It’s hard not to be impressed when you see an Instagram account with 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 followers — particularly if you’ve only been able to find a measly 10 or 100 fans on the Gram.
Don’t lose heart, though. Most Instagram users face the same problem. It can seem virtually impossible to add new followers when the competition for attention is so fierce. However, it is possible; many of today’s social media influencers started with a meager follower count and built their accounts into dominant Instagram presences.
You essentially have two options if you want to build your fan base on the social media platform.
You can plug away at it for weeks, months, or years, using old-school, manual methods to find one or two followers at a time.
You can take the modern shortcut (don’t worry, it’s a completely legal approach to growth) and play nice with the Instagram algorithms. They’re responsible for awarding the large audiences that let you share your content widely with potential followers.
Which is the right path to take? That’s not for us to say. Some people are understandably wary of what they see as a risky hack. They prefer to stay at it, day, after day, building their following incrementally.
Before deciding to choose that route, though, be aware that buying Instagram followers from reputable social media marketing services isn’t risky and doesn’t break any of the app’s rules. It’s simply a smart, fast, and effective way to bring in lots of organic followers who are interested in your Instagram content.
And as long as you understand how to do it properly, purchasing IG followers can quickly take your account from irrelevant to popular and important. We’ll cover all of the details, as well as the slower, manual Instagram strategies for account growth, in this tutorial.
Let’s get started.
Purchasing Instagram followers is simple, inexpensive, and it works. That doesn’t mean that all you have to do is “flip the switch” (or in this case, click “order” on a website). Here’s why: the interactions you buy aren’t always guaranteed to work. Consider this scenario.
You’ve signed up for an account on the app, you’ve created a few Instagram posts featuring your family, your dog, and your last vacation to Poughkeepsie, New York, you’ve purchased a package of Instagram followers to bring in a lot of new followers — but nothing happens. You see no increase in your follower count, and no additional engagement on your account.
What went wrong?
It’s simple. You may have purchased a number of new viewers for your photo and video content, but be honest. Who wants to see posts with your family, pet, and trip to upstate New York, other than your friends who already follow you?
Here’s the moral of the story. You can’t just buy followers and expect magic to happen; it’s up to you to convince people to hit the “follow” button. Among other things, you need a smart content strategy that will appeal to a large target audience, and you have to optimize your IG account, if you want to entice a large audience of random users to care about your posts and follow you.
We’ll be discussing those Instagram marketing strategies and many more, since they’re also important if you decide to try to bring in new followers manually. First, though, let’s look at why purchasing IG followers works so well, and the precautions you need to take before buying them.
As mentioned earlier, the system’s algorithms determine which posts are seen widely on the app and which are left to languish largely unseen. They award exposure based on follower counts and another account metric called “follower growth.” If an account is quickly adding new fans, it’s entitled to much greater visibility that it would otherwise receive.
The followers you buy produce strong increases in follower growth, meaning your photos and videos are given large audiences of random surfers who’ve never seen your content before. If they enjoy what they see, they can like your posts and follow your account, triggering powerful Instagram growth and greater influence on the platform.
There’s just one possible hitch: buying followers from the wrong vendor.
Most websites promising to supply Instagram interactions that jumpstart growth are out to cheat you. What they really do is create fake followers with automated bots. The tech tricks look like they’re boosting your follower count, but they don’t fool the algorithms. Instead, they’re quickly removed from your account and you’re often penalized or banned from the app.
It can be difficult to find them, but there are trustworthy social media management companies that sell “real” Instagram followers, meaning they’re real people who follow you from their own real accounts. They’re legitimate, they’re never deleted by the system, and they boost your metrics, audiences, and popularity. Only real IG followers can do that.
These are the best three providers that deliver them.
It’s difficult to overstate the advantages that purchased, real followers provide over manual growth strategies — but some people still want to do things the old-fashioned way. For hints and tips on how to go out and find followers (and how all IG users should optimize their accounts), read on.
It wouldn’t make sense to invite people to your house without first putting away (or at least hiding) your dirty clothes and making sure there was something for your guests to eat after they arrive. It doesn’t make sense to invite potential followers to your IG account without doing the basic housekeeping and planning, either.
It would be a shame if the house guests we mentioned quickly left your party bored or unsatisfied. It’s simple to make sure that visitors to your Insta account don’t feel that way, and it all starts with optimizing your Instagram profile.
We’ve already talked about the importance of creating content that centers around one niche that can attract lots of followers — and your family, dog, and vacations don’t qualify. Make it a subject about which you’ve built some expertise, so you have no trouble regularly producing informative, fascinating, funny, or other types of “must-see” photos and videos.
Don’t just shoot a video and post it. People who see it and visit your account will see nothing else of interest to them in your account, and there’s little chance that they’ll follow you. Create a backlog of content and then post a good-sized library of it; that’s a much more effective argument that you’re worth a follow.
But don’t post all that you’ve shot, either. Maintain a backlog so you can set up a regular posting schedule, which will show potential followers that you update regularly and current followers that there’s no reason to unfollow you. Pro tip: check Instagram analytics to find out when your followers are usually on the app and post when they’re online. They’ll appreciate it.
Above all, make sure that you spend all of the time and effort required to produce compelling, high-quality content. Poor-quality photos and videos are a sure turn-off to visitors.
It’s easy to throw a huge collection of hashtags onto your post before uploading, but that’s wasting valuable space.
Relevant hashtags (meaning they describe exactly what viewers will see in your video) will help bring in additional search traffic from like-minded IG users, and trending hashtags may attract large numbers of people who would probably never be exposed to your content any other way. You can find trending topics by looking at your Instagram Explore page.
Surfers who come across your post about the vintage ’59 Cadillac you’ve restored may keep scrolling right by if all they see is a screen capture of “a car.”
However, a well-crafted caption, like “How I restored my vintage ’59 Caddy for less than 500 bucks” or “You won’t believe how little it cost me to restore my vintage ’59 Caddy!” is much more likely to grab their attention, and make them stop and watch your video. Your Instagram captions are an effective sales tool to turn users into followers; use them smartly.
It’s time to point readers who’ve decided they want to try finding new followers manually (rather than buying follower packages) in the right direction. Here are some of the social media strategies you can use to bring in new fans — just be aware that many can take up a lot of your time and still won’t be as effective as purchased interactions.
You probably have accounts on other social apps like X, TikTok, or even LinkedIn. Post samples of your Instagram content on those accounts with a tease that the whole video can be found on your IG account (don’t forget to include a link). You may find some new long-term followers.
The Instagram Reels and Instagram Stories sections that you may usually ignore can be a valuable source of new followers; they’re extremely popular. Simply create shorter versions of your videos and post them in those formats to Reels and Stories to expand your account’s reach.
Don’t forget that people can comment on your posts. Responding to comments (as well as DMs you may receive) can make potential followers feel that you’re active, responsive, and worth following. Current followers will feel important, a part of your “community,” and less likely to unfollow you. Your responses also boost your engagement rate, telling the algorithms to give the posts more visibility.
Posts in an Instagram feed that contain multiple pieces of content are called carousels, and they’re worth your attention because they’ll get more potential followers to check out what you create. Statistics show that carousels are viewed much more often than single posts, and it’s simple to create them when you’re uploading content.
Content collaborations with popular influencers or your own followers can greatly expand your audience and give you more content to post. You can also create giveaways that encourage others to create user-generated content (UGC) that you’re free to repost.
Other approaches that have helped power users bring in more viewers and retain their existing followers include taking out Instagram ads and hosting real-time Instagram Live sessions. Studying the influencer marketing techniques that you see used by others can give you new ideas, all of which might help boost your follower count, popularity, and importance on the app.
