How to become popular on Instagram

Want to know how to become popular on Instagram? Fair warning: it takes work. If that doesn’t scare you, read on for Grin’s Guide to Instagram growth.

Stay Active

This may go without saying, but it’s important that you’re active on Instagram. With YouTube and other platforms, being active can mean posting a video or two a week. In Instagram’s case, however, you’re going to want to be doing at least one interesting new photo a day, or at least some shares of photos you found interesting. What’s important is that you remain consistently active so that your followers can enjoy your content and have plenty to see whenever they find you for the first time.

Focus On A Theme, But Try New Things

In addition to being active, you may want to focus on a theme. Different people have different interests and themes, but the themes that work best for you are typically related to what’s in your area and what your interests are. For instance, if you’re a fan of food Instagrams, maybe you can show off local meals at local restaurants, or even home-made food made by friends and family. If that earns you followers, think about how you can start expanding- do you start travelling occasionally to see cool new restaurants with cool new dishes? Do you start adopting a How-To methodology? Ultimately, what you do is up to you. Finding a general theme and trying new things within it is a great way to keep people engaged and excited. Don’t suddenly jump from something like food to gaming, though. That wouldn’t make much sense and will lose you some followers.

Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words, But A Few Extra Won’t Hurt

It’s true that Instagram is all about the photos, but if you want to know how to become popular on Instagram you can’t stop there. A picture is worth a thousand words, yes, but adding well-thought-out captions to your photos can greatly add to their value. This especially applies if your captions are really informative and entertaining. Don’t be afraid to use a few puns or make a bad joke about the contents of the main photo- people actually love that stuff!

Interact Regularly With Your Followers

Your followers are your bread and butter, so make sure you’re eating right. The true secret to how to become popular on Instagram isn’t just by getting followers, it’s keeping them engaged. To do this, don’t hesitate to follow them back and like/comment on their photos. Comments especially are good, since they can start a real conversation between you and the follower, ensuring that you two form a strong connection on Instagram.

Take Part In Community Contests

Contests are an often-ignored part of Instagram, but are a key tool to success. Many popular accounts will hosts contests, usually on taking the best photo/making the best captions around a certain challenge or topic. In return, the winners of these challenges will typically receive rewards in the form of a shoutout and/or a follow from the major page in question, greatly growing their web of influence. As long as it doesn’t jump too dramatically out of your usual theme, participating in community contests is a fun way to stay relevant and, yes, grow your Instagram presence.

Use The Right Hashtags

Hashtags are at the center of Instagram. Everyone will be posting within trending hashtags (and you should be too) but monitoring the most trending hashtags isn’t enough. If you want to know how to become popular on Instagram, you’re also going to need to learn a thing or two about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and keywords. In search engines and most web content, keywords describe the search terms used to find certain web pages. For this reason, websites (like our own) use keywords to help users find our content. With Instagram, hashtags serve basically the same purpose: grouping related content together, with the best/most influential rising to the top. When posting on Instagram, always try to find a few relevant hashtags for your photos. Don’t settle with just the most popular trending one, either- use some variety so your net is wider and people are more likely to find your photos and like/comment on them. Proper tagging goes a really long way on Instagram, just as proper SEO goes a really long way on the web at large.

(When You’re Growing) Do Giveaways

Growth isn’t an easy process. Once you start to grow, however, it actually isn’t too difficult to accelerate it. A great way to do that is, once you’re at about a hundred followers, start hosting giveaways. It doesn’t need to be for a massive prize, necessarily, but something like a $50 gift card code will typically get enough people interested in liking and sharing your giveaway post. Having a giveaway post with an incentivizing reward and the right tagging will all but guarantee that your followers share the post, which means that in a matter of a few days, your post will be seen by thousands of people. Everyone loves free stuff, and hosting a giveaway (while also having a high quality Instagram) will encourage new people to find you and see what you’re about.

Get Shoutouts And More

Finally, you can always start looking for shoutouts. Here at Grin, we offer the Grin Platform. The Grin Platform is an open marketplace run by creators, for creators, where creators are free to buy and sell shoutouts, collaborations, shares and more from one another. We’re passionate about helping creators like you grow into their fullest potential. To learn more about how to become popular on Instagram, click here for the lowdown on the top Instagram shoutout pages, or here to learn how to buy shoutouts on Instagram. You can also stay tuned to our blog for more regular, informative posts like this one. Our posts focus on providing the latest news and tips to growing content creators on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and other platforms. Stay tuned if that interests you!