How to build real followers on Instagram

The right way to grow your business with this powerful brand, audience and content marketing tool

Recently, we talked about how to boost your business marketing with Instagram. Contrary to what many people still believe, Instagram is not just a fun app where you can post photos of food, vacations, and family.

Instagram has become a powerful branding, audience and content marketing tool for businesses. It has over 200 million monthly active members who share 60 million images and 1.6 billion likes daily.

Warning: there are a lot of people who promise to grow thousands of followers on Instagram, but beware. Most of them use fake accounts created by bots to inflate your numbers.

These types of followers have zero value. In fact, they can even be dangerous, Instagram Followers wanting to steal your password or photos or infect you with a virus.

According to data security company Imperva, these bad bots make up 28.9 percent of bots on Instagram.

The best way to build a following on Instagram is to be authentic to your brand and your audience.

Here are 3 tips to help you get real Instagram followers:

1. Tell a story with hashtags

It's great to use your business name as a hashtag, but you need to think beyond that.

If you want to gain followers with your Instagram posts, use other hashtags that tell the story of the image you're sharing. You want to start a conversation when you share posts about things like:

• Events

• Promotional events

• Competitions

• Product launch

A good example of a brand doing this well is @Tostitos. They use the hashtag #GetTogetherAlready to encourage people to get together and share their tokens, as well as to use the hashtag when they share photos of their gatherings.