Instagram tips and advice pt. 2 // How to get noticed and gain more followers

It is time for the second and final post in my miniseries of ‘Instagram tips and advice’ where I this week will share my best tips and tricks on how to get noticed on instagram and gain more followers.

In my opinion the most important thing will always be good content, so if you haven’t yet read pt. 1 dedicated to photography and content I will recommend you to read that post first – you can find it right here!

#hashtags
One of the easiest ways to get more people to notice your pictures is by using hashtags. I would recommend that you use hashtags that are relevant to your pictures in order to connect with people who are actually interested in the content you post. I know that there are some very popular hashtags out there that will get you content viewed by a lot of people, but I think it is more important to use relevant hashtags that will allow you to connect with likeminded people and that way your pictures are also more likely to get viewed by people who will actually want to follow you.

I personally always place the hastags in a separate comment under the picture because that way your caption is not annoyingly long and the (lets be honest) kinda ugly hashtags are quickly hidden when other people comment on your pictures.

Features
Another way to get noticed on instagram and subsequently gain more followers is to get featured by some of the big accounts, for example if your instagram is dedicated to food there are a lot of big accounts that share other peoples food pictures and link to their accounts – most of these accounts have their own hashtag (find them in their bio) you can use to get them to notice your pictures. The same goes for makeup accounts, fashion accounts etc.

Brands and companies likes to share their customers pictures as well so if you are using specific brands and you know they are on instagram then tag them in the picture – they might like your picture and choose to feature you on their account! E.g. my little sister has an instagram dedicated to makeup (@thelipstickjungle_) and she always tags the makeup brands that she uses, which has resulted in the companies featuring her pictures multiple times giving her a lot of exposure and new followers.

Comment on peoples pictures
Another way to get people to notice you on instagram is by commenting on pictures, but be genuine and leave a comment that is actually relevant for the picture – I personally hate when people spam my pictures with “self’ advertising” for their account and I often just end up deleting those comments. If you instead leave a nice, genuine comment you might not only get the person whose picture you are commenting on to check out your instagram, but other people who sees your comment might check it out as well. When I first started on instagram I only followed a couple of health and food accounts and I really wanted to find more so I would always check out the accounts of the people who commented on my favourite accounts pictures and that way I found a lot more similar accounts to follow.

You can also be more direct and ask similar accounts if they would like to check out your instagram, but again, remember to leave a personalized and genuine comment– some might find these types of comments annoying, but personally I always check out the accounts that ask and I have often found some inspirational new accounts to follow.

Shoutouts
Another highly effective way to get more people to notice your instagram is by doing shoutouts aka. sfs with similar accounts – this means that two similar accounts agrees to feature one another on their accounts typically by sharing one of the other accounts pictures with a comment on why people would find this account interesting and why they should check it out and then of course link to the account. If you do this with similar accounts and make sure to make the shoutout as personal and genuine as possible then this can definitely be a good way to gain more followers, but do not overdo it! I have unfollowed so many account because they were spamming my feed with up to ten shoutouts a day.

I personally never do shoutouts anymore, but I did a couple when I first starting my instagram and they definitely helped me to get noticed by likeminded people, so I think they are a great way to get exposure if you do it right and most importantly don’t do it too often!

Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a website that allows you to view all the statictics of your instagram, e.g. your amounts of likes and comments, ranking your content by popularity, followers gained and lost – pretty much everything related to follower engagement and so much more. I love using the rolling month analysis to keep track of what content my followers like the most, what kind of pictures that really gets them involved by commenting and how much of the interaction on my pictures are actually by non-followers. Iconosquare is definitely a fun way to keep track of what is happening on your instagram account and it also helps you with a better understanding of your followers and gives you some useful tools for optimization.
The best part is that it is free unlike so many of the other similar webistes, I think it is really fun to use, but I would definitely never pay for statitics like this – it is just instagram after all!

Last and most important – just have fun with it!!
Instagram is an amazing social media and it should be fun to use it! Not everything is about followers and likes, so feel free to completely ignore these tips and just use instagram the way it was intended – as a fun photosharing social media :)