Tips & Resources for Increasing Your Number of Followers

Grow your following on Facebook & Instagram

Increase your followers’ interest in your Facebook & Instagram posts

Create posts that attract more likes, comments, and shares

Post share-worthy content

Optimize your posts for sharing. See this link and this link for types of content that generate more shares.

Types of content that are more likely to be shared include:

Posts with lists
Interesting and relevant news
“Why posts”
“How-to posts”

Trigger shares

See this article about share triggers, like the below:

Share trigger 1: Information gaps to spark curiosity
Share trigger 2: Great content design
Share trigger 3: Content utility
Share trigger 4: Social currency
Share trigger 5: Content length
Share trigger 6: Calls to action

Follow relevant businesses

Begin following other businesses, ideally relevant ones that may be a source of customers.

Engage with their posts (like, comment, share) as appropriate. Engagement is especially useful for starting a relationship and you may want to do this with as many relevant businesses as you can.

Follow your followers

Gain follows through your own base of followers

Check your ratio of people following you compared to the number you follow. If it is greater than 2 to 1, you are likely to gain followers by strategically following your current followers back.
With Facebook, unfortunately, it currently isn’t possible to determine your followers to the following ratio, so perform this work strategically.

There’s likely to be a good set of followers to start with: Usually, there is a small group of fans who regularly like each post who you should be sure to follow.

Be aware of limits

When following other accounts, pay attention to Instagram’s limits.

Instagram’s limits (see this link) are roughly:
10 follows per hour
Maximum of 100-150 follows per day
Try to achieve a 2:1 or lower ratio of your number of followers to the number of accounts you follow.

Hashtag strategy

Apply current best practices for hashtags

In posts, mix trending hashtags plus hashtags that are relevant to each individual post’s topic(s).
Top 100 Trending hashtags per day, week, month.
See this hashtag guide for Instagram.

Monitor other peoples’ use of relevant hashtags and engage where appropriate

Mention.com can be valuable for this
It is important to always monitor Instagram/Facebook for tag notifications

Utilize user-generated content

Engage with and strategically repost user-generated content (UGC).

When a user sees UGC on a business’s feed, the biz’s credibility gets a lift and your chances of gaining their following are that much higher.
See this article.

Trending issues/latest information

Trends / Stay relevant: Users always like to share trending issues with their friends as a way of giving them the latest information in town.

Trending topics ideas: newsjacking where appropriate/not controversial, such as posting stills & videos of events/unusual sightings in the area when they occur.

Reposting content when it is about your business

There may be lots of people that interact with your business and who don’t follow you on social media. These people may be posting good content like pictures with hashtags that are specific to your product, service, or brand.

When you repost their content (with proper credit), that person’s followers (no matter its 500 or 5000) have a chance to get to know about your business.

People really like the fact when a business recognizes something created by them. And, if as a result they follow you back, the whole pool of their friends will see your account in the mutual follower/friend list.

To make the above work, it’s important to always monitor Instagram/Facebook for tag notifications so you are aware right away when people tag your product or business or brand in their posts.

Monitor for hashtags that are relevant

Monitor other people’s use of hashtags that are relevant to your field or area or line of work, and engage with them as appropriate.

Many tools are available to monitor social media hashtags automatically, some of them have a free tier, such as this tool.

Read tips for growing interest and engagement with your posts >>