Why some business profiles grow exponentially, and the others struggle to reach a thousand subscribers? In this blog, let us learn how to grow Instagram followers organically and maintain high engagement rates.
Fact: 91% of 3 billion users are subscribed to at least one business profile.
A lot of businesses find Instagram statistics overwhelmingly impressive and drop their efforts into building their social media presence. A strong social media presence is important for every business to compete and win more sales. Every business stood in this exact same point and wanted to learn how to grow Instagram followers organically at their own phase.
Why Do People Follow Brands on Social Media?
The answer to this question is key to your profile’s success. A successful social presence starts with understanding the target audience, as this will offer insights on what content to create. 80 % of users follow a brand due to interest in its product or service, while 55% are more interested in its promotions. Also, people follow business profiles that are entertaining and open for communication. Interestingly 30% simply engage with brands because their friends follow a brand’s content.
Although many people follow brands because they already liked them before they discovered them online. However, you can still take the opportunity to create entertaining content and show your brand’s personality and make your audience get to know you better.
Organic vs Non-organic Growth in Instagram
The temptation to use services and buy engagement is high. But trust us, you won’t benefit from reaching fake growth at any point in the future.
Instagram algorithm has changed a lot in 2026. A few thousand fake followers on your Instagram profile deliver more harm than benefit. Though Instagram can’t recognize your fake followers but your link will be among the other billion profiles soon. When you share a post and out of 10,000 followers only 60 liked your post or have even seen it, the algorithm will consider your content not interesting. Thus, your content will not be even displayed to your most loyal followers, who truly enjoy your posts.
Fake growth harms your Instagram statistics in many ways. Fake follower counts downgrades your social media marketing effort. So, how to grow Instagram followers organically?
Step-by-Step Instagram Organic Follower Growth Guide
Step 1: Plan, Create and Optimize Instagram Content Strategy
Your content strategy will evolve with time and reflect the ongoing behavioral and social changes. However, having a clear short-term strategy is crucial to hit the marketing goals.
Understand how your profile is going to represent your business and which brand strategy will be focused around. This is the right way to attract the target audience.
Step 2: Find Your Unique Voice and Approach
Instagram is a visual social media. It has its own personality and your business profile should get the most of it. There are no rules for your Instagram feeds.
Some well-known business profiles don’t use Instagram to show their product line. Instead, they share their core values and the ways you can use the product and what their brand stands for.
Each profile is unique in its own way. Make yours too!
Make your profile likeable by your audience, don’t be pushy with your product line—welcome people for direct conversation without a tie.
Step 3: Consistency is the Key
Posting content at random times without a consistent schedule will not bring more engagement. You will lose your engagement rate gradually. The Instagram algorithm is complex and continuously improves users’ feed based on their engagement history.
Check our blogs on best time to post on Instagram. We have also created separate blogs from Monday to Sunday to help you in posting at the right time.
If you follow our posting time blogs, I am sure you can engage your followers consistently and gain more followers over time. If you are looking for a tool to create, post and manage posts, try our indzu tool, where you can generate a month worth of post in just 10 minutes and your entire social media plan is complete in less than an hour. After scheduling posts, you can concentrate on growing your follower count.
Step 4: Understand Instagram’s Engagement-Seeking Algorithm
Instagram algorithm works differently in 2026. To be more precise, the Instagram algorithm decides what posts users see each time they open the app.
Though Instagram has not shared any guide on how the algorithm works. There are some factors that alters the user engagement.
- Engagement
The rate of how well users interact with your content in terms of likes, reposts, comments, and save posts.
- Timeliness
When users spend more time on your content, Instagram algorithm pushes your content to the explore section. Thus, your posts receive more chances of being seen by more people.
- Interests
When an Instagram user searches for #newyear2026 posts, Instagram algorithm shares posts with the same hashtags to you for more engagement. It also asks you, whether you are interested in those posts, if you are interested, click” interested”. Instagram will show you posts with similar content for 30 days.
- Relationships
Based on the user interaction with an account, Instagram will show posts that will match your interest regularly.
- Profile searches
Profile searches enhance your profile visibility on Instagram. If you are in North Carolina and search for Biltmore, you are definite to hit more popular posts from Biltmore in your Feeds or Explore section.
Step 5: Explore Your Competitors
Explore your competitor profiles, and their social media strategies. Identify what worked for them and what went wrong. Similarly, identify their posting time, content strategy and posting frequency.
Learn from their success and mistakes. Identify what your customers expect from you and how you can deliver with passion.
Step 6: Influencers, Advertising and Giveaways
Once you set up your Instagram profile and create your unique concept, you will grow slowly. This type of growth is healthy and serves a nice base for future marketing efforts. Your key metrics will be positive and overall, and the profile page will leave customers a good impression of a credible and reliable brand.
We strongly discourage you from buying followers, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t paid ways to grow your account.
Advertising, giveaways and sponsoring Instagram influencers are 3 main methods that will bring wide audience attention to your profile.
Instagram advertising In case you have a budget for social media marketing, Instagram Ads can help promote your account effectively. Instagram Ads work on Meta’s ad system. It can promote your account , posts, Reels, or Stories. Though it cannot guarantee followers or sales, it will increase your reach, visibility and discoverability in the platform.
Giveaways is the straightforward strategy to attract many people to your account. Try to reach the right audience with something that can interest only your target segment. First identify who your ideal customers is and what they want to receive and use. For a SaaS tool, 30-days subscription or an additional feature to their existing plan is a great idea.
It’s important to note all the pros and cons before launching a giveaway. Attracting short-term or fake followers are one of the biggest cons you should avoid. To do so, first of all, choose your goal (to gain more followers, to grow email subscriptions, etc.) and be clear and precise with your participation instructions.
Sponsoring Instagram influencers:
Today, there are indeed real opinion makers, who can boost your sales. Their positive opinion shared with a million followers can be more effective than a BBC live telecast. But not every big account owner is the right person to work with. Understand their audience and pick influencers with closest to your target segment as possible.
Look for local influencers near you. Your general feed will help you identify the right one.
Consider working with micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers have excellent engagement rate similar to macro-influencers. If you are a small business owner, start with micro-influencers. They are the biggest part of the influencer community and can deliver your message to the right audience in time.
How to Hack the Instagram Algorithm?
- Add CTA (calls to action) to your captions:
- Create your custom hashtags:
- Communicate with Followers: Discuss with your followers, ask questions and answer their queries promptly. People always love personal attention. 2026 is all about personalization.
- With actions comes engagement on Instagram:
Every action taken on a post: liking, writing a comment, tagging someone, reposting is considered as a separate interaction with the post by the Instagram algorithm.
- Strong Customer Support Channel:
In addition to the friendly atmosphere on the page, you need to create a strong customer support channel. Instagram followers expect more from their influencers, so make your followers feel welcomed. Don’t just quickly respond using template answers to clients’ problems, but really show your readiness to help and provide a solution for their problems. For some people, leaving feedback in the comments section is easier and faster than reaching you via email. Provide a platform for them to talk to you in a way that is more convenient for them.
Adding CTA your captions to encourage your followers to interact with your post content. Most common examples of CTA are “Double tap if you agree”, “Click link in bio”, “Tag your friend”, etc. Make sure your CTA is relevant to your photo/video. You can also add a strong CTA in your bio section to engage everyone visiting your profile. It will also drive traffic to your website.
Use hashtags to build a community around your brand. Hashtags helps brands to connect with their followers, and feel like a family. Try not to use overly popular hashtags, instead try to create your own hashtags.
If you want to monitor all comments and engagement you receive from your followers, you need a powerful tool to help you out. You don’t want vital feedback or customer complaint to be buried under many others.
Try out indzu.com tool. It tracks all engagement and monitors your social media posts in a single dashboard.
How to get 10 k followers on Instagram?
Getting 10000 followers on Instagram requires content strategy, consistency and communication. With these 3Cs you can definitely reach your goal.
How to grow Social Media Followers for your Business?
Start by defining your niche and audience. Develop content that entertains, educates and solves unique customer problems.
You can use a mix of Reels, Carousels, and Stories. Also optimize your bio with a clear CTA, post consistently at right times and use relevant hashtags.
Respond to your customer queries and maintain a good interaction in your social media account.
Conclusion:
Growing your Instagram profile organically is definitely a challenge. But, it pays off with real benefits like great customer relationship, strong brand awareness, and excellent engagement rate. Thus, focusing on building real audience always shares the best part of pie.
