Set up your account properly
The first thing you want to do when setting up an Instagram account is coming up with a good username, if the page is about your company/business it is best that the username is the same as the business name so your clients can find you much easier and they know it’s you.
However if the page is unrelated to your business and you post about a specific product, you should aim to come up with a username which has a keyword that tells the audience what your page is about, example if you post about houses in London you could name it “london_houses” or “houseinlondon” , this will help your page show up when a user types a keyword such as “house” on the search bar.
Although this is very good for your page it can sometimes be very hard to come up with a good username as the easier ones might be taken already since instagram is very popular and if that is the case you can just simply apply the same thing on the “name” section, this is the bold line that people see right above your bio and if you use good keywords on that line chances are that you can easily show up when people search for those keywords, so it would be good to do this regardless of whether you have a good username or not.
One more thing you want to do when setting up an account is choose your category in your profile section, this helps Instagram understand in which section they should put you in, this isn’t overall very effective but if you do it from the start and you post something very specific it can help push all your content in front of people who would actually be into that sort of content.
Post regularly
Like most social media platforms Instagram likes it when you are consistent with your posts, and the more you upload the more your posts will be pushed out by the algorithm, the pages that grow the fastest organically usually are the ones that post about 2-3 times a day.
It is understandable that some type of content can’t be posted as regular but if you can still post at least once or twice per week it is enough for you to create a consistent growth, in these cases you must make sure that your posts are as engaging as possible and you post them at a time when your audience is very active, this information can be found in your insight settings.
When you can’t post regularly, try to get as many people as possible to save your posts, like, comment and even share. These are key things that instagram looks at when deciding if a post is good enough for their attention and if they should boost the reach.
Use hashtags
Hashtags are little names or words that go after the symbol (#) at the bottom of your caption, the words used are often something little to describe the post or what it’s about, it can also be the name of a category, this is so that your posts land on the explore page or in front of users who like similar posts or checkout other posts in that category.
With instagram being very popular and overcrowded there can be times and periods where hashtags are not really working or it’s just pushing the content to the wrong audience, but for the majority of the time they seem to be effective and can definitely generate a lot more likes, reach and even followers.
A good advice would be to do some research on trending hashtags or popular hashtags used by other accounts similar to yours or on similar posts that are doing well, this will help boost the reach of your content more than the other hashtags.
Jump on trends
Trends are currently the best way of attracting a huge amount of new followers to your page, most content creators go viral because they take advantage of trends.
Trends can be a lot of things, Instagram often adds new tools, filters,etc.. to stay up to date and so that the platform does not become boring. Currently the best trending tools are Reels and sounds, they both have now been around for some time, however there are new trending sounds every week that you can use to get a lot of views. This is Instagram’s take on the TikTok videos, most people will know that TikTok has started to increase their audience massively in the last few years and a lot of people have been going viral on the platform by using trending sounds or hashtags, so Instagram has been doing a similar thing (you could say they have also jumped on a trend)
Follow similar pages to yours
One small final tip that can help you grow and in generally benefit your page is to follow other accounts similar to yours, this isn’t going to bring a huge amount of followers, however if you have a page that is somewhat based around a specific niche, you will find that others who are very invested in that category will follow you. This is great for the page as it is a good way to rank higher for that niche and the algorithm will start suggesting your page more often when anyone searches or likes posts that are related to your niche.