How to Increase Organic Traffic on Instagram

Wassup Instagram hustlers! Want more eyes on your Instagram content? Trying to grow your organic reach and engagement? You came to the right place!

Driving organic Instagram traffic takes strategy and effort, but it’s 100% achievable. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through the top tactics to boost your organic Instagram growth in 2023 without spending a dime on ads.

Let’s get right into it!

Optimize Your Instagram Profile

The first step is optimizing your Instagram profile to convert visitors into engaged followers:

• Profile Picture: Have a clear, high-quality profile photo of your brand, product, or face. Make it recognizable and consistent with your brand identity.
• Bio: Use a short, catchy bio that communicates what you do and includes a strong call to action. Include relevant keywords. Keep under 150 characters.
• Name: Choose an easy to remember brand name or your own name if personal account. Consistent name across platforms.
• Link in Bio: Drive traffic to your website/landing page with a clickable link in your bio. Link to high-value pages to convert visitors.
• Contact Info: Add an email address, phone number, or other contact info in your bio to make it easy for potential leads, clients, or partners to reach you.

An optimized Instagram profile establishes credibility and gives visitors clear paths to learn more or take action.

Post Valuable Content Consistently

Consistency and value are king when it comes to organic reach on Instagram. Regularly post content that provides entertainment or solves problems for your target audience.

Here are types of posts shown to gain high engagement:

• Educational content: How-to tips, life hacks, lessons, skills, etc. Teach people something useful.
• Behind-the-scenes: Give a glimpse into your brand, products, business or life. People love exclusivity.
• User-generated content: Photos/videos from existing customers and fans using your product or service. Builds trust.
• Industry news: Commentary and insights on news related to your niche. Position yourself as an authority.
• Powerful visuals: Dramatic before-and-afters, infographics, and eye-catching visual content.

Post at least 1-2 times per day to stay top of mind. Schedule posts in advance for consistent publishing. Offer a variety of post formats like images, video, carousels, and more.

Also Check: How to Increase Organic Traffic on Facebook

Optimize Hashtags and Mentions

Hashtags help people discover your content by exposing it in tag searches and feeds. Mentions notify other accounts of your post. Both can expand your reach.

Best practices for hashtags and mentions:

• Research popular hashtags in your industry. Use a mix of niche tags and broader ones.
• Include 5-10 relevant hashtags per post. Too many flags you as spam.
• Customize hashtags for each specific post. Don’t just reuse the same tags.
• Insert hashtags in the post caption area rather than first comment.
• Search hashtags and engage with other posts using ones relevant to you to get on those feeds.
• @mention partners, influencers, brands, and others who would appreciate your post.

Hashtags and mentions done right lead to discovery by those outside your existing follower base. Funnel the right new eyes to your content.

Run Giveaways and Contests

Giveaways and contests are tried and true organic growth tactics on Instagram. The incentive motivates followers to like, share, tag others, and take other desired actions to increase reach.

Some tips for running successful Instagram giveaways:

• Require followers to tag friends for social shares to drive reach virally.
• Offer prizes tailored to your target audience – free products, gift cards, etc.
• Use contest apps like Wishpond and Gleam to easily manage entries and pick winners.
• Promote the giveaway in your Instagram Stories and feed leading up to it.
• Require following your account to enter giveaways. Checks for fake accounts.
• Limit to accounts based in one country to avoid excess international shipping costs.

Reward genuine engagement rather than just having people mindlessly comment/tag repeatedly. Structure giveaway rules strategically.

Use Stories for Engagement

Posting in Stories is a great way to engage your existing audience more frequently in between feed posts. This boosts your overall presence and content visibility.

Story best practices include:

• Give behind-the-scenes looks at your products, office, events, etc for exclusivity.
• Poll stickers are highly interactive. Ask followers questions to spark comments.
• Link stickers drive traffic to your site or recent feed posts.
• Leverage stickers, filters, gifs, and interactive elements to make it fun.
• Ask followers to reply with their own Stories that you can re-share. User-generated content is huge.
• Go live or do Q&As to engage in real time.

Even if Stories disappear after 24 hours, they keep you top of mind between feed posts and let followers get to know you better.

Collaborate With Synergistic Accounts

Find other Instagram accounts in your industry or niche and collaborate on giveaways, content shares, and mentions. This introduces your brand to new, relevant audiences.

Some collaboration ideas:

• Co-host a giveaway – each account promotes and contributes prizes.
• Swap posts to share each other’s content with your audiences.
• Guest post on their account with tagged author credit driving followers back to you. Offer the same in return.
• Share user-generated content featuring/tagging their products that would interest your audience.
• Jointly create content together – behind-the-scenes, listicles, reels featuring you both, etc.

Search relevant hashtags and locations to find potential collab partners. Pitch accounts 2-3x your size for optimal reach potential.

Run Paid Collab Campaigns With Nano-Influencers

While collaborations with similar-sized accounts help, arguably the most impactful partners are micro and nano-influencers in your niche.

Micro-influencers have 5K to 100K followers. Nano-influencers have 1K to 10K. While they may not have huge audiences, their engagement rates are off the charts.

Their followers also find their recommendations highly credible and actionable compared to celebrity influencers.

Run small paid collab campaigns with 5-15 micro and nano-influencers. Here are some tips:

• Vet influencers for genuine engagement and audience quality – not just botted follower counts.
• Negotiate set fees or structure around content performance (views, clicks, etc). Start small.
• Send products to feature and require disclosures around sponsored content.
• Provide suggested captions but give them creative freedom to stay authentic.
• Have them actively engage with their audience through the post – questions, tags, etc.

Micro-influencer marketing taps into their more intimate, hyper-engaged audiences for targeted reach. The hand-picked connections feel very organic.

Advertise Your Best Performing Content

While the focus of this guide is organic Instagram growth, running small, occasional ads can amplify your top posts even further.

Some tips for effective Instagram advertising:

• Promote your absolute best performing organic content that already resonates.
• Target interest-based and lookalike audiences reflective of your existing followers.
• Start with just $5-10 per day budgets to test performance. Scale as needed.
• Use video views or landing page clicks as objectives if you have clear conversion goals.
• Measure ROI and ensure your converting objectives exceed your ad spend.

Apply the Pareto principle – 20% of your posts likely drive 80% of your engagement and conversions. Give those stellar pieces of content an extra push through strategic ads.

Track Analytics and Optimize

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Make sure you’re tracking Instagram analytics to understand what content and strategies are working.

Some key metrics to track for optimization include:

• Engagement rate on posts
• Reach and impressions
• Which types of content see highest engagement
• Best performing days/times to post
• Top traffic sources and hashtags
• Ad performance for promoted posts

Continually test new posting ideas and analyze the data to determine what resonates best with your audience. Then double down on what works!

Wrapping Up

There you have it – a comprehensive blueprint for driving more organic traffic and visibility on Instagram in 2023!

Some key takeaways:

• Post consistently high-value content
• Strategically use hashtags, mentions, giveaways
• Collaborate with relevant accounts
• Leverage Stories between feed posts
• Promote your best content through ads
• Optimize based on analytics

Apply these tactics diligently and watch your Instagram grow! Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions. I’m always happy to help strategize creative ways to boost your Instagram marketing.

Now get out there and start engaging your followers! 📸

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some common questions people have about increasing organic Instagram traffic: