By | Elisha Robert
Whether you are starting a business page, a creative blog, or a regular social media profile, it’s a more fun and profitable experience when you have many people following you.
People who want to become influencers specializing in different areas of interest might want to gain instagram followers and start working towards a well-paying social media career. 10k followers is generally an important milestone for them. Not only does Instagram start allowing certain features at 10k, brands and companies start noticing you as well. And even if you are not an influencer, 10000 followers is a pretty respectable number that you can capitalize on in other ways.
If you’re just starting from 0, you might be wondering how long it will take you to reach the magic number – 10k. Well, there is no definitive answer to that question. It might take somewhere between 6 months to a couple of years. It depends on your interests and the specific content niche that you contribute to. Rare interests might not attract hordes of people. In contrast, the most popular interests are quite saturated with similar accounts and profiles.
If your style of publishing content is appealing and visually creative, you might even gain 10k followers in a couple of months. If you are Instagram-savvy and understand how the algorithms drive the content on the platform, you wouldn’t have any problem reaching that milestone.
Here are some ideas on how to grow your platform far quicker than most –
1). Join Instagram engagement pods – These are a great way to gain followers very quickly. The people in these engagement groups follow and interact with each other’s content to boost it in the algorithm. Join an engagement pod for your specific niche.
2). Use analytics to your benefit – Monitor your Instagram analytics regularly to gauge what kind of content your followers most enthusiastically respond to. You can also use websites like buylikesservices.com, Iconosquare and Socialbakers to understand how you can make your content better and engagement higher.
3). Maintain a consistent style – It is important to maintain a consistent aesthetic and content niche. After viewing your posts for some time, your followers come to expect a certain kind of content from you, and they follow you to consume that content. If you make drastic changes, people are bound to unfollow.
4). Experiment a little – Although maintaining some sense of uniformity is necessary, don’t be afraid to experiment with your style and content a little to see what sparks what kind of response from your audiences. You might get some great results.
5). Use Instagram to all its capacity – Besides using the analytics features, you should use stories, polls, questions, stickers, boomerangs, filters, and other features to keep your audience engaged and your content fresh. The importance of interactive and cool Instagram stories cannot be emphasized enough.
6). Repost followers and influencers – Keeping your followers interested in you is super important. Publish extra content on your page by reposting your followers and your favorite influencers. Tag them in the captain field. This will also encourage your other followers to tag you in their pictures.
7). Engage with your audience – This has been mentioned quite a few times already, but this is also the most important thing to keep in mind. Don’t forget to follow people back, reply to comments under your posts, like and comment under posts by influencers who share the same niche as you.
8). Publish content regularly – Do not slack off. Putting out content regularly helps gain new followers. Your older posts are not going to be noticed by newer audiences after a certain short time. Also, if you don’t post in a while, your existing audience might lose interest.
9). Use hashtags – Do not use hashtags that are super generic like #love or #fitnessgoals. Those do not help newly emerging influencers. Use smaller hashtags related to your specific niche so that your posts can appear among the top ones in that hashtag and introduce more people to your content.
10). Stay up-to-date – Staying alert to recent trends in your niche and Instagram algorithm and feature changes helps you out a lot. Keep your content up-to-date with pop-culture references and newer tools to make, edit, decorate and publish it.
11). Be your authentic self – This happens often, but if you try to maintain a persona separate from your true personality, you start to lose credibility and followers both. It is essential to remain your real, authentic self on your account.
12). Cross-promote your social media pages – Promote your Instagram page across your other social media pages like Facebook and Twitter. This will help increase your numbers by transferring your follower base to your IG account.
13). Host giveaways and partner with brands – These are tried and tested methods of increasing followers. Hosting giveaways and asking brands to give you a shout-out when you’re working with them will help introduce new people to your profile.
14). Be creative and learn to create great content – Creativity appeals to everyone. Watch tutorials and learn to make better and aesthetically pleasing posts, videos, and thumbnails. Be organized with your posting schedules as well.
Conclusion – Being popular on social media doesn’t just come by, it takes time and hard work to make it happen. A smart approach to social media can definitely help, though. You can also adopt practices like joining engagement pods, buy Instagram followers, or buy Instagram likes online. And while they are good for the beginning, you need to learn to create better content and constantly reinvent ways to stay at the top of the game.
