For your brand, Instagram can be a highly focused, visual marketing platform and a chance to create a loyal following that grows with your company.

In fact, the app is browsed every day by over 500 million Instagram and IGTV users making it home to some of the most active audiences around.

But there are the right ways to use your Instagram profile, incorrect ways to use it, and clever ways to use it, like any social network out there. You can also check out the best sites to buy Instagram followers. If you are aiming for instant instagram growth, then we are sure you will find this article really helpful.

In this post, we will show you how to use Instagram most efficiently to boost engagement and grow a massive following over time, one that is full of real fans, not inactive fake accounts. Keep reading to find out.

1) Using The Correct Hashtags
On Instagram, your goal is to regularly engage your current audience while increasing your number of real followers as well. The first requirement will be met by posting new, interesting and engaging photos, but to start growing, you will find it extremely important to hashtag your photos. Hashtagging the images makes it easier for individuals to identify pictures that look for unique words.

So which hashtags are you supposed to use? Users on Instagram use some hashtags over others, just as on Twitter and other social media. You're far more likely to reach new users and be spotted if you use common Instagram hashtags inside your videos.

On Instagram, below are the latest top 20 hashtags:

1. #love (1,271,692,015)
2. #instagood (742,795,562)
3. #photooftheday (507,358,504)
4. #fashion (487,010,088)
5. #beautiful (463,668,566)
6. #happy (427,528,663)
7. #cute (418,686,470)
8. #like4like (417,887,839)
9. #tbt (413,049,020)
10. #followme (392,011,012)
11. #picoftheday (380,504,677)
12. #follow (371,102,705)
13. #me (348,193,980)
14. #art (343,874,151)
15. #selfie (337,204,715)
16. #summer (324,498,110)
17. #instadaily (323,307,593)
18. #repost (309,603,537)
19. #friends (307,567,075)
20. #nature (303,040,276)

Popular tags such as those listed above are likely to net you extra engagement and likes, but they won't lead to increased long-term engagement, new involved followers, and perhaps most crucially, sales.

2) Look for the right followers
One of the best ways to find and attract a new follower is by looking for the Instagram accounts of your closest competitors and engaging with their audience. These individuals have already shown some level of interest in the goods you carry simply by following the account of your rivals.

So how do you steal followers from your competitors effectively? By engaging with them, you will rob the supporters of your nearest rivals. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and the more work you put in, the more you'll get out of it with followers and repeat engagement.

On Instagram, the three forms of interaction are:

• Pursue a Customer
• Like a photo
• Comment on a photo

In order to see how the followers of my rivals reacted to my marketing advancements, I ran an informal test on my company account. I was attacking the supporters of a similar local opponent. I added my town to my profile to build a stronger sense of familiarity with my brand and the people I target, because I know so many of his followers will be local.

I started by literally following 100 of the followers of my competitors. I followed a further 100 later, but I took the time to like one of their pictures as well. Finally, I followed a third party of 100 and liked one picture from each account as well as commented on it.

Here were the findings:

Follow: Follow-up of 14 percent
Follow + Like: Follow-up of 22%
Follow + Like + Comment: Follow-up of 34%

3) Pay for Reviews and Sponsored Posts
All this optimised account sharing is fine, but you need to take advantage of influencer marketing on Instagram, introducing the brand to a broader audience, if you really want to make an impact.

And how are you doing that? Second, this one is typically not open, unlike the strategies above to expand your account. However it's decent value if done right.
You would need to make a list of broad accounts in your niche to get started. You'll want to find major profiles from makeup blogs, for example, if you sell beauty products.

You may be tracking these pages already, but you'll need to locate them if not. One of the easiest approaches is to check for any of the nearest hashtag keywords you discovered at the start of this article using Webstagram (mentioned earlier).
Not only can it show you the relevant keywords when you make a search on your keywords, but it also shows you the top Instagram accounts that have such keywords.

The findings of the profiles provide a few items to search for:

• A major follow-up, usually 20k to 200kk
• In the profile, an email address

4) Geotags
Besides hashtags, by marking your location, either the city you're in or the location where the photo or video was shot, you can even make your Instagram posts and stories discoverable.

Locations not only have their own Instagram feed, but also their own post, just as you can contribute to hashtags when you use the location sticker on your own posts.

Through posting consistently to these feeds and even communicating with posts from prospective clients that are physically in the vicinity, local firms will get the most use out of place tags.

5) Organize the Highlights
You have a limited span of time to persuade them to join you if a prospective follower lands on your page.

One way to do this is to organise your Instagram stories in a way that expresses what your account is about by using the "Highlights" feature on your profile.

Since Stories have a lifetime of 24 hours, it is easy to use Highlights to give them a second life and to inspire people to follow you so that in the future they do not skip more Stories.

Conclusion

As a fun app for youth, Instagram soon exceeded its first impact and has become a serious content marketing, sales, networking and audience development platform for people and brands.

With over 200 million active monthly users posting 60 million photos and 1,6 billion likes every day it's one of the most popular social networking sites on the planet. If you want to increase your followers on Instagram make sure you go through the article above.