Top Instagram Growth Hacks to Build Your Brand Organically

Instagram is still one of the best social media platforms for business expansion, marketing, boosting awareness, and building a presence of authority in your niche.

With more competition than ever, it’s not uncommon for users to seek out Instagram growth hacks that can help their performance significantly.

While some people are here to look for a blanket solution that will turn your Instagram completely viral overnight, we’ll stop you right there— we wish there was a one-size-fits-all tactic that will turn you into an instant Instagram sensation, but if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

There certainly are, however, Instagram growth hacks that can help your performance and give you a huge leg up on the competition.

No matter if you’re looking for more followers, content tips, hashtag info, and more, our top 20 list of Instagram growth hacks will help you with all of that and more.

Growing your Instagram account organically is the best thing you can do if you want to have a lasting Instagram profile that continually generates more interest over time.

All of the strategies you’ll find below are completely actionable and will work for any account, in any niche!

There are three things that you need to consider as we get started on the Instagram growth hacks that you should be using. You’ll need to be very clear about the following things:

Who are you trying to get attention from?
What value or message are you sending?
What can you provide that your competition can’t?

In order for you to start our list of Instagram growth hacks with the best foot forward, we’re going to briefly discuss each one and give you some brainstorming time, so get ready!

How to Figure out Your Target Audience on Instagram

You’re not going to make everyone happy, and you’re not going to be able to capture the attention of every single Instagram user .

Usually, this can actually hurt your strategy as it’s the same concept, no matter what Instagram growth hacks you use.

While it’d be absolutely amazing if we could captivate the entire 1+ billion monthly active users on Instagram, it’s more important to know your target audience.

People who are connected to your niche and want to see content like yours are more likely not only to follow you, but also to take action.

Know exactly who your content is being put out there for, and tailor your content to those people. Use your captions and hashtags to also signal the attention of those specific people.

Are you targeting business people? Make up artists? Fitness for men, or fitness for women? Travelers?

There are so many specific ways that you can target your audience aside from demographics like age and location.

Consider who these people are, what they do, and what content + language would appeal to those people.

How to Identify Your Brand Image on Instagram

Another one of the key pieces of information you need to know when creating a strategy with Instagram growth hacks is to be clear about your brand’s voice and image. What are you saying, and how does your voice differentiate you from the others in your niche?

When you have a unique or branded element that helps users to identify you and understand who you are, you can gain traction and make an impact on people in your niche.

How to Find Your Competitive Advantage

Alongside understanding your brand’s voice and image, you’ve got to take that even further to give your audience something that makes you tangibly different from others. Instagram and success against the algorithm is all about providing value to users.

This could be as simple as an experience, a story, or something else that users can get from you that they can’t get from others.

After you have been able to successfully define these three aspects of your brand or business, you’ll have a much better opportunity to implement different Instagram growth hacks.

You may or may not be doing a few of these things already, but when you take all of the following 20 tactics and strategies and combine them, you’re likely to develop a profile that takes a stronghold in your niche and can get your Instagram reputation to new levels.

Instagram Growth Hacks for Fast Instagram Growth

Are you ready to get your Instagram account on the move and boost your reputation? Get ready, because we’re bringing these 20 Instagram growth hacks directly to you!

These hacks are geared for small businesses, entrepreneurs, influencers, creators, artists, and anyone else who wants to solidify their presence on Instagram and build a strong following that will not only support your endeavor but also help to boost monetization and revenue.

Let’s get started!

1. Growthoid for Follower Growth and Reach

Getting more Instagram followers is something that everyone seeks. While follower count isn’t the only important metric for Instagram success, it’s undeniable that you need a strong audience to view your content regularly as well as high engagement if you want your content to get seen by more people.

If you’ve been working on Instagram for some time now, you know that trying to get more users to notice you and follow you on the platform can be incredibly tedious, time-consuming, and sometimes discouraging.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could delegate those repetitive tasks to someone else so that you could focus on the other Instagram growth hacks on this list?

With Growthoid, you can do exactly that. We listed this as the first Instagram growth hacks because when you use Growthoid, you can free your schedule up to focus on the following strategies without losing your overall follower growth.

Growthoid is an organic Instagram growth service that will use your specific targeting instructions to identify and interact with users in your target audience. This will, in turn, bring you a higher follower count as well as boost your engagement.

Many other Instagram growth services simply try to send you fake followers or interact with anyone that they come across, but Growthoid is completely unique in that it offers the best, most specific targeting options in the industry.

That means you’ll reach more people that are likely to be interested in your content, helping you not only to get more Instagram followers, but get relevant ones that will enjoy what you post and engage with your content.

Growthoid never messes around with bots or fake followers, and they will keep your Instagram activity completely in line with Instagram’s terms of use, which is another big plus. They care about your safety and security and this is really important.

You can choose between two different growth plans on Growthoid, and both plans offer you no-contract services that you can cancel at any time.

With expert account managers, laser-sharp targeting, and a responsive support team that’s with you all the way, Growthoid is the best among Instagram growth hacks for audience interaction and follower growth.

2. Optimize Your Instagram Profile Elements

Now that you’ve got Instagram growth covered, the next of our Instagram growth hacks involves you taking a hard look at all the elements on your Instagram profile and optimizing them to catch people’s attention and define your brand.

The elements you should be concerned with include:

Username: keep your username memorable and relatively simple. Don’t include too many numbers, duplicate letters, or special characters.
Profile picture: you need an Instagram profile picture that is branded and professional. Try to keep the same profile picture on all of your social media networks for consistency and recognizability.
Bio: creating a strong Instagram bio is one of the most important Instagram growth hacks. People should be able to look at your bio and understand who you are and what you’re all about right away. You only have a few seconds to capture the user’s attention, so don’t waste the opportunity with your IG bio.
Call-to-actions: some businesses will have the option to add CTA buttons that allow users to book, email, reserve, call, etc. You can do this via the settings; consider which ones (if any) you might need and then display them accordingly. Make sure all the information is correct.
Overall Instagram aesthetic: Your posts should follow a pleasing aesthetic that represents your brand. Use consistent Instagram filters, and even consider using a visual schedule planner like Later so that you’ll be able to create a strong visual impact with your feed. Nothing you do on Instagram should be random— always think about how your content will look as a whole as well as on its own.
IG stories and story highlights: Instagram stories are one of the most popular features on the platform, so you should try to have an active one at all times. When users see that you have an active IG story, they’ll spend more time on your profile, which is likely to lead to a follow. Not only that, use your previous Instagram stories as Instagram story highlights and pin them to your profile in albums. Design album covers that enhance your overall brand image and profile appearance (more on these things later).
Link in bio: do you need users to be funneled to an external website? Instagram doesn’t allow links on their platform other than in the IG bio (and for some users, in the swipe up feature on IG stories), so you need to take advantage of putting a relevant link in your bio, or even a link directory that you can create with linktr.ee or linkin.bio.

All of these basic components of your Instagram account have to be completely intentional and created in a way that will make it easy for a user to understand who you are and what type of content they’ll be seeing when they follow your profile.

When all of these elements are cohesive, you’ll be much more likely to gain more Instagram followers and help people find the information they’re looking for when they land on your profile.

That will help you in more ways than one, and it’ll even help Growthoid when they work on your Instagram follower growth.

3. Cross-Platform Marketing

Instagram is obviously what we’re focusing on here, but it wouldn’t be a complete list of Instagram growth hacks without mentioning the power of social media integrations and how cross-platform marketing can help you.

Consider which other social media networks you want to build up so that you have an even stronger internet presence, and then you can promote each network within the other.

For instance, if you have a YouTube account, you can promote your YouTube content on Instagram and get people to go and watch your videos. Post teasers and trailers on your Instagram account.

Conversely, you can also use your YouTube to link to your Instagram account and make announcements about why people should go visit your Instagram and what type of information they can find there.

This is just one example of Instagram growth hacks with social media cross promotion; you can even share your content to different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and more.

This will get more visibility for your content and boost your overall reach.

4. Take Advantage of Instagram Stories

As mentioned in a previous section of our Instagram growth hacks, Instagram stories is one of the most popular features on the platform.

If you don’t have an active Instagram story strategy, you’re going to miss a lot of potential viewers on the platform.

Many Instagram users skip their news feeds altogether and focus mainly on the story feature, which means that it’s more important than ever to use it for your brand or business.

When you have an active Instagram story, you’ll see a colored ring appear around your profile picture.

This can capture the attention of users, and when they are your followers and view your story regularly, your profile picture will appear towards the front of their IG stories feed.

Stories only last 24 hours, so you have a great opportunity to share more intimate or casual moments with your followers as opposed to what you might normally post in your feed.

The great thing is that there are many different ways you can use Instagram stories to create meaningful content that your followers want to see, including:

Behind the scenes features
New product launches and announcements
Telling a cohesive story
Share stories that other users have mentioned you in
Interact with your followers using stickers
Tutorials or how-tos

These are just a few of the ways that Instagram stories can help your overall content offerings. Not only that, they can be saved and posted to your profile later, which is what we’re going to discuss in the next section.

5. Build Up Your Instagram Story Highlight Strategy

Once you become more active on Instagram stories, you’ll be able to take advantage of Instagram growth hacks related to IG story highlights.

If you’re not familiar with what this is, let us break it down. After you post an IG story, you can pin it to your profile in the form of an IG story highlight. This appears in a circular album underneath the bio on your Instagram profile.

It’s actually a very common practice and if you go to Instagram right now and check out your five favorite accounts, you’re likely to see them in action.

Instagram story highlights can be great for a variety of reasons:

Give users the opportunity to see your stories again
Offer relevant and important information
Feature products, dishes, properties, or any other element of your business
Create categories

We’ll discuss two more elements of IG story highlights for Instagram growth hacks in the next two mini-sections.

Categorize Your Highlights

Highlights offer you the chance to put your Instagram stories into albums, which can be invaluable among other Instagram growth hacks because it can make your content more user-friendly and help users know exactly where to find what they’re looking for.

It’s ideal for marketing and creating a strong and professional brand image because it shows that you understand how to meet the needs of your audience and it provides an easy way for them to access your content just how they want to.

Use On-Brand Album Covers

One of our favorite Instagram growth hacks is creating on-brand IG story highlight covers. You can be creative here and really show off your brand and give your profile a whole new look and feel with your albums.

There are plenty of brands and businesses that are doing this exactly the right way, so take a look at some of the competitors in your niche to see just what they’re doing.

Think about how to make your brand image stronger through these images.

Also consider the title of the album cover to make sure viewers know what they’re going to be looking at. You could also use emojis depending on your brand image and the purpose of your profile.

If you need a tool to help you create your IG story highlight album covers, consider Canva. They have a huge amount of social media templates and tools to help you not only with the album covers, but also with your IG stories, taking them to a more elevated and professional level.

6. Hashtag Your Captions

Hashtags remain one of the most valuable Instagram growth hacks out there, and without hashtags, you’re significantly limiting the power of your content to reach new people.

Growthoid will help you, but hashtags can put you in front of even more eyes.

Instagram posts with hashtags get put into a hashtag feed for each one that appears in the caption of the post.

That means any user who searches the hashtag or follows the hashtag feed can come across your content, interact with it, and even check out/follow your profile.

Knowing which hashtags are the best for your niche and for your target audience is key. If you use overly popular hashtags such as #igers or #love, these hashtags are virtually useless because you won’t get the chance to be seen.

Your posted content will get pushed down the feed so quickly that it’s not likely anyone will be able to catch it before it’s gone.

When you use targeted hashtags, you have a better chance to appear in front of your target audience, and that’s really what you need to remember in terms of Instagram growth hacks.

If you’re unsure of the hashtags you should be using, you can check out the best hashtag tool out there, Task Ant.

Not only will you be able to search for, filter, and see performance stats on hashtags, but you can also save them into sets for easy posting and different variations on your content.

Create a Branded Instagram Hashtag

Another thing you can do if you want to tap into additional Instagram growth hacks with hashtags is to create your own branded hashtag.

Brands like Old Navy and H&M have done this, and they are able to then create a new hashtag feed for content related to their brands.

You can tell users your hashtag in your Instagram bio, and encourage them to post using the tag.

Then, you’ll have a bank of user-generated content that you can feature and post later on, as well as a reference point for users who are curious to see more about your brand.

Additionally, you can use branded hashtags for campaigns, just like Coca Cola did with their #shareacoke hashtag, which became incredibly popular on Instagram and generated a lot of notoriety for their company.

7. Use Influencer Marketing

It wouldn’t be a complete list of Instagram growth hacks without mentioning the ultimate power that influencers have on the platform.

Influencer marketing is increasingly popular, and it can’t be denied that it holds a lot of potential for you to reach people in your target audience.

Influencers have a lot of credibility and trust from their audience, so when they recommend or feature products/brands/etc, their audience is likely to follow suit and check them out.

It can be difficult to understand which influencers are best and who to work with, so if you want to find the right influencer for your Instagram marketing campaign, you may consider using an Instagram user search tool or even a company like Upfluence or Tagger.

8. Connect Your Instagram to External Sites

If you have an ecommerce business, blog, travel site, portfolio, restaurant, and pretty much any other type of website imaginable, one of the best Instagram hacks for you is to create a gallery on your website of your Instagram content.

This will create a beautiful feature for your website but also prompt people to visit your Instagram account when they visit your website.

You can create one of these galleries using a WordPress or Shopify plugin, depending on where you host your site.

It’s really effective in drawing attention to your Instagram account and also creating a professional and tailored web presence for your Instagram content.

You can also link your Instagram to these external websites through the link in bio tool so that you can funnel traffic from Instagram to your outside website as well.

9. Run Instagram Giveaways

Instagram giveaways are one of the best Instagram growth hacks if you want to get a lot of followers and engagement in a short time.

While this isn’t something you can do every day, hosting a giveaway is a powerful way to generate interest in your account.

You can get even more reach for your content if you work with another person in your niche that has a large following.

You can create a giveaway with a prize that is desirable for your audience and then require them to do certain actions to gain entries.

For instance, if you work with another IG account, the requirements could be:

Follow @instagram1 and @instagram 2
Like this post
Comment and tag a friend
Share post (usually for bonus entries)

These actions will help you to get your content out there and also boost your engagement levels, both of which can be incredible for your Instagram presence.

You can also do the giveaway yourself without a partner, but if your audience is already small, it may not be as effective as partnering with other accounts that have a stronger and larger following.

10. Create Shoppable Posts

This is one of our Instagram growth hacks that’s directed towards businesses and brands that sell online products.

You can create an online catalogue for your products and link them to your posts, allowing people to purchase from right within Instagram itself.

By using shoppable posts to streamline the user experience, you can create a much better conversion rate and generate a lot of revenue from Instagram that you would otherwise have missed out on.

It’s so simple and easy; people can find out details about the product, and it’s a very seamless way to implement shopping into your Instagram feed without being too salesy. Your posts can remain completely aligned with your aesthetic and still capture sales.

The Instagram shoppable post feature is available to businesses and you’ll create the catalogue through your linked Facebook page, and you can then tag products in your post before you upload it to Instagram, just as you would tag a person or a location.

It’s one of the easiest no-brainer Instagram growth hacks for those of you that are selling physical products.

11. Become an Instagram Video Expert

Instagram video content is known to perform better than normal content and also gets much higher engagement levels than other regular static posts.

It’s not surprising considering there are always more and more video features introduced on Instagram.

This includes not just in-feed video posts, but also video content in your carousel posts, IGTV, IG stories, Instagram lives, and reels. You can seriously expand your content’s reach and audience if you use Instagram videos.

People also feel that they can connect more with videos because they see the person or product physically and not simply in a flat, 2-D way.

Videos can do a lot for your brand authenticity and transparency, so they should be an absolute must on your go-to Instagram growth hacks list.

12. Create Conversations

Social media is still based around social interaction, so that’s what you should aim to do. You can participate in conversations on other accounts and gain visibility for your account that way. You should also respond to all comments that you receive on your profile as well as any DMs.

One thing that you shouldn’t do is pay for a bot to leave auto-comments on other users’ posts. Doing so doesn’t present advisable Instagram growth hacks because your profile looks like spam and you can actually diminish your reputation.

Use your own account to leave comments on relevant accounts and get your username out there in the community.

Also, keep your comments on accounts that are likely to be followed by the type of user that you want to follow you.

13. Write Captions Geared toward Engagement

Although Instagram is a visual platform, you shouldn’t ignore the element of writing that appears through Instagram captions, offering you some serious Instagram growth hacks through the written word.

You can use your captions to expand on your photo, offer useful or interesting information, announce a sale or discount, tell a story, tag users, and so much more!

When you create an Instagram comment, you should also include something that prompts the IG user to take action.

Ask them to like the photo if a condition is true for them, leave a comment with their own ideas or opinions, tag a friend, and more.

Captioning your Instagram content appropriately can have a big impact on your follower growth, brand voice, as well as engagement rates.

14. Feature User-Generated Content

User-generated content, also known as UGC, is when a user on Instagram creates content for you and you feature it. If you have users that are showing off your product, talking about your brand, or even tag you in posts, you should try and feature that.

UGC is known to boost engagement because it inspires others to participate and engage with the post, and it also leads to more UGC because people want to be featured.

That means you can use a branded hashtag as we mentioned earlier and get a solid content stream of user posts that can add credibility to your brand and even give you content to feature.

Some IG influencers or brands create a “weekly roundup” type post that features different pieces of UGC so that it doesn’t completely take over their feed; other accounts such as H&M focus almost exclusively on posting UGC as their main content type.

15. Tag Other Instagram Users

The more that you mention other Instagram users, the more likely you are to be noticed. You can mention users so that they get the notification that you tagged them, and then they’ll check out your profile or even feature your content.

This is especially strong as far as Instagram growth hacks go because you can create your own user-generated content that features other brands or influencers, and then tag them, hoping to get featured on their page.

You can boost your visibility that way and also start to build relationships with other accounts that may come in handy later.

16. Go Live

Instagram live is one of the Instagram growth hacks that can work for pretty much any and every user. When you go live, you can connect with your audience in ways that you can’t do on other content types.

They can give you direct feedback and comments right then and there, and you can respond. You can also go live with other Instagram users to pull in more viewers, and post your IG Live in your stories for people to see later on.

Some content ideas for IG Live include:

Behind the scenes
FAQ session
Live feedback
Interviews

Instagram Takeovers

Another way you can use Instagram stories and Instagram live is to get someone to “take over” your IG account for the day.

This can be someone that’s an expert in your niche that provides valuable and entertaining information to your followers.

You can have an influencer do it, an employee or company rep, or even another expert from your industry.

17. Join Engagement Groups

Engagement groups are new among other Instagram growth hacks, and this is where different Instagram users get together and work together to collectively boost the engagement on each other’s posts.

Many of them use IG direct messages or even Telegram to create a group; the members will let users know when there’s content to engage with, and you’ll all do each other the favor.

If you can’t find any IG engagement groups, you can band together with other users in your network and create your own.

18. Use Instagram for Market Research

You shouldn’t feel that you can’t interact and engage with your followers, and if you’re trying to figure out what they want, why don’t you just ask them?

When you build a strong bond and rapport with your followers, not only does that build loyalty and trust, but it also allows you the opportunity to participate with them directly to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Instagram stories are perfect for this — you can use the interactive stickers such as polls, questions, ranking slider, and others to create posts that dive into what your followers like, what they prefer, and what they want to see more of (or less of).

It’s one of the easiest Instagram growth hacks because it’s fun for your followers, it’s easy for them to participate, and it doesn’t seem like you’re hounding them or trying to pump them for information. It’s very natural!

19. Track Your Instagram Analytics

One of our final Instagram growth hacks is absolutely imperative if you want to see real, tangible growth results from your Instagram strategy.

You must have a strong Instagram content strategy and the only way to tailor that is through Instagram analytics.

When you review your Instagram analytics and how your content performs, you can gain insight into the areas that you do well and where you need to amp things up, giving you ideas for actionable improvements to your strategy.

The following elements are things that you should consider when posting and creating content on Instagram, and then track those different areas as well.

Niche and Industry

The first thing is to know your niche and know your industry. For instance, if you’re in the food and beverage industry, posting photos of seascapes isn’t going to get you the draw you need. Keep in mind that you should understand your industry and know what type of content thrives there.

Check out other giants in your niche and see what type of content they’re posting to get the right idea, or do some hashtag searches and get inspiration.

Audience Stats

You should consider who your audience is as well. Instagram insights can give you the information about where your largest base is, what time they’re usually online, the percent of male/females, and so on.

Use these to understand who is primarily consuming your content, and then add some additional factors into your strategy:

What challenges are they facing?
What do they need help with?
What do they want?
How can you help solve these challenges and give them what they want?

Engagement Strategies

Engagement is the only way to thrive against the Instagram algorithm, so you have to boost your engagement. When your content is tailored to the problems and needs of your audience, they are more likely to engage.

You should also follow Instagram trending topics and understand what’s going on not only in your niche but also around the platform as a whole. Continue to interact with users on Instagram through comments and DMs.

Use Instagram engagement techniques like calls to action in your captions as well as giveaways to give your engagement a boost and check out Instagram insights to see which content is getting the best engagement.

Hashtags

As we mentioned in our hashtag section, know how your hashtags are performing and do some tests. Instagram growth hacks for hashtags include:

Testing out different hashtags and comparing content performance
Using a tool like Task Ant
Checking out hashtags that competitors use

Instagram Insights

Instagram insights is available for free on the Instagram app for any account that has a business or professional account, and you should get very cozy and comfortable with using it if you want to see how your Instagram growth hacks are helping your content and your performance.

If you don’t want to track it yourself, consider using an Instagram analytics tool like Iconosquare.

20. Offer Your Followers Value

Out of all of the Instagram growth hacks we’ve mentioned, every single one of them is geared toward offering your followers value.

You should show why you’re different and you want to make your content accessible, enjoyable, and desirable for your followers and new viewers.

Not only that, give them something that they can’t get elsewhere and set yourself apart from the competition.

Final Thoughts: Instagram Growth Hacks

So, which of our Instagram growth hacks are you just dying to try? Which ones have you already been doing?