important to use a social media content calendar to plan and schedule posts ahead of time.
2. Use native social media management tools to schedule your posts in advance
If you’re serious about increasing your Instagram following by working smart and not hard, we highly recommend making your life easier by scheduling your social media posts. Instagram has a native scheduling tool linked to Meta Business Suite that you can use for free to schedule your posts in advance.
If you choose to use Instagram’s wide variety of post types, i.e. Reels, Stories and square posts, things can get overwhelming without a scheduling tool’s help. That’s why scheduling your posts in advance can make it easier to use the aforementioned content formats more effectively.
3. Stick to a regular posting schedule
Deciding on a schedule for when to post your content and then sticking to it will help to build trust with your audience. However, optimising that schedule for your specific audience may take some time and experimentation.
According to Buffer, the best time to post on Instagram is between 7 and 8 am on weekdays, as seen below.
Source: Buffer
But feel free to experiment with times and days to see what works best for your audience. You may find that your most loyal and valuable followers are most active and engaged at different times of the day.
Once you find the best times to post on Instagram, stick with those times to set your audience’s expectations.
Another thing that can help, is keeping your target audience personas in mind as you plan your posting schedule, as this can drastically influence your posting time, especially if they are based in another time zone.
4. Make sure your Instagram account is a business profile
While you could technically grow your brand using a personal profile, we recommend turning your Instagram account into a business profile or starting afresh.
This is important because it will enable you to view valuable Instagram insights which will help you to see how quickly your following is growing and by extension, how well your strategy is working.
To switch to a business account, follow these steps:
- Open the Instagram app on your phone and navigate to your profile.
- Tap the hamburger menu on the upper right hand corner.
- Tap “Settings and privacy”.
- Scroll down to “Account type and tools”.
- Tap “Switch to professional account”.
Once that’s done, you’ll be given the option to switch entirely over to a business account or stay a professional account. We recommend switching to a business account.
5. Customise your newly created business account
Make it easier for followers to find out about your brand, what it stands for, and what you provide by first making sure your username is the same as or as close to your company name as possible. If your company name is already taken, try keeping your company name as the first part of your username so that people can find you more easily. For example, @mycompanynameza, if you operate in South Africa.
The next thing to do is add your company logo as your profile picture and fill in your bio with info about your brand. Adding this will let people know what you’re all about and inform them of why they should follow you. When adding info to your bio, don’t be afraid to add a bit of personality too, with emojis for example.
After that, it’s time to add a “link in bio” tool to your profile like Linktree to make it easy for people to navigate from Instagram to other important URLs you’d like them see.
6. Come up with an Instagram theme
You only have one chance to make a good first impression, so put in the required effort when it comes to your Instagram feed. Consider creating an aesthetically pleasing theme for your Instagram profile like we did for our profile @themustardflowerza as seen below, to draw users in.
Taking the time to create an eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed is considered one of the most effective ways to get a user to follow your business on Instagram. So create a cohesive Instagram theme across your feed and give users who visit your profile a better sense of your brand.
7. Write engaging and share-worthy captions
Captions form an important part of your posts and are essentially the icing on the cake. Well-written captions tend to do wonders for humanising your brand, winning over followers and making your content more relatable and sharable.
A well-written caption should include the following elements:
- Clever or witty wording
- Calls to action
- Relevant emojis
- Hashtags
8. Post content that your followers want to see
Lastly, if you want to attract your first 1000 followers on Instagram, it’s important to know who your audience is and post content that your followers want to see.
So, once you’ve created your Instagram business account along with some content, take note of which posts perform best. Ask yourself, is it interactive content? Behind-the-scenes content? Funny and relatable content? Or something else that gets the most engagement and shares? When you have a general idea of what that is, create more and make sure to vary your posts.
Don’t be afraid to test several types of content to see which ones do best. Then come up with a strategy to cater to those types of content. Doing so will help you create content that your current followers will love and help you to gain new followers.
Don’t have the time or feel like going through all the hassle? Contact us today and find out how we can do the hard work for you.
