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Beginnings are always the hardest, and the same goes for growing your Instagram account. Getting the first 1000 followers might not be the easiest of feats, but it’s not impossible. 

As long as you know what to do to make your profile more attractive to potential followers, as well as to Instagram, so that it can show your posts to users interested in the same niche you’re in, you should be able to reach this milestone before you know it. 

What you need to remember, however, is that it requires work – it’s not going to happen overnight, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results in one or two days after opening your account or making changes to it. 

Sometimes, it can take even a month to see the results, but that just means that you will see the impact of the changes you made long-term rather than just for a short while. 

Here are some of the most effective strategies for how to get 1000 followers on Instagram.

Find Your Target Audience

While you can post content for everyone, it will be a lot easier to not only grow followers but also manage your account in general when you have a target audience in mind. 

How do you find your target audience? You need to ask yourself some questions:

  • Do you want to cater to men or women? 
  • Will your content be focused on older or younger audiences? 
  • Do you want to publish your content in English or maybe in another language, targeting people from the countries that speak it? 
  • Are there any specific interests a person needs to have to be a part of your target audience, e.g., be interested in skincare or home decor?

Make Your Profile SEO-Friendly

Instagram is a search engine just like Google, which is why if you want it to ensure your profile will be shown to others, which in turn will attract potential followers to it, you need to optimize your profile according to what this specific search engine might be looking for.

It all starts with your name and bio. Many people actually leave their bio empty instead of using it to their advantage, but that’s a mistake. Rather than leaving it as it is, try to incorporate the keywords potential users might be searching up that you want to rank for – but keep it natural; don’t overdo it, or you might achieve the opposite effect.

SEO-Friendly Instagram Profile

Take a look at this example – in this case, we searched for the phrase “interior design.” There’s one thing in particular that all those profiles have in common, and that is that they incorporate the keyword “interior design” in their name (not to be confused with the account name, also known as your Instagram handle). 

Generally speaking, there are four places that the Instagram algorithm will look at to make sense of your profile – your Instagram handle, your profile name, your bio, and your captions – and that’s where you should focus on including relevant keywords. 

Captions are especially important, as that’s where you have the most freedom and, at the same time, the most opportunities to include keywords you’d want to rank for while keeping things pretty natural. So, before posting anything, make sure that the captions are keyword-rich but aren’t overstuffed with them.

Write Good Captions and Use Relevant Hashtags

Aside from being keyword-rich, your captions should also be interesting enough to intrigue people and make them want to follow you and your content. They shouldn’t be too short or too long – the right caption length is anywhere between 138 and 150 characters. 

Of course, if you have an interesting story to tell your potential followers that will make them want to stick around, you don’t have to follow that length – just make sure that you keep the story concise and without adding too many unnecessary details. 

Try to be creative with your content – come up with unique ideas that will spark the interest of anyone seeing your account for the first time. 

Think about making your captions focused on getting engagement, as those who decide to interact with your posts might also decide to follow you. What does it mean exactly? Post things that will make someone want to leave a comment. That could be a thought-provoking question, asking for a recommendation or tips, or creating a post serving as a Q&A session, where users ask you questions, and you answer them.  

Another thing that might be useful to your profile is to use hashtags. Oftentimes, people will not be looking for a specific profile but a hashtag to see what will catch their attention. Use it to your advantage, and include relevant hashtags in your posts. How many? According to the advice given by Instagram itself,  it’s best to use between 3 and 5 hashtags despite the limit being 30.

write good captions and use relevant hashtags

Post Your Content Regularly

One of the most important things when it comes to gaining followers and making them loyal to your account is being consistent. If someone has to wait for days, if not weeks, for a new post from a creator they follow, they might become disinterested and unfollow. 

Planning your content ahead and coming up with a posting schedule can make your creator’s life a lot easier and ensure that you don’t run out of things to post, which may cause you to have to frantically look for something to upload. 

As far as scheduling content to go live goes, here are two ways to do it – you can either decide to upload your posts manually, or if you want to make sure that your posts always go up when they should, you can schedule your post to go up on the Instagram app directly. Instagram allows you to schedule posts up to 75 days ahead, which is great if you’re going on vacation or simply know you will forget about posting. 

Another thing you need to think about here is when to post. Surprisingly, the best days to post are weekdays, and not weekends as it might seem. However, once you look at the best times of day to post, it will all make sense, as they are associated with most people’s daily lives. 

Generally, there are three-time slots where you will probably get the most engagement. The first one is between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. – that’s when most people get ready for work or school and scroll through social media while eating breakfast or commuting. 

The second time slot when engagement picks up is between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. – that’s when most people have their lunch break and have some time to kill by scrolling through Instagram during the work day. 
The final time slot is between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. – that’s when many are either commuting from work or are already home and are looking for a way to unwind after being at work the whole day.

Use Reliable Follower Growth Services

Now, let’s get one thing straight – by that, we don’t mean buying followers. We actually advise against buying followers, and there are several reasons why we don’t think it’s a good idea, from little to no engagement, the accounts typically being inactive or bots, to losing credibility as a business account.

By reliable follower growth services, we mean services that will gain the interest of real accounts that are interested in the same niche you work in and encourage them to follow you. With so many Instagram accounts around (there are over 2.4 billion active users at the moment), they might not have discovered you yet, and a simple message is all they need to take a look at your account and decide that they want to follow you.

This is called the Mother/daughter method, and it’s the approach we use here at SimplyGram. This way, we can make sure that all the accounts we direct to your profile are not only real but also genuinely interested in the content you’re publishing, giving you engagement.

Other Tips for Getting 1000 Followers

Here are some other tips that can be effective in helping you get 1000 followers: 

  • Create quality visual content – Humans are visual creatures, meaning we like to look at pretty things – and, as bad as it might sound, if your account does not have eye-catching visual content, it might be hard to gain and keep followers. There are plenty of online tutorials on how to take great photos and videos online. You can also hire a professional photographer or videographer on a freelance basis. 
  • Try the ‘5 likes, comment, follow’ method – How does the method work? Find an account that you’d like to become your follower. Like at least five of their posts, then pick your favorite one and leave a comment there. Finally, give them a follow. This might make them intrigued enough to check out your profile and earn you a new follower. 
  • Set up your account to be a business profile – While this doesn’t directly help you get followers, it makes it a lot easier to see how your follower count is growing, and it gives you insight into your reach and engagement.

The Bottom Line

Although it might not seem so based on how many accounts have thousands upon thousands of followers, the truth is that growing your Instagram following takes a lot of time and effort. However, as long as you know what you’re supposed to be doing and take the time to see what your targeted audience might enjoy, you should be able to reach this milestone. 

The most important thing to remember is that it’s not an overnight process – it can take days or weeks before you see any results, and that’s completely normal. Don’t become discouraged, as your big break might be just around the corner. 

Also, if you’re planning on using any type of service to help you boost your follower count, make sure that you only use reliable ones, like SimplyGram. We do everything in accordance with Instagram’s Terms of Service to make sure that only positive things come out of the partnership.

Get in touch with us today, and let’s work together to grow your Instagram account.

Maddie Schultz
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