It’s tempting to give in to short-term gratification and purchase fake followers on Instagram through a variety of nefarious means. But buying followers is a serious mistake that’s worth avoiding at all costs.

Developing real relationships with your Instagram followers is the key to your account’s growth. However, it’s difficult to establish these connections organically, especially with the influx of social scammers online.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a critical part of your Instagram marketing strategy. Not only can they help you reach new audiences, but they can also boost engagement on your content.

Hashtags help Instagram sort your posts into relevant categories and make them easier to find by users who aren't following you. This is why it's so important to use hashtags that are genuinely relevant to the type of content you're posting.

If you're unsure which hashtags to use, try searching for relevant tags in your area and checking their post volume on Instagram's Explore page. Hashtags with millions of posts aren't going to be very useful, whereas ones that have fewer than 10K posts are a much safer bet.

You'll also want to avoid hashtags that are overly spammy - they can be a red flag for the Instagram algorithm. These include hashtags like #instagood, #happy, and #followme.

Posts

Instagram is a social media platform with over 700 million users. It offers businesses a large potential audience.

It’s also a great place to promote giveaways. Posts like this can help you reach a new audience and generate more sales.

Hand-drawn illustrations are also popular on Instagram. They’re easy to create and often have a very natural quality to them.

Another way to get free followers on instagram is to share posts that are relevant to your brand or industry. For example, if you’re in the fashion business, posting a picture of your latest outfit can be a good idea.

You can also create a series of posts on a single topic for your audience to learn more about. These can be called “guides” and are a great way to gather your content pieces together in one place.

Engagement

Engagement is a key performance metric that businesses use to gauge the success of their social media marketing campaigns. It takes into account user interactions, such as likes, comments and shares, but doesn't necessarily measure sales.

To achieve higher engagement, brands should be willing to communicate with their followers on a regular basis. This includes responding to their comments, DMs and the content they tag your brand in.

This type of engagement can help create stronger relationships with your followers, while also encouraging them to re-engage. Instagram is a social media platform where conversations can be real and authentic, so take advantage of its ability to connect with your audience in the moment.

In addition, companies can use engagement as a metric to gauge how their mobile marketing campaigns are performing. This can include a number of in-app metrics, including the number of triggered events and how usage is affected by advertising. By incorporating engagement in a mobile marketing strategy, businesses can improve their overall business performance.

Competition

A competition is a great way to attract new Instagram followers and get them excited about your brand. It’s also an excellent opportunity to promote your latest and greatest product releases or highlight special offers.

The key to a successful competition is to ensure you’re following Instagram’s promotion guidelines and any legal requirements for running an Instagram contest that apply in your country of operation. You should also include a prize that’s appealing to your target audience.

For example, a local tour company could offer a free hiking trip for the best vacation photos or a lingerie store could reward its biggest fans with a bikini box set. Make sure your giveaway prize is relevant to your target market and has reasonable shipping costs.