If you want to be successful on Instagram, you have to generate a following on Instagram. You can post interesting content & quality content; without having a following it’s not worth your time. The only problem is; building an audience from zero takes time and effort.
As we’ve quite some experience with Instagram, we have decided to create this blog post to help you out. In this guide, we will walk through which steps to take. After reading this blog, you will know how you can grow your Instagram account to 20k followers.
Step 1. Have a professional profile
Your Instagram profile is the first impression of a potential follower. It’s key to have a professional bio & make you stand out from others. You need to be unique. Make the following changes to your profile:
- Make clear what your account is about
- Use a similar username to your actual business
- Identify your profile by using keywords
- Make your Instagram account a professional account
- Add a physical address
- Add your website link
- Add your email address and/or phone number as contact options
- Add a call-to-action button
Step 2. Add a recognizable profile picture
A profile picture is very important for an Instagram. Make sure your profile picture has a high resolution. If you have a business profile, make sure to use your logo as profile picture. It shows your credibility & professionalism as a brand. Are you an individual? Use an eye-catching profile picture. The more interesting your picture looks like, the more people it will attract. Using one of your most liked pictures, is a great option!
Step 3. Add and organize your story highlights
Not too long ago, Instagram added story highlight function. It’s a very useful function to add more body to your Instagram profile. Categorize your stories into different highlights & give them recognizable titles.
Step 4. Content is king
This is very important. Content is always king. Your posts have to be interesting for people to follow you. If you don’t have interesting content, people won’t follow you. You have to bring value to their feed. Don’t post something, because you have to post. Only post something when you actually think people are interested in seeing it.
Besides that, decide what content theme you’re going to maintain. It’s important to focus on one theme. Understand what your followers want you to post. If they follow you for food content, do not even try posting gaming content.
Step 5. Use Grid themes
Most of the popular Instagram accounts, use a grid theme. A grid theme makes a profile look attractive. A lot of Instagram accounts have used grid themes, which helped them grow to 20k followers. Here are some of the layouts that are being used:
- Squares
- Diagonal
- Lined feed
- 3 Post row
- Tiles
- Puzzle shaped
- Border
- Rainbow colored
- Mixed designs
Step 6. Post on the best times
To get more followers on Instagram, it’s important to get great engagement on posts. The better engagement, the more likely Instagram will show your posts on the Explore feed. The best posting times for an account is always different for each account. If you’re focusing on the United States, the best posting times are different than accounts focused on the United Kingdom.
Our tip: test different posting times. Once you’ve tested different times, you’ll see which time did great & you can use that as posting time for new posts! On accounts with a mixed, worldwide following, posting between 3 PM & 9 PM CET has been proven to work well.
Step 7. Be consistent
Being consistent is a key factor in your Instagram success. Often people will fail. Your adventure on Instagram will be a rollercoaster. You will have a lot of ups and downs. Don’t let the downs let you forget your goal; growing to 20k followers on Instagram.
Make sure to post at least twice per week. But don’t post because you have to. If you don’t have interesting content for the week, skip a week. The last thing people want to see, is forced content in their feed.
Step 8. Use Instagram Reels
If you’re not using Instagram Reels yet, you’re missing out! It’s a great opportunity to get a lot of traffic towards your account. Reels posts have huge reach & can get you a lot of followers.
Make sure to use trending sounds, keep the reels short, create original content & add on-screen text for no-sound viewers.
Step 9. Encourage user-generated content with branded hashtags
One of the easiest ways to get content, is encouraging your followers to share user-generated content on their Instagram. It’s one of the best working strategies to raise brand awareness & grow your account to 20k followers.
Step 10. Use Geo-Tags
Using Geo-Tags, you will make sure Instagram users are be able to find your business on the map. If you’re goal is go reach local users, using geo-tags is an absolute no-brainer.
Step 11. Target potential followers
Once your profile is looking professional, your content is great & you’ve followed all previous steps, you’re ready for the next step. You want to reach your potential followers. You can do that by publishing ads & pay for that. But assuming you don’t want to spend a lot of money at the start & want to grow your following yourself, you can follow your potential followers.
It’s a very old strategy; follow-unfollow. These days, Instagram has made it quite hard to optimize this strategy. Instagram has quite some limits & you can get action-blocked by performing too many actions. So, keep it on the low.
This is a strategy, which you will be using at the start. When you have zero followers. It helps you kickstart your account. But when you have reached around 1000 followers, it’s time to stop this & keep going organically.
Step 12. Interact with your followers
This is very important. Once you get DM’s & replies on your posts, respond to them. Soon, you will create a relationship with your audience. This will make sure your audiences keep engaging & don’t unfollow you.
Growing 20 thousand followers on Instagram
Especially when you start, it most likely is an uphill battle. But once you start using the correct strategy, you will definitely be able to grow to 20k followers. Growing an Instagram is not rocket science. But it takes consistency & work.
Skip the hard work of growing followers
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