How to promote an Instagram account from scratch: 10 practical tips

Making money on social media is not only about posting. You need to promote your Instagram account. Then, whether you sell or receive donates, you will get more money. Let's see what you can do to let users know about you.

Before you promote your Instagram account, do some homework. Study the ground you want to grow your follower count on.

To switch to a Professional account, open "Settings", then go to the "Account", tap "Switch to Professional account" and choose "Business" (if you promote a business on Instagram) or "Creator", which is meant for celebrities and bloggers. 

Among the first milestones for Instagram promotion is to gain at least 50-100 followers so that the account doesn’t look null. This is definitely what gives credit when users come from other bloggers, targeted ads or Instagram search. 

Your colleagues, friends, relatives can be your first followers. Subscribe to them to let them know about your business account. You can find them on Instagram by phone number, for example. If you already have a personal account, you may also post about your business account to the feed and Stories.

If you’ve already created publics in other social media, have a list for newsletter mailing - write about your new account. Offer a discount, gift or useful checklists - thus, they will be more willing to subscribe. For example, a beauty salon can post in Facebook:

“Good news! We’ve got an Instagram account. Now we have one more social media platform to let you know about working hours, discounts, and post reviews and useful information. We are sending a certificate for 50% off for any beauty treatment to new subscribers! Follow us!”

Remember, you can’t launch targeted ads in other networks to invite users to your Instagram profile — social media moderators do not approve it, except, of course, Facebook, since both of them belongs to Meta.

Comment posts on pages your target audience often go to. Better the big ones having more than 100,000 subscribers, then more people see your comment.

For example, you promote a business on Instagram that provides foreign language lessons. Find language profiles and reply to users comments. Remember, your goal is to make yourself known and draw audience attention, not selling your lessons. 

For example, you can answer a user asking in comments about the students books - We teach our students by these or that books. And you better explain why your company chose these educational materials, but not mention the name of your company (hope you use it in the profile name:-)), otherwise it is too obvious you comment to promote your Instagram profile. 

Keep in mind, if users mark your comment as spam, Instagram may restrict your account. Therefore, do not write evident ads like “Buy honey $10 for a pound in my account”. 

Invite your audience to follow you. You can find the users to invite among your rivals accounts. You can follow them to get their attention, they may follow you back. Besides, you can send them messages in DM where you explain why they may want to subscribe.

This is one of the Instagram tips for small businesses that brands with a limited budget use to promote their accounts. But if you have enough budget, you may want to skip this way since there is a risk.

Using mass following services to save money is a bad option. Accounts having the link will be blocked sooner or later. 

Go to the profiles of your target audience, like their posts and follow them. Some users will be curious to know who has liked their content and go to your profile. And if your profile has interesting content, they will subscribe to you too. 

Though, if the number of followers is equal to the number of following, it might raise suspicion among the users. 

If the number of followers is quite the same as the number of following, users might think you cheated. 

Thus, we recommend to unfollow you subscribers from time to time. They won’t get the notification and you won't insult anybody :-)

An account having several times more followers than following are more credible (but likes and comments are also should be considered).

Do not use mass following and mass looking services to promote your Instagram account. The account may be shadowbanned or even blocked with no chance to recover. 

You can use trustworthy services to promote your Instagram account, though. Try Folme, which does exactly what is described in this part. It finds the right users and interacts with them. So you don't have to spend your time on this routine. Spend it on other promotion ways instead. 

Use hashtags to promote your account on Instagram. When you add hashtags to a post, it is sown on the hashtag pages. People who search for these hashtags will see your post. And this will be mostly people who do not know about you yet. If they like your post, they become your new followers. 

Instagram hashtags in the comments or caption — what’s better for promotion?

Make sure you use hashtags relevant to posts to promote your account on Instagram. Then you can be sure your post is what people need when look for a hashtag. This means your post is interesting to them , they will tap it.

For example, if you run a car maintenance service in Salem, add a hashtag #Salem_car_maintainance. Hashtag collecting services, like Best Hashtags, make it easier. Beside you can add a campaign-specific hashtags, when collaborating with bloggers.

Collaborate with other profiles followed by your audience to host a contest and supply a prize. Then the deal will be beneficial for both you and the bloggers:

Choose accounts with more than 5 thousand followers for the Instagram promotion. Otherwise, there might be not many participants. 

Choose bloggers or business accounts posting content relative to your field, or who’s audience is similar to yours by any characteristic (age, gender, interests).

For example, you produce youth clothing. Search bloggers posting on social life and fashion. Flower shop owners may collaborate with profiles blogging about weddings and preparation for them.

Of course, the bigger a blogger is, the more you have to pay. Besides, big Instagram accounts are not likely to collaborate with the newbies. And small bloggers (less than 10 thousand followers) won't be much help in gaining followers, as their profile visits are not high. 

If you request Instagram promotion from several bloggers at a time, it’ll be difficult to figure out where a new subscriber came from. You have to go to his or her profile and check what blogger he or she is subscribed to. If there are many new followers, it takes quite a time. That’s a reason to avoid asking for promotion from several bloggers concurrently. 

At the beginning of promoting your Instagram account, assess the effectiveness of a blogger by a subscriber cost. Divide the total expenses to the number of subscribers that appeared for 2-3 days after starting the campaign. 

For example, you’ve spent 1,000 USD to advertise your Instagram account and got 500 new followers. Then, a subscriber value is 1,000 / 500 = 2 USD. The number depends on the topic and the audience. For example, expenses for inviting a teen is much less than for inviting a businessman. From time to time (not more often than once in 3 months), request Instagram promotion from an account that attracted cheap subscribers.

Targeted ads are an effective but money demanding way to attract new subscribers. What’s important is to determine your target. It means parameters distinguishing your own audience among all Instagram users. You should know the gender, age, location and interests. Select them when setting a campaign. 

Use the in-app Boost Post feature to promote your Instagram account. The photo or video will be shown to the users who may be interested in them. If the users like the photos and videos, they go to your profile and subscribe. Read how to set up post promotion on Instagram to get new followers.

Another important thing is to choose the right aim. It is set in the first step of the ads account in Facebook Ads Manager. To get more followers (not likes, comments or views), choose the Traffic Consideration. 

Estimate the average cost of a new subscriber the same way you did for a blogger’s promotion. Analyze which way is more profitable to you and use it. 

All manual methods for gaining more subscribers are spread out over time. For once, it takes a lot of effort. Secondly, Instagram has some limits for an account activity. That’s why it might be easily banned. So, if there is no money for Instagram promotion at all - that’s ok. If you have money to spend, and want to get instant results without risks - likes, comments and inviting to your account are only an addition to bloggers and targeted ads. 

What for working with small influencers, I recommend thoroughly monitoring before choosing some of them. Monetization from the requested promotion is the milk and honey for slacker bloggers, so don’t neglect checking their accounts for cheat subscribers, likes, comments. And remember, the topic of the brand and its view on things should be close to yours. Then the chances to gain new target audience are higher. Conversion rate and followers number can be increased with raffles and contests.

It takes a lot of effort, time and money to promote Instagram accounts. For instance, you should understand who your audience is, where and how to look for it. Then you understand what accounts are good for collaborating and drawing prizes, what bloggers to work with and how to adjust target settings. Growth tools can ease this work.

I don’t recommend mass-liking and mass-following services for Instagram promotion. Instagram might ban the account, and you probably won’t recover it. Besides, you won’t know the real number of followers interested in your account and whether you are good at managing your profile. 

And lastly, create social media reports regularly to track your success. Then, you will know if you promote your Instagram account in the right way, or if you need some adjustments. The report also gives insights into what adjustments exactly you need.