How to Get More Instagram Followers: Your 4 Point Plan
Understanding how to get more followers on Instagram has never been more important. Our 2025 Social Media Study showed that interactions increased by 16% on the platform, proving its huge engagement opportunities. With the rise of influencer marketing and brand partnerships, the competition on Instagram has intensified, making it crucial to understand how the platform’s algorithm works and how to optimize your content strategy.
The Instagram algorithm prioritizes likes, comments, and shares, so real content and genuine interactions are more likely to reach a wider audience. Ethical and transparent practices are more effective in the long run than sneaky strategies, which may provide short-term benefits but can harm your brand’s reputation and eventually decrease engagement. In this article, we will discuss how to increase your reach with a 4-point plan that will help you get more followers, likes and leads on Instagram.
1. Optimize Your Presence
Before you worry about content, you must ensure your profile is optimized for conversion. When a new user finds your content via the Explore page or Reels feed, they need an immediate, compelling reason to click “Follow.”
Prepare The Perfect Profile
Your profile is the single most important conversion tool you possess. Every element must be clear, concise, and targeted.
- Username and Name: These are the only searchable fields outside of hashtags. Ensure your Username is consistent and easy to recall. Use your Name field to include your primary keyword or business focus (e.g., “Agency Name | Social Media Strategy”). This simple inclusion helps users discover you when they search for a service or topic, not just your brand name.
- Bio: The Conversion Copy: Your bio must clearly articulate what value you provide and who you serve. Use bullet points or emojis to quickly convey key benefits and include a strong call-to-action (CTA) leading to your link in bio. For instance: “Helping brands increase organic views 🚀 | Free Strategy Guide Below.”
- Profile Picture: Use a high-quality, recognizable image like your brand logo or a professional headshot. The visual quality of your icon is the first impression a user has of your brand’s commitment to quality.
- Link in Bio: Beyond just linking to your website, use a single link tool (like Metricool’s SmartLinks) to provide multiple destinations: a main site, a contact form, a specific product, and a lead magnet. This maximizes the traffic value of this constrained real estate.
Your Highlights Strategy
Highlights act as permanent, curated Story folders, offering a visual tour of your best content and offerings. Properly organized Highlights provide instant value to a new visitor.
- Establish Key Categories: Create Highlights for essential topics like:
- Start Here: An introduction to your brand and core mission.
- Testimonials: User-generated content or client reviews (powerful social proof).
- Services/Products: A visual breakdown of what you offer.
- FAQs/Tips: Educational content that provides quick value.
- Design Custom Covers: Use branded icons or clean graphics for your Highlight covers. This ensures visual continuity and professionalism across your entire profile, making it feel polished and reliable.
2. Master Content Formats for Reach
The secret to getting more likes and followers on Instagram lies in understanding that the platform is now a collection of specialized ecosystems (Reels, Feed, Stories), each with its own algorithm and optimal content type.
Reels: The Discovery Engine
Reels are currently the single most effective format for reaching non-followers and dramatically increasing your overall reach.
- Retention is King: The Reels algorithm prioritizes Watch Time and Replays. Your focus must be on crafting a compelling hook in the first 2-3 seconds. Use striking text overlays, immediate action, or a captivating question to stop the scroll. Test new ideas with Trial Reels.
- Use Trending Audio: Incorporate trending audio from the Reels audio library. Posting with a trending sound automatically places your content into a high-traffic algorithmic pool. Always check the little upward-pointing arrow next to the sound name to confirm its current popularity.
- Provide Quick Value: Successful Reels distill complex information into short, digestible tips, listicles, or tutorials. The goal is to make the viewer feel rewarded after 15 seconds, prompting them to save the Reel for future reference. A high Save rate is a massive positive signal to the algorithm.
The Feed: Conversion and Credibility
While Reels drive discovery, your feed content (carousels and static images) converts visitors into followers and builds long-term credibility.
- Carousels for Education: Carousels, which allow you to swipe through multiple slides, are excellent for deep educational content, case studies, or multi-step tutorials. The act of swiping signals high engagement, telling the algorithm that users are spending more time on your post.
- Strong Visual Consistency: Maintain a coherent visual aesthetic. Use consistent filters, color palettes, and fonts. When a user lands on your profile, the grid should look professional and intentional, reinforcing your brand identity.
- Captions for Conversation: Use the caption to start a dialogue. End every post with a clear, open-ended question or a Call-to-Action that prompts a specific response (e.g., “What’s your biggest challenge with this? Tell us below!”). Comments are weighed heavily by the algorithm, and generating a high volume of quality discussion increases visibility for the entire post.
Stories: Community and Reciprocity
Stories are essential for nurturing the followers you already have and maintaining top-of-mind awareness.
- Use Interactive Stickers: Regularly use Polls, Questions, and Quiz Stickers. These low-effort interactions encourage participation and boost your relationship score with the algorithm. A high relationship score means your future feed posts are more likely to be prioritized for those engaged viewers.
- Share Your Feed Posts: Every time you publish a new feed post or Reel, immediately share it to your Story with a bold CTA like “NEW POST: Tap to Read!” This is the single easiest way to bypass the feed algorithm and guarantee that your existing followers see your new content, driving crucial initial engagement.
3. Use Strategic Growth Tactics to Gain Instagram Followers
Once your content and profile are optimized, you need specific strategies to push your reach beyond your existing network. This is the stage where you effectively increase Instagram followers.
Consistency and Scheduling with Metricool
Instagram’s algorithm favors consistency, so an account that publishes predictably is favored over one that posts sporadically.
- Determine Your Baseline: Based on your resources, commit to a sustainable publishing frequency (e.g., 3 Reels and 4 Feed posts per week).
- Schedule with Precision: Use a tool like Metricool to pre-schedule all your content. This allows you to bulk-create content when you are most productive and ensures posts hit the platform at the optimal times determined by your audience analytics. Consistent, timed publishing provides the reliability the algorithm rewards.
Hashtag Strategy: Reaching the Right Niches
Forget lists of 30 generic, high-volume hashtags. Focuses your strategy on targeted, tiered relevance.
- Tiered Approach: Use a mix of hashtags by popularity to maximize your chances of showing up in different search results:
- High Volume (500K+ posts): Use 1-2 broad, highly descriptive hashtags (e.g., #socialmediamarketing).
- Medium Volume (50K – 500K posts): Use 3-5 hashtags relevant to your specific content topic (e.g., #instagramtips2024).
- Low Volume (Under 50K posts): Use 4-5 niche, community-specific hashtags (e.g., #digitalmarketingagencytips).
- Location Tags: Always include a relevant Location Tag if your content has a physical tie-in, as local content often gets a priority boost in discovery feeds for regional users.
Collaboration and Cross-Promotion
Working with others is the quickest way to tap into a new, relevant audience.
- Co-authored Reels: Partner with accounts in parallel or adjacent niches to create co-authored Reels. When published, the Reel appears on both profiles, instantly exposing your content to the partner’s audience and vice versa. This is a powerful, mutual way to get more Instagram followers.
- Instagram Live Sessions: Host joint Live sessions with an industry partner. Live viewers receive notifications, drawing both of your audiences to a shared event. Use the time to share mutual value and promote each other’s work.
- UGC and Tags: Actively look for user-generated content (UGC) about your brand, share it to your stories (and tag the creator), and encourage customers to tag you in their posts. This reciprocity encourages others to follow suit, turning your customers into advocates.
- Don’t Sell Out: Do not promote products or partner with influencers that do not align with your brand or that you do not genuinely love. Invest your time and efforts only if you truly stand for and behind it to maintain authenticity and trust with your followers.
4. What Not to Do: Avoiding Follower Traps
To ensure you truly get more Instagram followers who are authentic and engaged, you must actively avoid certain detrimental practices that sabotage long-term growth.
Skip the Fake Followers
Do not buy followers or use automated “get Instagram followers app” services that promise rapid growth. These followers are:
- Inactive: They do not engage, severely hurting your engagement rate and signaling to the algorithm that your content is low-quality.
- Harmful to Reputation: A high follower count paired with a low engagement rate (e.g., 50,000 followers and 50 likes per post) immediately flags your account as unreliable to potential partners and customers.
Buying followers is a violation of Instagram’s terms of service and can result in reduced reach or account suspension.
Avoid Excessive Follow/Unfollow
The practice of aggressively following thousands of accounts, hoping for reciprocal follows, and then unfollowing them is outdated and ineffective. Instagram’s systems easily identify this automated, low-value behavior and penalize accounts with temporary action blocks or reduced visibility. Authentic growth prioritizes earning followers through quality, not tricking users into one.
Stop Engagement Baiting
While you need engagement, overtly begging for likes and shares (e.g., “Like this post 10 times!”) is low-value and against platform guidelines. Focus on earning high-quality, authentic interactions through valuable content and genuine questions.
The pursuit of Instagram followers is a continuous journey that blends creative content with technical precision. By maintaining a sharp focus on profile optimization, mastering the distinct needs of Reels and Feed content, and using precise, data-backed strategies instead of short-term hacks, you build a resilient, high-value community that drives real results.
Would you like to analyze your current Instagram analytics to identify your top-performing content themes and formats?
Don’t Forget Traditional (Old School) Marketing Methods
Gaining more followers on Instagram isn’t only about what you do on the platform. You also need to ensure you’re getting your profile out there to as many people as possible, in different ways. Of course, this includes cross-platform promotion, e.g., including your Instagram profile link in your YouTube video descriptions. However, you also can’t forget to take advantage of traditional marketing methods, you know, in the real world. Yes, I know this sounds ancient, but things like business cards, stickers, and flyers with a QR code directing potential new followers to your profile are still effective. Try it out if you attend industry events, or in your local area, if your business would benefit from more local awareness.
Use Metricool to Grow Your Instagram Followers
Metricool offers valuable assistance in enhancing your brand’s visibility on Instagram and all your linked social media accounts.
Track your brand’s follower growth, account reach, and engagement metrics such as likes, impressions, and shares, along with competitor data. Metricool also provides tools for planning and scheduling your Instagram stories and posts.
