We started working on our Instagram page during our trip to Bali, which was in October 2018. At that moment we just reached 4.000 followers. Exactly one year later, we had 145.000 followers on Instagram. We have never bought any followers, nor have we participated in any loop giveaways or any sorts of shady stuff. Time to show you how to gain Instagram followers with a few simple tips and tricks!
Want to know how we did it? Keep reading!
While we won’t promise that by doing what we say you’ll also gain 140.000 Instagram followers in a year, we will give you some tips about how to make sure you gain as much new followers as possible the quickest way possible.
1. Post regularly
When you look at our statistics from last year, we have posted exactly 350 pictures. That means we didn’t post 15 days of the year, mainly due to having no internet connection while traveling. Consistency is key, and you should always try to post once per day. When we don’t post for 1 or 2 days, we notice a big drop in new followers. Consistency is key if you want to gain Instagram followers!
2. Post at the best possible time
If you have a business account on Instagram (highly recommended), you can see your statistics. Understanding these statistics is crucial if you want to build a large following. From the very beginning, our followers have been most active between 3pm and 9pm GMT (see screenshot below). Makes sense when you know most of our followers are from the United States and Europe.
Our goal was to post at around 3pm GMT time, no matter where we were in the world. Basically posting during the night when we were in Australia, or at 6am when on the West Coast. Especially if you travel a lot you might have to make sacrifices to post at your optimal time, but if you take the growth of your Instagram page seriously, it will be worth it in the end. Posting at the right time will really help you gain Instagram followers more quickly!
3. Content is key
Use all the tips & tricks you know, if your content is bad, your page won’t grow. Try to analyse which content works best with your followers and build on that. If you notice videos work much better than pictures, try and post more videos. Or if you notice that pictures of your dog get half the likes and comments your selfies get, you might want to post less dog pictures and more selfies. It can be as easy as that to analyse what works best. If you want to create beautiful couple pictures, check out this article!
4. Build a consistent feed
People seeing your feed will decide in less than a second if they’ll hit that follow button or not. Therefore it’s very important that your feed is pleasing to the eye. There are multiple ways of creating an aesthetically pleasing feed. One always returning aspect of a beautiful feed is matching tones. By editing all your pictures with the same split-toning, your feed will look much more attractive. We manage to do so by using our self-made photo filters which all have the same split-tones. With just one click of a button, you change the tone of your pictures and you’ll have more people following you!
Check out our presets and photo filters here:
5. Have accounts share your content
A great way to attract new followers and have other people than those who are already following you see your content is by having other pages share your work. Thousands of accounts share other people’s best content and have gained a huge following doing that. We’ll call them inspirational accounts. Those inspirational accounts are constantly browsing the web looking for the best content to share which their followers will like. Try and find some of these accounts that repost similar pictures to what you post and contact them. Send them a couple of the pictures you think would work best on their page and maybe they’ll share it and tag you in the picture and in the caption, generating more traffic to your own account!
When an account like @wonderful_places with over 13 million followers shares your picture, you know you hit the jackpot and will get a few hundred new followers!
6. Use the best hashtags
Having a good hashtag strategy can be hard. We feel it’s probably the aspect of our Instagram that we have most difficulties with, so we’ll keep this short. Try out different strategies and see what works best for you by looking at your statistics later. We have tried to use all 30 hashtags, only 10 hashtags, used them in the caption, used them in the comments, used different ones every day, used the same ones over and over, but haven’t really found something that works every single time. We have had pictures that reached over 10.000 new accounts only with hashtags and pictures that had trouble reaching 5 new accounts with hashtags. So if you have a good strategy for us, definitely share the love and let us know in the comments what works best for you!
7. Engage with other people
To attract new followers, you have to make people come to your profile first. A great way to have people click on your name is by having your name out there, a lot! A trick we used a lot in the past when we had periods with less new followers was to engage with other people. Go to your explore page and scroll. When you see a cool picture, like it and leave a (funny) comment. Maybe the owner of the picture will have a look at your profile to see who the account that left that funny comment belongs to, maybe he or she will like your beautiful looking feed and decide to follow you. It’s a time intensive method, and if your comments are lame or spammy it won’t work, but if done correctly, it can definitely gain some extra followers.
8. Optimize your Instagram bio
Having a great bio is almost just as important as having a beautiful feed. It’s the first thing people will see who visit your profile, and if they like what they see, they’ll smash that follow button. A good Instagram bio should tell who you are, what you do and what people can expect from you in a few words and emoji’s. Also make sure your email address can be found in your bio, not only for receiving fanmail, but also for brands who want to work with you.
9. Put some effort in those Instagram stories
Nowadays Instagram is more than having a pretty feed. People start following you for who you are just as much as for the beautiful content you publish and what better way to show your true self than through Instagram stories? Try to upload stories regularly (5 per day is a good start) and don’t be afraid to show your face and let people hear your voice. It will create a stronger relationship between you and your followers and they will be more engaging, which in the end will always result in new followers. You should also use text (most people don’t have their sound on when watching stories), use stickers, ask questions, and every other tool Instagram gives you to be more engaging with your followers.
10. Enjoy the ride
Instagram can be a tough place, and sometimes you’ll hit a plateau and stop growing. In those moments you should remember to enjoy the ride and don’t focus on numbers too much. Look at the new followers you already gathered who follow you for who YOU are and what YOU do! Isn’t that amazing?
11. Extra
If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the video below! In the video we discuss how we are able to travel the world full-time while earning money doing so.
Thank you so much for the tips! I’m currently putting a lot of effort into my profile @annaofelia, so your tips are great for someone like me <3 Love following you guys and wish you luck in your future travels!
Author
Hi Anna, thanks for liking our tips and letting us know! Best of luck with growing your account! Your Indonesia pics are looking really good! 🙂
Thanks so much for those valuable tips! I’ve been applying some already specially the ones that include genuinely appreciating other peoples work! We do need to work alot on our stories, some days we have stories to post well atleast that’s how we feel!! But thank you for the amazinggg tips💕💕💕
Twotraveluvers
Author
Hey guys! Great to hear you’re working on it! Stories are difficult, especially on the days when you’re not doing anything exciting, but just be creative! <3
Thank u guys for this tips.its very helpfull.
U r awsome
Author
You’re very welcome, Alma <3
Hi Laura & Nicolas! Thanks for this blogpost! I a currently trying so so hard to gain more followers. But I feel that Instagram is just working against the small accounts trying so hard. So thanks for all the tips ♥️
Lots of love, @shegoesoverseas
Author
Trust us when we say even the big accounts will have the feeling that Instagram is working against them! Just don’t give up and keep going forward! <3
Hi thank you for the tips. You guys are really an inspiration to us. 🥰
Author
Aww, that’s so great to hear, Isabelle! Lots of love <3
Thankyou for the tips 😘♥️
Favorite as always ♥️
Author
Thanks for letting us know :-)!
Love <3
Thanks for this article! Concise and clear!
We just started our account and we will see where it brings us in a year 😉!
@yapitravel
Author
Good luck! Feel free to DM us on IG if you have any questions! ❤️
So amazing! You guys are inspiring! I just recently began my travel blog, @keleeci, and I am still in the trial and error process but your tips are extremely helpful. Thanks for sharing and being so kind to do so 🙂
Author
Our pleasure! Hope our tips will help and you’ll be able to grow your account quickly 🥰
Thank you for this inspiring blog! We have been applying a few of your golden rules and just like you still struggle with the hashtag strategy but if we figure it out for sure we will share 🙂 you are a true inpiration (and by the way love the design of your blog too) Love, @funkyterrone
Author
Wishing you guys all the best! Those hashtags can be a pain 😅! Let us know if you find the golden ticket to it! <3
Thanks for the post! Such a good reminder to just enjoy the ride! I find it so hard to find content to post to stories! I’m a family travel account – but we don’t travel full time and our everyday life isn’t exactly related 😂 any tips? @whereweareheaded
Author
We know similar accounts to yours who make extra stories while traveling and just immensely stretch it out, so a 1-week trip will look like a 1-month trip.
Another option would be to find creative things to put on your stories to keep them alive: think a Q&A with your followers, a top 10 of your favourite moments for your last travels, some stories about how you plan your next travels, why you decide to go to a certain country,… Just be creative and keep those stories alive 🥰
@omynewland Hello beautiful couple! Thank you for sharing this. I was one of your first followers and it’s been so wonderful and exciting seeing you grow and evolve as world travellers 🙂 loving your journey and how inspiring it is watching you every day. I would love for you to check out my profile and see what you think? And last question – How many hours daily you dedicate to your instagram (editing, posting, emgaging etc) Love you guys!! keep inspiring us @omynewland
Author
Hi Omy! Thanks for the kind words! So great to hear you’ve been following us for this long already!
You have some very beautiful pictures, especially love the one from the Louvre in Paris, but also notice you’re not really following the first 2 steps of our guide, which are crucial! (Post regularly and on specific times!). Nowadays we typically spend 1-2 hours on IG daily, but in the beginning we spent way more than that! Sometimes up to 6 hours! Hope that helps! Lots of love
My account @travelwithhafiz needs to have improvement I know. Thank you for you guys!
Author
Some great landscape pictures on your profile! Keep going 👍🏻
Amazing blog post! @lukas.klicimunka
Author
Thank you! Loving the darker style of your pictures 🙌🏻
Super great ideas, hopfully they work for me. Love @jordynshay.s
Author
Great to hear you like the post! Good luck!
Great tips, thank you!
xoxo, @multismile
Author
Our pleasure <3
Loved reading this, we are doing exactly the same we have taken 6 months off work. We would love our insta to reach people but unsure how to do it and where to start so this was a great read. Thanks guys love @newlywedbackpackers 😊
Author
Great to hear that you guys! Happy we could help! <3
Thank you so much for sharing all these with us 💖 I think it‘s so hard to find good tips which are ,,on point“ how we would say it and also very easy to understand 🙂 I‘ll try all that for my travelaccount ,, travelromina“ for sure! Thank you so much u two ❤️😍
Author
Happy we could help <3
Excellent post. I want to thank you for this informative, I really appreciate sharing this great post. Thanks for sharing this
Author
Our Pleasure! xx
This is such a great article! I like this blog and it gives very useful information for getting Instagram followers fast. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post.
Author
Happy to hear you liked it, James! Thanks for reading!
Thank you so much for these tips! They’re very helpful, IG is a jungle and we’ve been trying to grow for well over a year now! We love traveling and photography, so as you say – We’re doing what we love! But it can be quite frustrating when it doesn’t work. 😀
Anyways about reaching out to hotels and airbnb – you say we should just give it a try and see what happens. But we’re just concerned that without many followers hotels won’t see us a professionals and take us seriously. We only have about 1200 followers, so I guess what we’re trying to ask is, at what point did you start reaching out? 🙂
And do you have any other tips for a hard working fellow instagrammer?
xoxo @Nomadlivingbyus
Author
Hi guys! Glad you liked the article! We actually wrote a series of ebooks about how to reach out to hotels and brands, even when you don’t have any followers. We’ve had many followers who read the ebooks and who managed to get free hotel stays with almost no followers :-).
You can find them on https://www.passportpresets.com