As a highly visual platform, there are countless creative possibilities if you’re thinking of how to get Instagram followers to achieve your business goals. 

Instagram is a powerful marketing tool for growing a web-based business. 

As a platform with more than half of its users following brands, Instagram can help create brand awareness and increase engagement with an audience that spends a significant amount of time scrolling through the app every single day. 

8 Ways To Get More Instagram Followers

You’ll have more opportunities to expand your reach, sell more, and create increased brand awareness if you have more followers. Here are 8 ways to get more followers. 

1. Know Your Target Audience

The key to Instagram success is finding your people. Even if you develop your brand, it’s critical to attract your target followers. So to be successful in Instagram targeting, start with getting to know your customer base. 

Identifying your target audience begins with creating a portrait or a persona of your target customer. The information you need includes demographics, daily routine, education, job, spending power, patterns, and solvency. 

You can also research their current specializations, interests, and preferences. Once you’ve settled that, create content that aligns with industry trends and addresses the pain points of your target audience.

2. Try Using An Instagram Growth Service

If you have some money to spend, it’s helpful to subscribe to an Instagram growth service. 

A good Instagram growth service will help you with how to get Instagram followers organically and improve your engagement metrics by identifying your ideal followers and attracting them to your account. 

Choosing a growth service that's high-quality and uses engagement marketing will save you hours.

3. Optimize Your Bio

An optimized IG bio lays the foundation for content to perform well. Since the ultimate goal of the platform is to attract followers, your bio section, which has a limit of 150 characters,  ought to be optimized. The goal is to give potential followers a gist of what you offer. 

In your bio, be sure to set a striking profile picture, show off your personality, highlight the key features of your brand, and accentuate your unique selling point (USP) as a web development business. Include your contact information, a link, a hashtag, and a CTA inviting them to visit or follow. 

4. Engage With Your Audience

Engagement is everything on Instagram. It’s the metric that shows what percentage of your followers interacted with your content. 

Knowing how to get Instagram followers depends on understanding engagement. There are different ways to get more engagement through comments, likes, shares, and saves: 

• Create memes and graphics related to your business or industry 
• Let your brand personality shine through shareable Stories Stickers (quizzes, polls, questions)
• Share valuable information through Carousel Posts 
• Host a Giveaway contest
• Create an Add Yours Sticker 
• Start an Instagram Live broadcast

Whichever tactic you choose, remember that including a CTA in your caption or post will increase Instagram engagement. 

5. Use Appropriate Hashtags

Hashtags group conversations and content together around a certain topic. 

This makes it easier for people to find what they need or are interested in. When using Instagram for your web development business, create a branded hashtag that will help boost your company’s reach and engagement. 

However, you need a mix of popular and relevant hashtags to add to your branded hashtag for wider reach. On Instagram, the optimal number of hashtags you can use is anywhere between 3 to 5. 

To find out which hashtags are best for your brand, do a competitive analysis on industry competitors and social media influencers. Find related hashtags that work well for your brand. When you use hashtags that are relevant to your business marketing strategy, you get increased organic reach. Gather intel about what hashtags they are using within your brand’s niche. 

Another thing to do is know which hashtags in your niche are trending today. Include a trending hashtag in your post so your content becomes more discoverable to people who search for that hashtag. 

Remember, though, that writing a great Instagram caption is also a key factor in the success of your hashtag choice. After writing the caption, group your hashtags at the end. 

6. Collaborate With Influencers In Your Niche

Customers today trust social proof above all else. Recommendations from real people are proven more effective than ads. So, any Instagram campaign will, at some point, include collaborating with influencers, making it big in the web development business.

After deciding who to work with, you can leverage some of the most effective influencer collaboration ideas, like creating a paid partnership through sponsored Instagram content. This is when an influencer creates and posts content that promotes your brand across their social media accounts, from Instagram to TikTok to YouTube. Another is by gifting your product or service to an influencer. 

Encourage them to create content around the gift for your brand. You can also ask influencers to be your brand ambassadors.

You can also try doing an Instagram influencer takeover. In this collaboration, you’ll allow the influencer to take over your brand’s account and post on your behalf. Just be sure you’re choosing an influencer you trust. A takeover can happen for a day, a week, or a fixed timeframe. 

7. Run An Instagram Giveaway

Everyone loves free stuff. So if you’re running a giveaway contest on Instagram, you’ll effectively build your fanbase and reach new customers. A giveaway contest also encourages social sharing of a specific Instagram post, so doing this grows your Instagram following quite naturally. 

To be successful, the first thing to do is choose a suitable prize. Make sure people have that incentive to join your giveaway by offering something attractive. Second, decide on the giveaway criteria. You can require joiners to follow your account, tag x number of people in the comments, or reshare your post with your giveaway hashtag. The idea is to gain brand exposure. 

Third, decide how much time your audience can enter your Instagram giveaway. The duration you choose depends on the size of your existing following. You’ll need to run a shorter giveaway if you have thousands of followers. Another factor is the time zones of your international followers. Be clear with the dates and times. 

Finally, after those first three steps, create your compelling Giveaway post. Use a strong and high-quality image and write an engaging caption. Use your giveaway hashtags, too. After the giveaway, spread the news about the winner and thank everyone who joined. 

8. Keep Track Of Your Analytics

Beyond the creative tactics, being successful on Instagram also needs data-driven decisions. You’ll be able to know how to get Instagram followers through analytics. Keeping track of this lets you understand how you are fair regarding engagement and audience behavior. Among the analytics to keep track of include:

• Audience Insights and Analytics
• Post Insights and Analytics
• Stories Insights and Analytics
• Reels Insights and Analytics
• IG Live Insights and Analytics

When you understand your data, you can recreate top-performing content that your audience most responded to. It also empowers you to spot growth trends. 

Engage, Engage, Engage 

Instagram has been helping owners expand their business exponentially through engagement. 

By being strategic with these tips, you’ll be able to significantly increase your follower count, allowing your web development business to move to a higher level with more exciting projects and more likes.