Is it still possible to grow Instagram organically?

Instagram is one of the best platforms to connect with your audience and communicate your brand visually. The launch of Instagram TV and Ads, and Instagram Business Accounts, greatly helped marketers, influencers, and businesses to promote themselves.

If your Instagram presence isn’t robust, it might be time to learn how to set your strategies and get real, organic followers.

According to statistics, Instagram has approximately 1.074 billion users worldwide. With such a large audience, the potential and possibilities in this social network are so huge that you just have to use it.

Since Instagram continues to grow in popularity with audiences, taking advantage of this social media and applying tips to get more followers will help you increase your reach.

How fast is Instagram growing?

The Instagram growth rate is speeding up because users are more and more engaged in their mobile phones; everyone checks images while waiting, traveling, or relaxing. It took them six months to go from 500 million active users to 600 million, but it only took them four months to grow from 600 million to 700 million active users. In September, at an event in NYC, they added 100 million new active users just one month after the last announcement (April 2017).

Instagram launched the platform on October 6, 2010, so let’s check how long it took Instagram to add every 100 million users:

• February 26, 2013 – 100 million; 28 months
• March 25, 2014 – 200 million; 13 months
• December 10, 2014 – 300 million; 9 months
• September 22, 2015 – 400 million; 9 months
• June 21, 2016 – 500 million; 9 months
• December 15, 2016 – 600 million; 6 months
• April 26, 2017 – 700 million; 4 months
• 2019 – 2020 – 186.3 million (eMarketer, 2020)

According to research, 90% of people on Instagram follow a business, 2 in 3 people surveyed say Instagram enables interaction with brand, and 50% of users are more interested in a brand when they see ads on Instagram.

Grow Instagram organically: How do I get organic traffic on Instagram?

Just start with it.

Instagram is growing, and so we are. What I want to do is get on that train and, if possible, grow together. Because of that, I created an Instagram account for my business.

Of course, it’s the same with any other platform. When you are starting, you don’t know what could affect the growth. You start posting some pictures, using some hashtags, and your followers start growing, but the progress is pretty slow. So, after some testing and experiments, I found out what works. In this article, I will try to give you some tips that helped me grow my accounts by getting several hundreds of followers every week.

Here are our 4 Instagram tricks that helped us grow Instagram organically, without any advertising budget and paid ads:

• Ask questions
• Engage with your current followers
• Follow active users in your niche
• Explore relevant hashtags

What does engagement mean on Instagram?

Engagement is everything and everywhere.

If you didn’t notice, on this platform, engagement is everything. Instagram updated its algorithm, and posts are ranked depending on comments they receive. Likes were relevant before, but today they lost in value. Comments, shares and save options are more valuable than likes. But not all comments have a value; only those longer than three words are considered a rank factor on Instagram  If someone only leaves you a comment in the form of an emoticon or something like “great photo”, “love this” it’s like there is no comment at all.

Maybe you ask yourself why ranking on Instagram is essential? If you have a big marketing budget, then it’s not (at least not as it is when you are shooting for organic growth). But if you don’t have a big marketing budget, then it’s more important than you think. Instagram is feeding its users with posts on their news feed, and it tries to show only good posts. If you have a better engagement, it’s more likely that your post will show up on the user’s news feed. That’s it! Logic is simple here, and it’s essential.

How do I fix low engagement on Instagram?

If you are looking for ways to boost your engagement, we have a few pieces of advice that you have to use to get the maximum from your profile. For best results, please don’t forget anything listed below.

#1 Ask questions

Use a little bit of psychology here; people love to speak about themselves. Try to ask questions about their feelings, their thoughts, and so on. You will get a feel what kind of questions suit your audience the most. The goal here is to get a response from them. You will probably need to test a few types of questions before finding out which performs the best. Also, make sure that the question is related to the image and your niche.

How to ask the questions? You have two options here. The first one is to add a question to the image caption/description, and the second option is to write the question on the image. I prefer to ask the question in the description below the image. Otherwise, it would not be a good quality photo since the question would be in focus.

When you get your first responses, try to answer as soon as possible because Instagram will think your post is important due to the activities it got and rank it better.

#2 Engage with your current followers

The most common beginner’s mistake is not caring about users that already follow them. People are mostly only focused on getting new followers and growing their accounts; only a small percentage of tries to engage with current followers.

This is important because your post will not show up in the user news feed if they don’t interact with your brand regularly. If you are putting all the effort into getting new followers but never interact with current ones, you do more damage to your account and brand. Once in a while, comment and like your followers’ photos. This way, your posts will show on their news feed, and they will notice your brand more often.

One of the best ways to do this is to engage with your current followers before posting some content. If you interact with them a few hours before posting, it is more likely they will engage with your post.

How do you get more followers on Instagram for free?

Ok, now when you know how to engage with your followers, the next thing would be to grow Instagram organically, and attract more followers.

#3 Follow active users in your niche

I’m guessing that you are already looking for accounts similar to yours, so take the next step and randomly follow similar profiles. The best way to find only those who are active is to follow the people that engaged with some of the latest posts from those accounts. The chances are those people will be interested in your content and will probably follow you back.

#4 Explore relevant hashtags

Be ready to invest your time, be patient, and soon you will see the results in increasing your Instagram followers organically. This way, you can also save your marketing budget and gather a targeted audience that will connect with your brand and ideally convert into a client or customer.