5. Be Active

Newsflash, Instagram is all about engagement. If you want other people to take an interest in your life, you better take an interest in theirs first. Follow similar accounts to yours and engage with them on a daily basis.

Spend at least 5 minutes a day liking and commenting on pictures of the accounts that you follow, and the same amount of time on the explore page. You can even type a certain hashtag into the search bar (e.g. #londonblogger) and like all images that please your eye. When commenting, it is best to be genuine and not post spammy comments with a hundred heart emojis etc.

If the person who’s image you are commenting on has captioned their post, read it and try to comment on it. Over time, you form “insta-friendships” through this technique. The more active you are on the platform, the easier it is to grow your Instagram.

I hate to bring up the Instagram algorithm here, but the more active you are on Instagram, the more the algorithm pushes your posts. If it sees your account is engaging with other accounts, it will think “Oh, these accounts have a relationship. I should probably make it easy for them to see when the other account has posted.”

Social media brand builder Gretta van Reil (15 mil+ followers) has talked more about the impact of account relationships on how to grow your Instagram in a podcast here.

P.S. This goes witout saying in my opinion, but always reply to comments! There’s nothing more annoying than a blogger who doesn’t reply to comments, especially questions. Be polite.

6. Use Hashtags, But Do Your Research

How to grow your Instagram: Use hashtags

How to grow your Instagram the fastest way? Make it easy for people to find you! Contrary to popular belief, the most popular hashtags are not the best hashtags to use.

To put things into context, if a hashtag is used 100 times in a minute, how many minutes will it take for your post to sink to the bottom of the hashtag page? Not very many. My tactic for discovering hashtags is to go to the accounts of people who post within the same niche as me (fashion) and take the tags that they use.