5 Ways to Grow your Instagram Following

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As a person who fell in love with Instagram two weeks after it was released into the App Store back in 2010 (even before I had a blog!), Instagram was a way to share through social media in a way no other applications had before. It’s grown exponentially in the past few years, with everyone from your best friend, sibling, local bakery, to even sports stars and celebrities posting regularly to it. It’s a snapshot into their lives just as it is into yours. Instagram is a way to share a message for your blog or website without even having to craft an entire post, and brands are noticing, leveraging, and they want in on the snapshot action, too!

If you’re loving Instagram like everyone else, but unsure how to grow your Instagram following, here are some tips and tricks:

Take great photos. That probably goes without saying, but if you want people to like and follow you, you’ve got to make your subject matter important enough to them. No, you don’t need to be a professional photographer to get likes and follows on Instagram, but it does help to have either a great camera or a great smartphone camera to get great clear shots. Show your passions, shoot what you love, and the people will follow.

When all else fails, there’s always the marina with friends. ?

A photo posted by Jenn ✈️ The Rebel Chick (@therebelchick) on Jul 12, 2016 at 5:29pm PDT

Stick to a theme or niche. Brand your Instagram into 5 or 7 things that comprise you and who you are as a person, things that make you YOU, and share often. Then, go out and find others in those in the same theme/niche and follow them, too. Because I’m a travel writer and travel often, you’re always going to see my travel posts on my IG, but you’re also going to see food and drink posts. I’m also a sucker for poetry, so you’ll see quotes as the captions on some of my photos.

Wandering is the activity of the child, the passion of the genius; it is the discovery of the self, the discovery of the outside world …These discoveries are essential to realizing what it means to be human. To wander is to be alive. – Roman Payne #TravelTuesday #CarnivalVista #CruisingCarnival A photo posted by Jenn ✈️ The Rebel Chick (@therebelchick) on Jul 5, 2016 at 4:56pm PDT

Use Hashtags. Find popular hashtags that are related to your photo, save them in some sort of a NotePad app (so you can paste and copy) and use them often. I will only usually hashtag the main caption of my photo once or twice, but I’ll do a follow-up comment with more hashtags so that others can find, like, and follow me.

That sun flare, tho. #SeizetheKeys

A photo posted by Jenn ✈️ The Rebel Chick (@therebelchick) on Jul 2, 2016 at 5:13pm PDT

Refer & tag friends and reciprocate. I love helping friends. When I travel, I’ll often share a photo with a fellow travel buddy. Often times, they’ll do the same.

I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness – E.E. Cummings ? ? Are you following @gowri_chandra ? Because you should. She’s an inspiration! #ChattanoogaFUN

A photo posted by Jenn ✈️ The Rebel Chick (@therebelchick) on Jun 25, 2016 at 7:18am PDT

Be Active. Don’t just post and wait for hoards of followers to flock to your account, go find people and like their content, too! Search those hashtags that are related to your content, like and comment on their stuff to get noticed. Another way to get noticed is to like multiple images on someone’s account one after the next (it’ll get you noticed in their feed). The more time you spend finding like-minded IGers to follow while commenting and liking their stuff, the more it’ll pay off for you when they reciprocate.