10 Strategies To Get Organic Instagram Followers To Build Your Brand

Instagram provides many opportunities for exposure. Whether a blogger or a business owner, it’s important to build your brand profile by growing organic Instagram followers. Doing this is not easy, though, especially when everyone is trying hard to gain followers. 

The best results will come from organic growth. To make this work, you should have the right strategy in place. We’ve rounded up the ten best strategies to grow your Instagram like a pro!   

10 Strategies To Get Organic Instagram Followers 

Some users resort to buying fake followers or using bots just to increase their number of followers. This type of success can be short-lived. Worse, shady tactics like these can hurt your brand in the long run. There are ways to grow your Instagram following organically. 

1. Use An Organic Instagram Growth Service 

An Instagram growth service helps you get real Instagram followers through organic growth naturally and gradually over time. The best thing is that an Instagram growth tool like doesn’t use bots, spam, or fake followers. 

For example, a growth service like Kicksta uses AI technology to find, target, and engage with your potential followers on Instagram. Upon signing up, you’ll be asked to provide the names of your Instagram competitors, complementary brands, relevant influencers in your niche, and other targets. The service then targets followers of your complementary or competitor accounts under the guise that they are interested in your brand, too. As the tool automates liking and following other people’s posts, those accounts will likely follow you back and engage with your content. It’s simply growing organic Instagram followers at its best. 

2. Partner With Brands In Your Niche

Collaboration with a brand will bring you more benefits than you can imagine as an influencer or content creator with a decent Instagram following.

When a brand features you on their Instagram page and shows their followers that you use and recommend their products, a slew of new people will become aware of you and, most likely, follow you on Instagram. It’ll also bring you many new followers and higher engagement rates, making your content and profile more visible. Aside from that, partnering with a brand builds trust and strong relationships within your niche and community. 

3. Schedule Posts At The Right Time

Cracking the time code brings rewards when posting on Instagram, but this can be tricky. There are many things to consider about the best time to post on Instagram, like the types of posts, time zones, user traffic, and the algorithm. Although the best time to post your content on Instagram is different for each account, there are some widely-accepted facts about scheduling posts based on what your followers share in common. 

The first thing to remember is you would want to post minutes before your followers’ peak time of activity. In other words, post when most of your audience is active. Another factor is to create posts that are relevant to your audience. Think of the relevance of your content at a specific time of the day you’re posting it. Third, factor in the age group and lifestyle of your followers. Check your Instagram Insights to find out. Your Insights also help you understand your followers’ activity during the days of the week. The data enables you to make informed content creation and post-scheduling decisions. 

4. Use Relevant Hashtags

To grow organic Instagram followers and get more eyes on your posts, use the right Instagram hashtags. One of the best ways to grow your Instagram audience is to use relevant hashtags in your posts, Stories, and Reels. When you include a hashtag in a post, it’ll appear on the hashtag’s page. Even if they don’t follow you, people who follow or search for that hashtag will be able to see your post!

Aside from discoverability, hashtags can also be used to build communities, run campaigns, find user-generated content (UGC), and research your audience.

That is why a solid Instagram hashtag strategy is essential. Just remember to be thoughtful about using hashtags. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up spamming potential followers or getting your account penalized. 

5. Keep Up With Trends

By analyzing current media trends, your brand can better tailor its content to fit both the brand’s voice and current trends. Making relevant content will encourage audiences to interact and share it more frequently. You simply cannot capture audiences’ attention if your brand is out of touch with current trends and thus irrelevant to them.

To keep up with trends, check the Instagram Explore tab regularly. Here, you can search for hashtags and search terms that people are posting about. Another way to stay on top of trends is to check out Google Trends to monitor trending topics. You can also listen to podcasts since they cover a wide range of topics from news roundups with social media experts and influencers. 

Knowing what media trends allow you to create content around those hot topics, which will undoubtedly have higher impressions on social media and are more likely to be picked up by consumers. Creating content relevant to a media trend will keep your audience engaged.

6. Utilize The Power Of Reels

Using Instagram Reels increases the likelihood that someone will discover your content. Because the algorithm has made Reels more visible in people’s feeds, they receive 3x-4x more views than posts on Instagram.

Reels also allow the content creator to demonstrate what makes them unique to their audience. People are drawn to those who authentically display their personality or brand. Whether behind the scenes of one’s creative process, before and after photos, ways to use a company’s product, etc., the consumer wants to know what makes you unique.

7. Post Stories Consistently

Instagram Stories has become one of the best ways to build brand awareness and drive engagement and traffic on Instagram. By consistently posting Stories, you also grow organic Instagram followers over time because it’s a great way to connect with your followers. The more users interact with your Stories, the more likely your posts to appear in their feed. 

To get the most of this, use all the features and tools that Instagram Stories offers. When adding a story, click on the sticker icon where all features and options appear. You can add stickers, locations, GIFs, hashtags, music, and more. Once your post is up, encourage your audience to interact. The Instagram algorithm notices each interaction you receive on your Stories, like when someone replies to or DMs your story to another user. 

8. Utilize All Tools/Features Instagram Offers

With a younger audience and most users aged 18-34, Instagram’s features are designed to catch the attention of the young people who primarily use it. And also, because the majority of Instagram’s active users use the platform to research and discover brands, it’s the place to be if you own a business or are marketing a brand. The best part is that you don’t have to spend a dime growing organic Instagram followers. 

Among the tools and features, you can use on Instagram include photo filters, video posts, Instagram Stories, Stories Highlights, Instagram Stories video, Instagram Live, AR filters, IGTV, stickers, and quizzes. From that list, Instagram Live is great for generating leads, especially today. Brands and businesses take to it with great creativity creating hype around their product or service. Through Instagram Live, offering discounts, promotions, or giveaways during a live broadcast becomes easy. 

9. Run Giveaways

Successful Instagram giveaways are limited-time promotions that promise to give away a product or service in exchange for users performing specific actions like following a brand’s Instagram profile, leaving a comment, and even tagging a friend. This is why running giveaways can be an effective way to grow Instagram followers organically. 

Running giveaways successfully involves deciding the goal of your giveaway so you can tailor your strategy. After that, set your giveaway entry criteria. Some popular criteria for people to enter the giveaway are asking people to share the post for your giveaway to help you increase your brand awareness. Another is to ask people to sign up for your newsletter if you’d like to build your email list. You can also ask people to follow your social profiles to grow organic Instagram followers. Other criteria include asking people to leave a comment or creating a UGC (user-generated content) photo contest where people will have to upload a photo and tag friends in the comment section. 

After figuring out the giveaway criteria, choose what you want to give away on Instagram and pick a good Instagram hashtag to go along with it. Don’t forget to set your giveaway rules. Without it, your giveaway contest can get messy. Remember to put a disclaimer on your Instagram giveaways and follow Instagram’s promotion guidelines. You might also want to put a time limit before finally running your giveaway. 

10. Use Cross-Promotion

To maximize Instagram engagement and grow your following, use cross-promotion. Cross-promotion allows you to use your resources, whether it’s your TikTok profile, YouTube channel, Twitter audience, blog, or Pinterest account. All these platforms can be leveraged and put to good use. 

You can promote your Instagram page through an email subscriber list. You can also add your Instagram link in the description of your YouTube videos. As a visual platform like Instagram, Pinterest allows you to link your Instagram account by creating a new board or a new pin with your best Instagram content. On Facebook, try cross-linking. You can add links to your Instagram account in your Facebook About Us tab. Finally, when cross-promoting on Twitter, try compiling your funniest or most original tweets about your brand and turn them into IG Stories. Go further and save these to your Highlights. You can also try posting your UGC content on Twitter. This gives your Twitter audience an excellent reason to check out your Instagram profile. 

Use The Strategy That Best Suits You

Growing organic Instagram followers is not a one-size-fits-all thing. What’s most important is to offer your followers value. Growing an audience is always about understanding people’s needs and problems and sharing content that makes things a bit easier for them by the day.