A Client Asked Me: “How Can We Grow Our Followers Quickly?”
A client recently asked me a simple question.
“We want to grow our followers. What tactics can we implement this month to increase our following?”
Here was my response.
The first thing I asked back was this:
What is the purpose of wanting more followers?
Because followers do not necessarily translate into people seeing your content.
Good content does.
Instagram has shifted over the past few years from a social graph to an interest-based graph. The platform now prioritizes content it believes people will enjoy rather than simply showing posts from accounts they follow.
The result is something many brands have noticed but few talk about.
People are following brands less than they used to.
But they are still discovering content.
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If the Goal Is Retail Optics
In many cases, brands want more followers because retailers look at social media.
Buyers check Instagram.
They look at engagement.
They try to understand if consumers care about the product.
If the sole goal is to create the appearance of traction for retail conversations, there are tactics that can accomplish that quickly.
One option is purchasing followers.
I have honestly never recommended this before. But if the only objective is retailer optics, the downside is smaller today than it once was because Instagram distributes content based on interest signals rather than follower relationships.
Still, it is not the strategy I prefer.
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The Most Organic Way to Grow
The best long-term path to growing followers is great content.
When your content is great, Instagram naturally distributes it to new audiences.
And those audiences become followers.
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Other Tactics We Could Test
There are also some tactical ways to accelerate discovery.
Broaden the audience targeting
For example, if a product is sold at Fresh Market, we could target a broader group of consumers as opposed to just Fresh Market consumers. This would drastically reduce CPM and introduce the brand to a much wider audience.
The tradeoff is that some of the people discovering the brand may not have immediate access to buy it.
But awareness still grows.
(getting in the weeds) Promote posts directly through Instagram
Another option is to promote content directly on Instagram instead of using Ads Manager.
This approach drives traffic more directly to the Instagram profile, which can increase follower growth. The tradeoff is that we lose some targeting precision.
Still, if the immediate objective is to grow followers, this tactic can work well.
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The Bigger Point
Follower growth alone rarely drives real business outcomes.
What actually matters is:
- People discovering your content
- People talking about your product
- Retailers seeing consumer interest
- Consumers buying the product
Followers can signal momentum.
But content and distribution create demand.
So before chasing follower counts, it is always worth asking one simple question.
What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Because the strategy changes depending on the answer.
