How To Grow Instagram Followers Organically 2021
Now in this article, I’m actually going to show you exactly how to grow your Instagram account organically in 2021. No bots, no cheating, no follow for follow, no nothing from 2019. Real ways to increase your follower count, for FREE!
Big brands and Instagram businesses are using these Instagram strategies to grow their awareness right now. Now we’ve managed multiple Instagram accounts for a while, and since then we’ve grown Instagram accounts by over 30,000 followers each, in as little as 3 months by simply applying exclusively organic strategies.
Now I know nowadays it’s really easy to buy your way into Instagram success. You can buy followers, you can buy likes, you can buy anything that you want.
But for me personally, I’ve always favored the organic approach, especially if you are using Instagram for your business. Genuine follower growth has always been important to me. And I really say this for multiple reasons.
First of all, if you’re spending money automating your engagement or spending money buying Instagram likes and buying followers, you’re going to need to financially keep that up for a long period of time.
If you suddenly stop investing in growing your account, it’s going to be very obvious to brands that your past success was all fake. That it was something that you purchased and now you can’t keep up with it.
Grow Instagram Followers Organically 2021
- Stick To Using Organic Strategies
- Optimize Your Username For Organic Traffic
- Create Engaging Captions That Convert
- How To Convert True Fans: Know, Like, Trust
- 10x Your Instagram Hashtag Strategy
- Rotate Your Instagram Hashtags
- Engage With Your Followers & Build A Community
- Instagram Hashtag Engagement Hack
- 5 Ways To Double Your Sales In 90 Days With Instagram
Stick To Using Organic Growth Strategies

I’ve seen a lot of influencers and I’ve seen a lot of business profiles have massive accounts and huge success all the sudden. Till they can no longer afford the investment or can no longer upkeep the manual work and that growth comes to a complete stop. That’s a really dangerous spiral to find yourself in.
An important reason why it’s important to stick to organic strategies for your business, is you want to engage with real followers, with your target audience, real potential customers, and real potential clients. If all of them are fake or if all of them are ghost followers, you’re really only talking to yourself.
If you agree with these points at all or you are actually down for learning how to grow from 0 to 5,000 followers FAST, then keep on reading because I’m going to share the five top hacks that I’ve used to grow Instagram accounts organically from 0 to almost 8,000 followers. No fake engagement, no constant unfollows, no fake followers, just real, genuine, step by step real growth.
And also before I forget, make sure you keep on reading because at the end I’m going to share a resource that you can download with my full checklist of things to look at for how to Gain Instagram Followers Organically 2021. You definitely don’t want to miss that. I’m also going to teach you the organic growth strategies AND help you make your feed look bomb with quality content. Because truth be told, your feed is actually the first impression that someone has when they go onto your account.
And you want to make sure that you make the best first impression possible so that it increases the chances of them following you and engaging with your content.

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Optimize Your Instagram Name For Social SEO

Now the first tip that I have that I feel a lot of people gloss over or don’t mention at all, is to actually change your name on Instagram so that you can optimize your SEO. And what SEO means is search engine optimization.
Let me explain.
As we mentioned before, Instagram is its own self-contained search engine. In order to show up for the correct terms in the search bar, you need to work within the app itself to land that coveted top-of-search positioning.
Basically what you’ll notice is that on our page you’ll see that instead of just putting our agency name on the front, we actually put Top Social Media Marketing Agency because that’s what we are.
And the reason why this is important (and what we see a lot of people NOT doing) is that when you actually go into search and let’s say I type in a social media agency, even though the person is typing social media and not necessarily Social Influenc., I’m still going to show up on the page, which is awesome. It’ll bring in more organic traffic to your page.
What I recommend to you, especially if you have a business, or you’re a service-based business, is that you need to capitalize on the name section that’s on your bio because that’s going to allow you to rank higher in Instagram SEO.
Realistically, no one is searching Social Influenc on Instagram, especially people who don’t know us.
And if people are looking for social media marketing content, or they want to look for a business coach, or something like that, they’re going to search for that on Instagram search and we’re going to pop up.
The same thing if let’s say for example you’re a fitness coach. If you actually put fitness coach as your name and someone in the area is looking for a fitness coach to work with, guess who’s going to pop up in the search?
You.
Definitely make sure you’re leveraging that key aspect of that bio section, and you’re not putting it to waste. Because that is precious real estate to help you rank higher in Instagram search and bring in a higher quality of traffic to your account.
Create Captions That Convert To Gain Instagram Followers Organically In 2021
The second tip that I have for you is to write captions that convert. I know it’s really easy to want to post a meaningless emoji or a song lyric, but it’s important to really add depth to your Instagram content.
Shorter captions aren’t always the best strategy when creating engaging content.
Something that I love to teach my clients when we’re talking about their Instagram strategy is, yes, the post itself. The picture has to be nice because it’s going to encourage someone to stop scrolling and actually pay attention to what you have to say.
But it’s the caption that allows those conversations to happen and that actually draws that engagement.
Think of it like dating.
Usually, you want to date someone because first off you were attracted to their looks maybe, but you decided to actually date them and to actually keep in touch with them, and stay connected because of their personality.
Literally use this analogy and apply it to Instagram.
Now for me, I actually write a lot of long-form captions into my posts on a regular basis. And I actually kind of treat my Instagram account like a micro-blog. And what I’ve found is that I’ve actually been able to spark a lot of one on one private conversations since doing this.
Now I know a lot of people care about vanity metrics like likes, comments, so on and so forth.
But for me, I’ve really changed my perspective and I actually measure my success on Instagram on the number of private conversations in DMs that I have with another person. Especially if you’re using Instagram for your business, the people who are actually engaging with you privately are your warmest leads. Your potential customer.
My clients already have found me through Instagram DM because I took the time to actually cultivate those strong relationships with them.
In order for me to actually get to that point though I’ve written vulnerable, deep captions that they can connect with. And that’s what’s really contributed to my success, and how I’ve been able to find a lot of my clients online.
Actually, I’m going to change my vocabulary.
I don’t find my clients, they find me.
How To Convert True Fans: Know, Like, Trust

If you actually want to treat your Instagram like a true business and create those long-form relationships and those warm leads, then definitely having micro-blog-like captions is actually the way to go.
Because yes, not everyone is going to resonate, but the people who do, they become your potential clients, or they become your biggest fans. Because they feel a stronger connection with you and they feel know, like, and trust you.
And really quickly before I hop onto my third piece of advice, I’m actually going to explain what know, like, and trust is. Know, like, and trust is so crucial for your business.
Know, you want people to actually know who you are.
Then eventually you want them to like you because of what you’re posting or whatever.
And lastly, you want them to trust you.
That’s kind of the level that you want to get at with all of your potential clients. Even if you don’t have a business, then your audience.
Know, like, and trust is so important in actually funneling sales into your business and actually creating a very strong tribe and community.
You don’t want to skip out on that.
Definitely every time they’re using a social media platform, really ask yourself, “Am I building know, like, and trust with my potential follower?”
10x Your Instagram Hashtag Strategy

Now the third piece of advice that I also don’t see often when I’m researching about Instagram hacks is actually mixing the size of hashtags that you use.
Yes, I know everyone cringes when they hear the word hashtag, but it’s still a relevant piece if you want to grow on Instagram.
Because hashtags allow people to actually find you and it allows you to increase your reach.
However, the problem that I see is a lot of people use very big popular hashtags, like #makeup, #business, #success.
Those hashtags are actually massive and guarantee you by the time that you post it, you’re going to disappear from the hashtag explore page in five seconds. Because everyone is literally using that hashtag, and it is way too big.
What I actually recommend, and it’s going to take a little bit more work from you, but I promise that it’s worth it, is to actually mix up your hashtag sizes and do hashtag research to find the small to medium relevant hashtags that exist in your niche, or in your category.
Essentially what you want to know is that you want to focus your effort on 80% of the hashtags that you use on either the small to medium size tags.
The reason why you want to do this is that those are the tags that are actually kind of the more niche ones, and the ones where a lot of communities are inside.
There’s a lot of loyal people, or a lot of people that are actually loyal to those tags, and are more likely to search for them and follow them on Instagram. And it’s also going to increase the likelihood of you actually staying on that explore page for hashtags a lot longer, versus if you use really large tags.
You’ll notice an increasing engagement rate if you focus on smaller hashtags.
And again, if you need more help, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram DM’s for some advice. We don’t charge you a penny for helping point you in the right direction with social.
Don’t sleep out on that.
You need to switch up your hashtag sizes because that’s going to help you increase your reach, and also help to make sure that you’re actually reaching people that care about your content. Because the more niche that you are, and the more tailored and segmented that you are, the more likely that people are going to want to follow your content because you’re speaking to the right audiences.
Branded hashtags can also contribute to your Instagram marketing strategy as you create a prominent brand around your community. This will help you create user generated content and increase traffic to your page as well, but this is a whole other story.
Rotate Your Instagram Hashtags

Now on the topic of hashtags, this is my fourth piece of advice for you, and that is to actually rotate between your hashtags.
A big, big, big mistake that I see a lot of people do is that they use the same hashtags over and over and over again.
But the problem is that if you use the same hashtag too many times, Instagram is going to think that you are spam and actually decrease your reach, and actually… I don’t want to say the word shadow ban because I’m not sure if it’s true that shadow ban even exists. Because apparently, Instagram says that it doesn’t exist.
You aren’t going to Gain Instagram Followers Organically in 2021 like this.
But if you are using the same hashtags in every single post that you’re doing, you are going to be flagged for spam, and that’s going to increase the chances of you not showing up on the feed for your followers or for whoever else.
Just be careful that you are actually making a conscious effort of rotating the hashtags that you’re using and mixing it up every time.
I’ve seen a lot of brands make the mistake of using the same hashtag too many times.
After I’ve done my research in terms of the hashtags that I want to use, and I mix it up between small, medium, to large, I actually have a notepad on my iPhone and I have different hashtag groups.
I have group number one,
then group number two,
then group number three,
group number four.
While making sure that I’m using relevant hashtags on the specific type of content for that hashtag. And I kind of have multiple groups that I rotate between.
Every time I post something I kind of keep track of the groups that I’m using.
I copy and paste it, and then I put it in my caption.
I don’t really have to stress because it’s things that I’ve already done in the past, that I’ve already kind of in a way automated.
I’m not stressing about what hashtag to post for each post.
But at the same time, I’m also making a conscious effort to make sure that I’m not using the same ones over and over again.
On top of this following advice, I am also making sure that all my hashtag sizes are kind of varied, and there is a mix between small, medium, and large to make sure that my reach is maximized.
Those are some hacks that I wanted to share with you in terms of hashtags that have really helped me, and that I think will really help you, especially if you want to grow on Instagram organically.
Engage With Your Followers & Build A Community

Now, the last and final tip that I have for you is community engagement.
This is one of the most crucial growth strategies we use to grow our follower base. We execute this on all of the brands we work with.
Before you click out of this article, I know, I know community engagement is something that everyone dreads. It takes so much time, it is so time-consuming, and it’s also very exhausting.
But trust me, if you want to actually grow organically on Instagram, you need to put that energy back and you actually need to engage with other people. And there are a couple of reasons for this.
The first one is the algorithm. The more that people engage with you, and let’s say you actually take some time out of your day to engage with others, and they engage back, that’s going to show Instagram that, that’s the content that they want to see.
And it’s going to increase your chances of your post showing up on their feed.
That’s why community engagement is important.
There are a lot of things that can damage your Instagram Trust Score, but this isn’t one of them.
Another reason why community engagement is important is that the more you actually interact with other people, especially if they aren’t following you yet, it’s actually going to increase your reach organically.
You will grow a more engaged audience and people are going to become more curious about you and want to click on your page.
That’s why community engagement is so important. And yes, you can technically automate it, or hire someone, or even by a bot that’s going to allow you to kind of automatically engage with other people.
But it’s kind of awkward when someone DMs you and they’re like, “Hey, thank you for engaging with my posts.” And they kind of start talking to you and you’re like, “Wait a second, I don’t remember liking your posts at all away. Oh, wait it was my bot.”
Just know that if you actually outsource this to someone else, or use a bot, you are going to lose that genuine connection.
And then the reason why I’m saying this is that if you are using Instagram for business, and you want to attract clients and potential business opportunities, it’s really helpful that the message comes from you, and that you are the one that’s actually actively liking other people’s posts, or commenting on other people’s posts and engaging.
Because if it’s actually not that genuine, and it’s actually really awkward when someone replies back to you and you’re like, “Oh, who is this person?” Right?
That’s just something to keep in mind.
Instagram Hashtag Engagement Hack

I’m actually going to show you a hack I guess, or something that I use to make community engagement a lot easier.
A great feature that Instagram has is the ability to follow hashtags.
Following hashtags allows posts to automatically show up on my feed. And these posts are from people that I actually don’t know.
And it allows it to be easier for me to engage because it’s already on my feed, and I don’t have to actively go out there and search for people.
It’s already going to show up, and at the same time, I’m able to engage with my existing audience as well.
That’s just something really important to note, that you are able to actually follow hashtags.
Let’s say… For me, I’m a business coach, maybe I’ll follow the hashtag #torontobusiness, go to tags, there is one it has 125k, I follow it. And eventually, those posts that are random posts from people that are using the same hashtag, are going to show up in my feed.
And that’s what makes it a lot easier for community engagement, and actually kind of takes off the edge, and it makes it a lot more enjoyable because I’m already scrolling through the feed engaging with my followers anyway.
5 Ways To Double Your Sales In 90 Days With Instagram
Guys and girls, you’ve reached the end of the article. Those are my top insta hacks on how to gain new Instagram followers organically in 2021.
Now, if you want to learn more or if you want the full checklist of all the things that I’ve said to Gain Instagram Followers Organically 2021, then definitely check out www.socialinfluenc.ca.
Scroll all the way down to the bottom and redeem your free gift.