How to Build your Instagram Following

How to Grow Your Instagram Following

Suggested

After you create a new account, you might wonder how to build your Instagram following?

Instagram will provide you with a list of people you might want to consider following. In your settings, under “Follow People,” it could take you to “Discover People” and several tabs which could include “Suggested”  “Facebook Friends” or “Contacts.” Suggested people often are people who are new to Instagram. They might not have many followers yet, so maybe you’ll be among the first to discover their photos.

You can follow those you know

Maybe you’ll be more comfortable adding people you know, in which case you might choose to add from “Facebook Friends,” or “Contacts.”

If you choose to follow the accounts of friends, then find you aren’t interested because you already see their content on other platforms, you can quietly “unsee” their content by “muting” them. They won’t know.

Search “landscape”

You can search for hashtags

Hashtags are great for attracting people to the topics you are sharing, or for you to find. If you go to “search” and type in a word or two that reflects what you are interested in, you’ll be able to find accounts to follow. In many cases, a percentage of people will follow you back.  For example, if you are interested in landscape photography, search for #landscape. You’ll be presented with popular images associated with that hashtag. You can take a look and see if there are any interesting accounts to follow.

You can also look at the people who are liking or commenting on the content of those you follow. If you were to follow them, there is a possibility they’ll also be interested in your content.

quickly build An Instagram following

Another strategy I’ve noticed new accounts employing is to follow as many people as possible. The reason I don’t recommend this is, in discussing with various users on the platform, new accounts with apparent imbalances between “followers” and “following” are frequently perceived as spam accounts. For example, if you have 50 followers but you have followed 1,500 people, many will look askance and avoid you, or even report you as spam. Spam accounts are frequently blocked. If enough people regard you as a spammer, you could find yourself locked out of your account.

Don’t buy fake followers

The final, and worst strategy is to buy followers to make your account look more successful than it is. Lots of famous people, under the misconception that the more fans and followers they have make them seem cooler. But platforms like Twitter and Instagram, periodically go through and clear out fake followers. This means accounts that inflate their popularity through artificial follower numbers benefit in only a temporary way, and have to reinvest money to maintain the illusion.

There are also tools and apps that users can deploy to automatically follow people, and apps that will unfollow people if they don’t follow back.

Bottom line – start slowly and have fun!

A best practice is to let your account grow naturally through organic following and engagement.  And importantly, it needs to be fun. If you enjoy it, you’ll stick with it. And if you stick with it, you’ll succeed!

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For more tips, check out How to Monitor Your Instagram Account.

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