Growing organically on Instagram nowadays don’t mean getting followers anymore. It means having a big engagement rate, reaching a lot of people and contributing to the stats and fighting the evil the ever-changing algorithm. As an active Instagrammer on the platform for more than 6 years with more than 3 different accounts, I think it would be a good idea to resume in a nice little post what I learned about this app.

1. Choose a clear BIO

It sounds strange but your bio on Instagram is what makes people stick or move on. In 4-6 words tell people what is the theme and the niche of your Instagram. People are only looking for accounts that have a specific niche that tend to their needs. You don’t have to decide it right away, for people who can’t choose what niche you’re in here are my tips:

2. Stick to a theme

Like I mentioned in my post : How To Create a Perfect Feed, you have to keep a constant theme or colour palette throughout the feed. My tip is the rule of 9. You have to get 9 grids on your feed that fits a theme, 9 grids allow people to see the global impression of your feed. For example, here in 9 grids they can see my account is a bit about food and fashion.

Compare to this one, it’s about mostly about books :

3. Tag Locations On Your Posts

People tend to look for what’s happening in their cities or bloggers posting things living in the same area. It can be useful for people traveling around and want to discover what makes a city special, or some cute places to go.

4. Use #Hashtags

Hashtags are still the main way for people to attract new followers all around the world. Choose the hashtags carefully AND change them around. You need to be more specific in your hashtags as well to target specific niche. The more specific the niche is, the more loyal they are to your account.

5. Use Instagram Stories

A great way to promote your posts nowadays is to post them on your stories. BEcause of the new algorithm, Instagram only shows your post to a specific amount of followers. If you want more followers to see your posts, sharing it on your stories is a good idea. Also, Instagram lets you put hashtags in your stories, too. Say you go to a restaurant and you want people around the city to know about it, simply geotag the story put on the right hashtag.

Let me know if you want a post on how to create stories and templates!

6. Posting at the right time

Yes, there’s an optimal time to post things and reach even higher impressions. Depending on your niche, it might change. For food, I noticed it’s around Noon- people tend to engage for lunch. You can check these stats in your Insights section. It keeps track the time when your overall posts work the best. Here’s a global view provided by Social Sprout.

7. Interact A LOT with your niche and community

It’s not always about commenting and liking. It’s either by watching their stories, replying to DMs and comments, make sure you are always in contact with your community. The more you use Instagram features, the more it will favour you.

8. Use the Discover section

The section is here to suggest what you might like but also the posts feature there suggest what niche you are towards to go to and it’s a window of opportunity to create new connections and interact genuinely.

In the end, the algorithm is very simple, if you adapt to your niche, it will help you and redirect you to the right people.

You just got to use what Instagram offers you.