Every new trend/new challenge starts there and everyone is watching. It’s the hottest place on the internet.

That means that it is a great opportunity to gather audience and promote things.

But at the same time there is great competition, and many Influencers are fighting for the attention of their followers.

So how to stand out and grow your Instagram followers fast?

Take a look at this 5 easy tips that WORK.

1. Find your Niche
Many people try to do everything at once on Instagram, and that’s their downfall.

You have to first think about what kind of image/brand you want to project to your followers.

Think about what is your passion. What defines you? What are you best at?

For example I like cars. But that is too broad field, there are literary dozen types of cars and thousands of models.

What I most like are sport cars.

But if we narrow it even more I like Italian sport cars (who doesn’t, right?).

Now we can go even further and my niche would be ‘Italian sport cars from the 80s’.

If you are wondering what is my favorite car, take a look.

It’s Lamborghini Countach, now back to the article.

Point is you have to find the narrow specific field of your interest and start building your audience from there.

2. Hashtag strategy
This ties to the previous point. When you have found your niche, you now have to choose the right hashtags.

Through the right Instagram hashtag strategy your audience will be able to find you, and you will pop up on their feed regularly. This way you will grow your Instagram exponentially.

Few years ago you could just get by with putting as many hashtags as you can, but now the algorithm is changed. Instagram is  matching your hashtags with your images (that they recognize with AI software) and they want your hashtags to be as precise as possible and appeal to the right audience.

To grow your followers you have to choose around 14 tags and choose them by the following scheme:

8 easy hashtags – meaning hashtags that are generic. For example if you work with digital marketing this hashtags will be #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingonline  etc. You can also put here generics like #like # follow #instagood, but you shouldn’t put too much unrelated hashtags.

3 medium hashtags – these are hashtags that are more specific to your field. For example #socialmediamarketing #advertising #contentmarketing etc. Mainly something that describes your niche.

3 hard hastags – the name hard is misleading a bit, it should be ultraspecific. Now this hashtags have to depend on the post you are making. So there are no set rules here, just put something that perfectly describes your image. This is also the place where you invent your own hashtags. You can make hashtag of your brand like #osortoo or #osortooapp etc. This is the hardest part of the Instagram hashtag strategy.



Extra tip: To make your hashtags look more interesting try writing them in capitalized style like #DigitalMarketing #Marketing #SEO #SocialMediaMarketing….you get my point ????

3. Follow/Unfollow
This is maybe the most effective Instagram growth strategy at the moment, confirmed by science.

First you must find some successful influencers/brands in your niche.

You should take a close look at their profiles. See what kind of posts they make, what type of content they share and how they interact with their audience. If they are successful then you can be too, just follow their example.

When you make 8-10 posts (enough for your profile to look full) you can also try the Follow/Unfollow strategy on them.

What does that mean?

It means that you go to the influencers/brand that you look up to. You go to their likes, and start following those accounts.

If those followers liked their content, chance is they would like yours too.

You try to follow 100 accounts a day, for 3-4 days.

Then you pause for 2-3 days. In this time many of the accounts you followed will follow you back and you will blow your Instagram quickly.

After this pause you start unfollowing about 70 accounts a day, for 3-4 days.

End result is you get your targeted audience following you, and you end up with more followers than what you are following.

4. Make Giveaways
Giveaways are like nuclear weapons on Instagram, they are crazy effective.

On average if you make a giveaway you will receive 350% more likes and around 64 times more comments than your regular post.

Those numbers are absolutely staggering. That’s why Instagram Giveaway is the best kept influencers secret to grow your followers.

One rule you should always follow when making a giveaway is to show your followers that you have chosen your winner in unbiased way, and that he has really received your prize.

To show them that you have really done a random pick you can use Osortoo and then share the Winner Card on Instagram, like this.



Here is one final statistic: Instagram accounts that hold giveaways grow +70% more faster.

Take a look at this short guide for organizing Giveaways on Instagram.

5. Be Social
This tip seems kinda obvious, but it’s pretty important.

Many people hop on Instagram and start acting like computer bots.

They just like, follow and unfollow, and don’t participate in the social aspect of the network at all.

This is making Instagram very suspicious and soon their algorithm starts restricting them, thinking that is some fake bot factory behind it.

So please, please (again) be social!



This means start interacting with other accounts. Leave comments, share opinions, tag someone.

Leave your feedback on some product, get in touch with other influencers.

Everything you would do normally if approach this people in real life, you surely wouldn’t just stare at them.

So get involved, uplift people, try to connect with them and before you know it you’ll have a big audience.

Check out this 5 way to be more social on Instagram.

Extra Tip: Make a Hashtag Photo Contest
Remember the #DollyPartonChallenge?

We can’t let you go without revealing you one more VERY potent tool.

And that is doing a Hashtag Photo Contest on Instagram.

The idea is simple: you think of a great hashtag, you make an interesting photo and you ask your followers to do the same.

The most popular or the most interesting post wins your Prize.

It can get you viral in no time and grow your followers massively.

Conclusion
Instagram can be a great place to get ideas, meet people and share your work with the World.

If you want to grow your followers there are few simple tips that you can follow, and you will get your tailored audience.

Think about how you want to present yourself. Find your niche, work on your Instagram hashtag strategy and start follow/unfollow. Later do a few Giveaways and always try to be engaged and social.

Be patient they won’t work overnight, but every time you put them to practice you will get closer to what your audience wants. This will help you to became better at what you do and connect deeper with them.

So put everything into practice, be patient, and don’t forget to have fun while doing all of this.