Despite Instagram being one of the most influential social media platforms businesses, influencers and personal brands can use, it is still at the top of the list. Instagram is able to reach out to customers and build an engaged following.
However, the platform is extremely competitive, and organic reach has been declining as more and more content floods the user’s feed.
To stand out in 2024 and 2025, having an effective Instagram strategy will be more important than ever. Simply posting visually appealing photos and hoping for the best will no longer cut it. To draw and keep consumers in the next years, businesses must get inventive with their content and interaction strategies.
This article explores creative solutions businesses and influencers can implement over the next two years to boost their Instagram followers and engagement. Next, we’ll discuss tried and true strategies like using influencer marketing, optimizing hashtags, hosting contests and giveaways, and more.
Leveraging Influencer Marketing for Instagram Growth
The most cost-effective customer acquisition method for brands of all sizes is influencer marketing. With social media users becoming more and more wary of traditional ads, the recommendations of influencers they know and trust are a powerful alternative.
According to a 2022 study by QR, 89% of marketers say influencer marketing efforts are equally or more effective than other marketing channels. And 72% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation.
If you’re a brand investing in an influencer campaign for Instagram, then you’re going to get good returns on your investment. These campaigns can bring in new audiences and get followers to your profiles. In addition, influencer content has higher engagement rates than branded posts.
When vetting potential influencer partners for 2024/2025, brands should be looking at follower count, engagement metrics, content quality and audience alignment. Smaller but highly engaged, targeted niches are often the sweet spot for micro and nano influencers, who can be very effective partners at a lower cost than celebrities with massive reach.
Optimizing Hashtags to Improve Discovery
One of the best ways to increase the number of eyes on your Instagram content and new profile visits is to strategically optimize your hashtags. But as we enter 2024-2025, it’s not enough to just fill posts with the most popular hashtags.
With hashtag stuffing becoming more common, Instagram’s algorithm has started deprioritizing posts trying to exploit hashtags this way. Rather than prioritizing volume, brands must have a just social hashtag strategy that balances relevance, personalization and volume in order to get visibility.
Influencer MarketingHub states that Instagram posts that use 3-5 hashtags get the most engagement in 2024 research. Use some very targeted, unique hashtags (<100k posts) along with mid-range hashtags (100k-500k posts) and mix them in with widely used hashtags in your niche (500k+ posts).
Furthermore, Meta’s Hashtag Insights also provides you with tools to find hashtags related to your brand that are low in competition. Also, when you can include a personalized branded hashtag in posts, do it to help people find you via search.
Driving Followers Through Contests & Giveaways
For a long time, giveaways and contests have been staple Instagram strategies for gaining followers to engage and expose. Promotions like these executed creatively and effectively, can fuel impressive growth in 2024 – 2025.
One of the big keys is to offer prizes that are obviously in line with your target audience’s preferred tastes. An outdoor apparel brand may offer a backpack and cooler, or a makeup brand may offer a year’s worth of cosmetics.
To reach the largest number of people, brands should push for contests on other social channels and through influencer and employee networks. Drive profile visits and conversions to followers by requiring users to follow the brand’s Instagram account to enter.
Through smart strategic prize selection, cross-promotion and influencer involvement, thousands of targeted invested followers can be acquired from 2024 to 2025.
Driving Engagement Through Instagram Stories & Live Video
Quality feed posts are critical for new followers on Instagram, but Instagram’s ephemeral Stories and Live formats are really incredible ways to keep followers engaged post-conversion.
Compared to feed posts, Instagram Stories have a higher engagement rate on average. Influencers or other real people still have higher engagement with stories.
To boost Stories engagement in 2024 and beyond, brands should:
- Let followers relate to the people behind the brand by posting more candid, behind-the-scenes footage
- Poll and ask questions so that you can get followers involved and feel heard
- Showcase real customer experiences (with permission) by sharing user-generated content
- Collaborate with employees and influencers by featuring takeovers and guest content
Similarly, Instagram Live enables real-time interaction and authentic connections with followers.
During a live broadcast, viewers can react, ask questions and get to know brand personalities in a raw, unedited format. Brands can also add a clickable “Follow” sticker during the video to drive more followers to their profiles.
Additional Tactics to Boost Followers & Engagement
A few other creative tactics brands can test to boost Instagram growth over the next couple of years include:
Leveraging Link Stickers in Stories
The best way to drive traffic to your profile and convince visitors to follow is by adding swipe-ups or link stickers to Stories. Use them to highlight recent posts followers will want to see, promotions in your bio link, etc.
Running Ads with Strong Calls to Action
Instagram ads can be well designed to help brands reach more people with relevant content and powerful CTAs to visit or follow the profile. Also, the post-click experience should be optimized for conversions.
Cross-Promoting with Employee & Brand Advocate Accounts
Share your materials and advertise your Instagram handle with staff, brand champions, and devoted consumers. This increases the scope of your brand by means of reliable relationships.
Offering Customer Coupons for Following
Companies might provide free samples, little discounts, or other unique offers just to clients who use Instagram. This incentive can persuade audiences primed for purchases to remain in touch.
Repurposing Top Content
Resurfacing some of your best-performing Instagram material occasionally will help you attract new viewers who might have missed it the first time. Edit the copy and images to make them seem fresh.
Key Takeaways for Gaining Instagram Followers in 2024-2025
And that’s it – a bunch of different creative growth tactics that you can test on Instagram over the next couple of years as competition increases, but opportunities still abound.
Here are some key takeaways as you develop your 2024-2025 Instagram strategy:
- Look for mutually helpful influencer partnerships that fit your expertise and target market
- Create a thoughtful, tailored hashtag system to strike a mix between loudness and relevancy
- Plan events with appealing incentives to attract new members
- Create entertaining, real-life stories and live videos for those following to interact with
- Discover new tools like Link Stickers that increase traffic and follow count
- Drive Instagram content across employees, influencers, and loyal brand advocates
- Paid partnerships and ads with optimized post-click landing pages are something to consider
- Provide discounts and perks to your Instagram followers only
With competition and saturation growing on the platform, just showing up won’t cut it anymore. As a brand, you have to strategically create, promote and distribute content that offers value, entertainment or incentive that will make users follow and engage.
In 2024-2025, those who skillfully combine organic community building with paid acquisition will have a leg up on others who will fight to be seen and grow.
