How to get more Instagram followers

Getting paid to take photos and post them on Insta? #DREAMJOB

Instagram influencing has really taken off in the last few years and many aspiring models are turning to social media to earn a bit of extra money - or even to make a living!

The world of Instagram influencing has many positives - including being able to manage your own time and be in full control of the amount of work you take on (#bosslady). On top of this, the influencing industry has absolutely no height, size, shape, look, culture or ability restrictions. You can become an influencer exactly as you are RIGHT NOW and promote whatever message/theme/passions that you want - and we reckon that's pretty awesome!

So, how do you become an influencer?

Well, before you can jump into the world of Instagram influencing it is super important that you build up a significant and engaged following. Although there is no specific number of followers you need to start doing influencing work on Insta, they say that the absolute minimum is 1,000. On top of this, these followers need to be engaged with your content (so unfortunately the days of buying followers are far behind us!).

To help you fast track the process a bit, we've put together 7 hot tips on how you can begin to build your following RIGHT NOW and get results straight away!

1. Have a clear theme

The first thing you need to do before you go out and try to get some followers is make sure your account is looking awesome. It is important that you have a clear theme in your account - remember you need to give people a reason to follow you! Some example themes could be health and fitness, travel, fashion, modelling, self love, sport, food, etc. It doesn't really matter what you choose as your theme as long as all of your posts link to that theme in some way so that your potential followers can see straight away what you're all about. It's also a good idea to put your theme in your bio to make it extra clear.

2. Repost engaging content

Once you have got a clear theme, it's a good idea to try and find some other accounts with a similar one. If possible, try and find some with a slightly higher follower count than you (but not HUGE). Once you've found these accounts, keep an eye out for any content that they post that they get a lot of engagement on.

To work out engagement all you need to do is add up the total likes and comments a post gets and DIVIDE this by the total followers on the account.

ENGAGEMENT = (LIKES + COMMENTS) / FOLLOWERS

If the post gets more than a 10% engagement usually this is a really great piece of content to repost either into your story or on your main page (just be sure to always tag the account that you've got the content from)!

By doing this you'll find that you're likely to get really great engagement on the post and you may also gain followers directly from that post as well because better engagement = more post visibility and reach = more followers!!

Bonus tip - to see the number of likes and comments on another account's post just use the desktop version of Instagram and make sure you've got a business account. Then, just go to the page and hover over the post!

3. Consistent posts + content

If you're serious about gaining followers then you're going to need to make sure you're posting consistently. Not too long ago posting daily was important but now the sweet spot seems to be around 3 posts per week. Post too often and you'll lose followers and your content is likely to be less engaging. Post too little and your followers will lose interest and likely not see the value in following you. 

4. Get your planning sorted

The biggest problem with posting consistently is coming up with content - especially if you've left it to the last minute!! We would recommend finding a pre-planning app. Something like Later or Planoly are both great options. Once you've got your app, then you'll be able to schedule your content in advance (and even get it to automatically post for you!).

This will allow you to work out how you want things to look and will help you work out when you need another content creating day! Even better, these apps will give you some really cool insights into how your posts are performing!

When a new post goes out, it pays to be around for at least half an hour to engage with anyone who interacts with your content. Remember, the more engagement you have, the more likely you are to appear highly in people's explore feeds (and even in any hashtags you've used). So, we would recommend creating captions that encourage your followers to leave a comment on your post and when they do - make sure you reply!

6. Use your hashtags wisely

The world of hashtags can be a bit of a confusing one but these days, hashtags are still a great way to engage new followers. Many people tend to think that using hashtags with huge post numbers is a good idea; however, this actually isn't necessarily the case. We would recommend finding hashtags that have less than 100,000 posts if you can. Why? Because you're more likely to appear highly on these hashtags than the other more commonly used ones. These hashtags might be a little harder to find but we've found that it's worth putting a bit of effort in as you will likely gain some followers out of it!

7. Like comment repeat

This is one of the most successful - but also time consuming - ways to build a following on Instagram. The first step is to find a group of people who are interested in what you offer on your account. The easiest way to do this is within a related hashtag. For example, if your account is all about health and fitness then you could go through common hashtags like #workout #motivation or #fitfam. As you go through the posts in these hashtag groups, engage with the content by liking and commenting on as many posts as you can. Be sure not to use the same comment on every post either - the more unique your comments are the more likely you are togain a follower out of it. If you are consistent with this technique you can expect a good majority of the people you engage with to follow you back!

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