9 Unconventional Ways to Get More Instagram Followers
So you want to get more followers and likes?
Don’t worry — it’s not just you!
Almost everyone who’s in Instagram is focused on improving their numbers and getting their follower count high enough to matter.
It’s no secret that when Instagram changed the rules and altered how content is being served to their users, people have begun to get less new followers.
Ultimately, it’s becoming more of a challenge to get noticed on the platform. But don’t lose hope! The secret to this long standing issue is not really a secret.
It can be summed up in four words: Focus on profile views.
Lately, Instagram users have been obsessed with their likes and engagements. While that seems important, those numbers don’t line your pockets with more followers.
The number you should be tracking is the profile views. Our research shows that before following people like to check out the profile of that account and then they make the decision to follow or not.
In this article we’ll be looking over some of the ways you can drive more profile views and therefore get more followers.
1. Engage with other people to drive them back to your profile
Like with any social media network, engaging with the other people and the community is the best way to get them to your page.
Look for relevant conversations and from there engage with the key people that are active on those topics. Like their posts, comment and share their content. When you do this, they’ll get a notification and are likely to check out your profile.
Similarly, people will return the favor and potentially follow you if they find your content relevant and interesting to them.
One of the best ways to do this is through Combin — a tool that allows you to manage and grow your Instagram account safely and organically.
You can easily find posts by hashtag and engage with relevant content right from the tool. It also allows you to do a comprehensive and targeted people search. You can easily look for your accounts similar to you and engage with them!
Spend your time replying on other people’s comments within your profile as well. I find that answering people’s questions and addressing their needs will give them the strongest initiative to follow back. When people see value, they’ll be behind you 100%.
2. Cross-promote everywhere!
One of the fastest ways to get more profile views is to promote your Instagram everywhere and across all your social media accounts. Make your profile easily discoverable.
If you already have a big following on other social networks, let your people know about your account. Share a link or your handle and get them to check you out. Make it a habit as well to highlight your best content by cross posting it on your other platforms.
Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr seamlessly integrates with your IG account and allows you to post simultaneously. This is a great way to boost your profile views and encourage your new audience to check you out. Shout out your handle every chance you get.
3. Be active on other social media channels
While this may sound counter-intuitive, becoming active on other social media channels can give you the boost you need on Instagram as well.
For example, leaving YouTube comments on relevant videos that encourages users to check out your IG profile helps.
Reddit and other similar discussion boards provide a great way to promote your account. With your replies, include a link up to your IG page where it seems appropriate.
Similarly, Quora is another platform that can give you the visibility you need. Answer relevant questions that can provide you an opportunity to share your handle.
All these can be excellent sources for getting more profile views.
4. Get media exposure
One of the best ways to get media exposure and attention for your Instagram profile is through Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
Think Tinder for people who need exposure and those journalists who need to regularly feature stories as part of their assignments. It’s a service that easily connects journalist to basically anyone who are looking to get featured on major publications like CNN.com or The Huffington Post.
Start by going to www.Helpareporter.com and sign-up for an account. You will usually receive at least 3 emails a day from journalist looking for stories. Start monitoring HARO daily and look for journalists that you can pitch your story to for an interview. This doesn’t necessarily yield immediately. I pitched around dozen highly relevant stories before I got featured. Important is not to give up after your first or second try.
Once you’ve secured a feature, write your best post or hire someone if you’re not a good writer. After the post goes live you can expect to see a spike your profile views and start getting more followers (depends on the publication).
5. Interact with the top influencers and instagrammers
Exposure is the game in Instagram.
Don’t hesitate to piggyback on other influencers to grow your own account. You can do this easily by commenting or interacting on their posts. Make it relevant, genuine and long (not comically long though)!
Look for key influencers and instagrammers in your space and turn on their push notifications so you’ll be the first one to interact with their post once it’s up. There’s a good chance that whenever you leave a good comment first, they’ll notice it and most certainly their followers will. If it’s a good comment, you’ll likely to get profile views.
Getting Gary’s attention is quite unlikely, but you get the idea…
6. Collaborate with others
Similarly, don’t be afraid to collaborate with others. It’s a win-win! This can help you gain exposure from another influencer and vice versa.
Focus on collaborations that allow you to co-create different content together to be posted on your individual accounts. Then each of these posts should link back to your own page.
When collaborating, it’s best that you find influencers that don’t just deliver the highest numbers of new profile visits but matches your theme and style as well to maximize its effects! These collaborations are also called shoutout for shoutouts. And if you don’t feel like posting each other content doing an IG live together can be powerful as well.
7. Do an Instagram Takeover
Instagram takeovers are a fun way of collaborating with brands, media outlets and other Instagram accounts with a significant following.
Essentially, it’s the process of taking over someone else’s account temporarily and sharing your content to their audience. With each successful takeover, you get to expose yourself to a brand new audience and it can help redirect them to your own page.
To start off, reach out to the social media team of the Instagram account you like, DM them or fill out a media exposure form on popular content sites. Just ensure that your content aligns with the page you are pitching to. Propose a compelling storyboard on how you envision the takeover to happen and a plan on promoting it. Once you get approved, create the content and share it to them. Usually takeovers are still managed by the account owners not you. You just provide the content. When done right, this will drive a lot of new profile views!
8. Join or create an organic Instagram pods
One of the best ways to push engagement and start driving people to your profile is through comment pods. This is the industry’s best kept secret to circumvent the algorithm and get more people to view your profile.
To be frank engagement groups don’t work as well as they used to back in 2016 and 2017 they are still effective to some extent. A pod is a group of at least 10–15 Instagrammers whose sole intention is to share each other’s content and drive up relevancy for each one in the form of quality comments and likes.
When you have something up, DM it to your pod for everyone to start placing positive and genuine comments. Similarly, reciprocate! This will (ideally) boost your engagement enough that your content starts getting good organic ranking and you’ll start getting more visits from explore feed and hashtag feeds.
However, don’t forget — if your content sucks then there’s nothing an engagement group can fix.
Here’s some groups I’ve put together worth checking out: http://bit.ly/telegram-engagement-groups
9. Be Controversial
Another way to drive up exposure for your profile is to get fueled with controversy.
Post a strong sentiment or do something that stands out. You may end up shaking some trees and shouting against the wall but you’ll get more visibility for sure. Powerful sentiments can get people riled up and to look for you on Instagram. The key to getting more followers and making your account “blow up” is with awesome quality and valuable content that is been constantly promoted.
TAKEAWAY
While it’s important to focus on driving more profile views for your account, you may not be able to convert them without having a powerful bio and profile. This, along with having a consistent feed style, can make a case for getting users to click the “follow” button.
Getting more profile views is what drives more followers. So getting noticed and making your account available in media outlets, bigger account comments and other social media channels can really make a difference especially if you’ve been hit by the algorithm changes everyone are talking about.
If you ever want to discuss these points with me personally hit me up on my Instagram. Yes I do answer to all of my DMs and comments. Also checkout some of my other articles at my blog gettinggrowth.com.
