Last Updated 8 months by Emily Standley-Allard
Each month, over one billion people use Instagram to discover new ideas, engage with creators and build their businesses. In order to get 10K or more followers on Instagram organically, a set strategy must be put in place consistently to attract the massive amount of attention your business needs from those looking to be inspired, entertained, informed and connected. Keep reading to learn how you can get more people eager to connect and follow your Instagram page!
Since 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram, a tremendous opportunity exists to help get your products in front of an audience eager to engage with you and perhaps become a customer!
With over 25 million businesses utilizing Instagram, it’s easy to feel like a little fish in a big pond as you try to generate intriguing and relevant content for a larger following and engagement that leads to sales organically. But, that’s where we can help!
We’ve compiled our best, actionable resources to help you kickstart consistent growth that actually turns into sales.
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Secret #1: Zero in On Your Target Audience
When we peep at the many guides and “How to Reach 10,000 Followers on Instagram” posts online, we can’t help but notice that a key element is usually missing from the beginning.
That’s how to zero in on your target audience.
If you skip over figuring out exactly who you’re speaking to and creating Instagram content for, you’ll miss an opportunity to connect!
First things first: do some homework on your target audience, and who you envision your ideal follower to be.
Make sure that every aspect of your Instagram profile is clear and approachable.
It should also help a visitor to your page quickly determine whether you’re someone they want to follow.
That’s why these three profile components play a big role in growing your audience to 10k Instagram followers.
Here are some handy tips to get the most out of your Instagram profile!
- Use a clear, concise handle to make your profile easy to search
- Use the 30-character username to identify yourself and your purpose (search terms are valuable here!)
- Decide whether to use a photo of yourself or a logo in your profile pic:
- A logo is great for brands or groups with more than one personality behind them.
- Logos should be high-resolution and high contrast so they’re easily readable in that tiny circle
- Profile photos are ideal for one main personality behind an account
- Profile photos should contain head and shoulders, and an uncluttered or neutral background.
- A logo is great for brands or groups with more than one personality behind them.
- Make the 150 characters available in your IG bio count!
- Don’t restate your name line
- Include a clear call-to-action
- Format with line breaks, emojis, and spacers to avoid a wall of words
- Include a trackable link so you can measure your impact and more click throughs to your website
Secret #4 Designing Your Instagram Feed
In Secret #2, we mentioned that your Instagram profile plays a huge role in the first impression you make on a potential follower. This is also true of your Instagram Feed!
When you scroll through Instagram, you see single posts – one after the other.
However, when you visit a profile, you see the users “feed”, or latest posts stacked together in a 9-grid.
Take a look at some of these great Instagram templates and examples from Canva Design:
You can really see how each image in these stylish grids complements each other, which is the goal of your Instagram feed design!
The look and feel of these grids will inform potential followers of your style, mood, and aesthetic.
The better each image looks in with the others, the more likely you are to impress.
You could even win over a new follower immediately and creep a little closer to the coveted 10k followers!
Here’s how to make that happen:
- Learn how to get top-notch photo quality and composition in your Instagram feed photos.
- Decide if you want to use a set of preset filters on your photos.
- Start a collection of easily accessible photos and graphics on your phone or desktop that’s readily available for you to pull from when planning content.
- Plan and arrange the look of your feed with Tailwind’s 9-grid preview, taking care to note how each photo looks among the rest as well as individually!
Here’s a glimpse of a beauty blogger bundle, and how you can arrange your posts to work together seamlessly in a feed worthy of 10,000 Instagram followers:
At this point, you’ve identified your audience, optimized your profile, created a solid content creation plan, and begun to visually design your Instagram feed.
The final puzzle piece?
Creating a content schedule that supports your marketing goals!
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Secret #5 Creating Your Content Schedule for More Followers on Instagram
The way you schedule your content is actually integral to getting you 10,000 Instagram followers fast.
That’s because once you have all of the impressive elements you need to create a connection with followers and knock their socks off with your content, you need a way to schedule your posts.
This gives you free time to engage and stay ahead of the game!
Here are the need-to-know elements to create a schedule that builds engagement and helps you get more likes and followers organically on Instagram.
- Decide how often you want to post (according to Crowdfire’s own research case study, you should be posting at least once per day!)
- Schedule your posts for times when your audience is most active on Instagram
- Create an even mix of hashtags that are ultra-competitive, niche, better and best to help searchers looking for your content find you easily
- Use a Hashtag Finder to create and save Hashtag Lists based on the content you post most often!
- Use CrowdFire’s Auto Post feature to automate your posting schedule (without push notifications!) and free your time to engage in comments and create Stories!
- Schedule photos and videos directly to your Instagram feed with Auto Post.
- Optimize every post for more engagement with dedicated content curation
- Automatically hide your post’s hashtags in the first comment to keep your caption clean & clutter-free.
- Make your posts more discoverable with user tagging & location tagging.
- Analyze what’s working across every post and profile with smart analytics.
Speaking of engaging in the comments section, the final piece of your “How to Get 10,000 Instagram Followers puzzle” centers around connection-building practices that will keep new followers coming back for more!
Secret #6 Continually Grow More Followers on Instagram with Real Engagement
Congrats! You’ve done all the heavy lifting of finding your audience, optimizing your profile and planning your content – you’re all done, right?
Not quite yet. Even after you plan your content and create a system that works, you’ll need to add the secret sauce to get thousands of followers on Instagram.
That secret sauce? A little thing called engagement.
After all, Instagram users love to connect with the profiles and brands they follow and feel like they’re a part of your everyday story!
So after you do all the technical work of planning your content and creating your visuals, you should use all that free time you found (after using a scheduling tool like CrowdFire ) to get into the comment section and engage with your followers.
Establishing the connection between your content and audience is a key step in how to get more likes and followers organically on Instagram.
Here are some of our favorite ways to build a loyal following among your existing followers, and attract new ones like bees to honey:
- Work on creating a strong sense of community among your followers
- Religiously like and reply to comments on your posts – and other accounts that are similar to your niche!
- Watch your Instagram Analytics and make adjustments as necessary to amp up your approach
- Use Stories to drive connection and engagement with your followers through the use of polls, questions, Lives and more!
Building authentic engagement is a winning strategy for a number of reasons. Users want to be a part of the club, and following a brand or Instagram presence that frequently talks to followers, features their content and asks questions that drive conversation will make them feel included.
All those feel-good vibes towards your brand or presence mean they’ll probably tell friends and family, share your content and give you shoutouts that put you in front of other audiences and push you one step closer to 10,000 followers on Instagram!!
The second major benefit is a lot more technical. Instagram’s algorithm pushes posts with high engagement towards the top of user feeds and search results, meaning that the more comments and likes you have on your post, the higher it will appear to existing and potential followers.
Thankfully, we have a lot of engagement building tips and advice included in our, How to Master & Monetize Social Media guide, to make growing your business and unlocking 10K Instagram followers a breeze!
So How Do I Grow My Followers on Instagram for Free?
We’re glad you asked! If you want to grow more followers on Instagram, you’ll need to create a plan that includes:
- Zeroing in on your target audience so you know exactly who you’re speaking to
- Optimizing your Instagram profile to inspire connection in seconds
- Planning content that resonates with your followers
- Designing your Instagram feed with entrancing visuals
- Creating a content schedule that’s easy to stick to
- Engaging with your followers to WIN at Instagram’s algorithm
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Ask yourself:
After you zero in on your target audience, you’ll want to gear your content and your profile towards attracting more followers on Instagram.
That brings us to our next tip to grow and reach more followers on Instagram!
Secret #2: Optimize Your Instagram Profile to Inspire Connection
The second secret we have up our sleeve is optimizing your Instagram Profile from top-to-bottom.
Oftentimes, users will focus more on the look and feel of their feed than the look and feel of their profile.
Specifically, your photo, your name, and an engaging bio. Here’s how mine looks: