Getting your first 10,000 Instagram followers can take time and effort. Why? You're still unknown and must prove yourself as an influencer or successful brand. However, it's possible! You can read on to learn the step-by-step guide on how to increase your Instagram followers by 2022.

1. Join Instagram Engagement Groups

The trick to snowballing? Joining engagement groups (or Instagram pods). While entering the biggest engagement group sounds great, remember that being specific to your niche could get you an even better list of potential followers. Look for engagement groups for travel, beauty, fashion, and more.

In these groups, you can get more followers and likes from people who share your interests. To gain more attention, follow the fan pages of those who join the group. If you do this, you could get 2,000 new followers in a couple of weeks. Just to let you know, this is a short-term strategy.

If you want more advanced tips, check out our free Instagram course.

2. Repost Others' Content

When I was starting within social media marketing, my entire strategy revolved around reposting other people's content. It's crucial to credit the original poster in descriptions so that you don't get flagged.

My success came when I started to use the Repost app, allowing me to include videos on my page. This gained me 52,862 views, 1264 comments, and 9,147 likes. All without spending a penny on ads!

When you start using this tactic, you must watch numbers and look at the hashtags you come up with daily. Use these to help you find the top-performing posts from individual people, not competitors.

3. Get Featured in Buzzfeed

To make your Instagram presence skyrocket, you must access a broad audience. Buzzfeed is a great place to start.

A Buzzfeed staff member wrote a piece about her journey of growing her brand as an Instagram influencer, which helped her gain almost 10,400 followers.

If you want to experiment with Buzzfeed, head to its Community section and follow the guidelines to get visibility and trust.

Also, you can use a tool like HARO. Here you'll get emails three times a day that contains requests from reporters in search of content and expert quotes. You can reach your store and your Instagram account with one link.

4. Ask Customers to Share Photos

If you've had a few sales, please reach out to customers and offer a reward for taking pictures of your product. Offering incentives is a short-term strategy, but it can help you build your brand during the start-up phase.

When customers see pictures of other people using your product, they're more likely to follow you and tag you in their posts. Reach out to comment, repost and follow them, and many will reciprocate.

5. Have a Consistent Style

Here's why having a consistent style is essential: people don't follow because of one post but because they expect future posts to be similar.

Say you have a corgi fan page. If people keep seeing your original content, they'll understand that you always post the cutest corgi content.

Maintaining consistency with every post will gain followers while building confidence and trust in your brand.

6. Use Hashtags to Gain Followers on Instagram

Many people suggest only using 5 or 11 hashtags, but when I was building my store’s Instagram account, I experimented and used up to 30 hashtags -- the max limit. Your first comment may be seen by some people when you are just starting out, but if you want to increase your visibility, adding more hashtags is the easiest way to do it. Make sure to choose niche-specific hashtags so that relevant audiences can find your page.

7. Utilize Location Tags to Get Followers from Nearby Areas

Adding a location tag to your Instagram Story or post increases visibility for that vicinity and makes it easier for local followers to find and follow your page. Additionally, locations have their own distinct feeds and hashtags that you can easily contribute to with a location sticker.

8. Embed Your IG Feed into Your Blog to Grow Your Audience

Embedding your Instagram pictures into your blog posts will give your audience an opportunity to check out your account and follow it. This is especially useful if your blog has low traffic, as it will give you a better chance of being seen.

9. Follow People Who Like Competitor’s Instagram Pages

The best way to increase Instagram followers is to find people who follow brands similar to yours. Find out who your competitors are on Instagram, then browse their posts to see who’s commenting on them. You can follow these people, engage with them, and even comment on their posts without being salesy.

10. Collaborate With Influencers to Increase Your Followership

You can get an Instagram shoutout from an influencer to increase your followership. However, ensure that you write up a contract that prevents the influencer from sending fake traffic. Account takeovers on Instagram Stories are great for gaining real followers, and you should ask the influencer to inform their audience before they do one.

11. Build Your Instagram Following Through Giveaways

Host giveaways to get more followers on Instagram. You can post the giveaway on your website, or to reach a larger audience, try posting it in relevant Facebook groups. Or, reach out to giveaway blogs and exchange products for a review post - many will take you up on the offer. This will generate hundreds of new followers and expand your reach on all social accounts.

However, if your goal is to get more sales, giveaways may not be the best option. So it’s important to weigh your options carefully before hosting your next promotion.

12. Grow Your Instagram Audience Organically Via Partnerships

Organically grow your follower base by partnering with other brands. Post your own product photos and ask them to credit you when reposting. This can provide you with hundreds of new followers from the brand's audience.

13. Crafting Instagram Guides To Attract Followers

Create Instagram Guides to share fun and educational content with your followers, and make sure to curate videos and images from your feed. Not only will this keep users engaged, but it may also boost visibility due to high engagement rates.

14. Use Instagram Analytics Tools For More Insights

Take full advantage of Instagram analytics tools such as Sprout Social, Iconosquare, Keyhole, Curalate, and Socialbakers. These tools provide helpful information about your follower base, your engagement rate, new followers, unfollowers, and inactive accounts. Armed with these insights, you can better understand your audience and create the right content to increase your followers.