I often get asked about ways to get a lot of traffic to Instagram, which leads to a lot of exposure and followers. I’ve done a lot of research over the last couple of years about various ways to maximize social media accounts while keeping your account active on a low budget. I really don’t believe that you need to spend any money to engage with people, comment on other posts, follow other users, and publish very valuable content to your account. Every time I look up some information in regards to getting more followers, I come across this long descriptive article that doesn’t really explain how to do it; rather, it’s really very technical. Since we are talking about Instagram, let’s do a small experiment that not only will engage users with us, but also get them to follow you and look forward to your posts at all times. The key element is to have a good strategy and perfect timing of when to publish your photos on Instagram. For instance, publishing one photo monthly will not get people to engage with you because they will conclude that you are not active. You will get the same result even if you only publish once a week. So, for our little experiment, we will be using multiple images daily. If you don’t have any images to publish on Instagram, I suggest that you start taking some! You do not need to get fancy by buying an expensive camera. All you need is your phone. The smart cameras on iPhones will produce high quality images that will grab people’s attention and will have them click and comment on the photos.
Let’s start with the basics. If we want to get 100 new followers on Instagram, then we will need more than 10 images to do that. I would like to believe that using about 50 images will get us really good quality followers and get you started on the way to more. For our little trick – we will be using it for five days – ten images a day published at a specific time. I found it to be very interesting to publish images on Instagram at various times and compare the amount of interaction I get from other users. For instance, early in the morning, or after work around 6 pm seem to be good times to get more activity from other users. So, we will do five images in the morning and five images in the afternoon. Instagram has some very tricky options. If you are not familiar with them, you will not get clicks if you do not use them properly. On the search bar at the bottom of Instagram, if you click on it, you will notice that Instagram offers various ways to communicate with other users by finding them through usernames or hashtags. There are certain rules that you need to know about so that you don’t get banned from instagram and can keep your account active and organically collecting followers. An example would be the hashtag rule. Instagram will ban any inappropriate hashtag use, from key words to length. So you want to use the hashtags wisely. Try to avoid some of the nonsense hashtags that you see online because others may use it to their benefit. So, let’s circle back to our images strategies. Today is Monday, and we want to publish five images in the morning, while eating breakfast, before heading to work. Let’s say that you took images of a beautiful sunset somewhere over the weekend. The first thing you will need to do is upload the picture to Instagram since it’s already on your phone. Once you upload the image, then it is up to you to use any kind of filters to enhance the quality of it, or keep it natural. I tend to keep all of my images natural, because I have learned over the years that people will like natural images. And for that, we will use the hashtag #nofilter. After you’re done uploading the image, the second option would be to make a decision if you want to share that image with other users on different platforms. Instagram will allow you to share directly from your account to your facebook account, flicker account, tumbler account, and twitter account. I like that idea – it gives you more control when publishing your posts all over the place with one click of a mouse. It saves you time, energy, and resources, and minimizes hassles. So, if you made the decision to share the image on twitter for example, you will need to tap on the twitter icon and instagram will connect you directly to your twitter account and ask for verification. Once you connect to your account, instagram will take you back to your image. The same procedure follows for facebook and other social media platforms. Now that you have connected some or all of your social media platforms to instagram, you will be asked to write a descriptive paragraph for your image (think keywords). If the image is of the sunset as we mentioned, then there are two ways to write the descriptive paragraph. The first option is a full descriptive paragraph with a couple of hashtags afterwards (max 29 allowed by instagram). The second option is embedding the hashtags within your descriptive paragraph (same number of hashtags). Here is an example to clarify how your descriptive paragraph will look:
1 – One of the most beautiful natural things you can see is the sunset. The warm, rich colors slowly fill the sky as the golden orb descends. It is so fascinating to witness such a majestic view with someone special. #sunset #sky #beautiful #amazing #cloud #clouds #nature #beach #love #followme #bestoftheday #picoftheday #instadaily #instanature
So, as you can see in this descriptive paragraph, we used strategy one. We wrote a description, followed by hashtags. If you notice, we have used very specific hashtags that are related to our image and some others that are very popular on instagram, and one specific one that asks people to follow you. So, if anyone is new to instagram, and is looking to follow people, they might just write #followme on the search bar, and then find you easily.
Here’s an example using the second method:
2 – One of the most #beautiful #natural things you can see is the #sunset. The #warm, rich #colors slowly fill the #sky as the #golden #orb descends. It is so #fascinating to witness such a #majestic #view with someone #special.
In this example, you will notice that we embedded the hashtags within the paragraph. The principle is the same, but the strategy is different. However, there are so many apps out there that can help you understand the hashtag rule better so don’t be too shy to do some research and see what works for you. There are plenty of free apps so you don’t have to spend money to get the information you can get for free.
After we finish uploading the description of our image on instagram, tap on the other social media icons so they are lit up (that means they are activated to publish on their platforms, and then you are ready to share).
Now that you shared your first image, you will need to follow the same steps for the remaining four images. Remember, five in the morning, and five in the afternoon. The remaining images don’t all have to be about sunset. They can literally be about anything, from people, locations, objects, food, art, pets, etc. With time, you will become more efficient at it. Soon you be publishing dozens of pictures a day, without even noticing.
So, for the next five days, you will do the exact thing with new pictures, different descriptions, and maybe the same or slightly different hashtags. It all depends on your images. Do some reading on “top hashtags to use on instagram”. Another thing that I found to be very helpful is that before I go to bed, I launch instagram and like about 100 – 200 images that others have posted. Like I said, you can become efficient at it, fast at it, and it’s like you won’t even notice that you’re doing it. I turn my phone off before I go to sleep, turn it back on in the morning, and I find that I have 25 new followers!
In conclusion, you will not get followers unless you are being active, engaging with other users, publishing materials, and being consistent in your postings. There really is no magic formula on how to get massive followers other than the obvious which is publish beautiful images, like other peoples’ images, and follow some people so they can like your images and follow you back. I would like to emphasize that quality of the images is a big selling point on instagram. The better the image is, the more engaged an audience you will get.
I hope you found this article to be helpful to you. Please help us by liking and sharing this valuable information for others who are struggling and may find it to be helpful.
Very informative! Many thanks!
Thank you Rosie Rose! This is such a valuable information! Please like & share with your friends :-).