It isn’t easy creating an Instagram presence for your small business without using advertisements. The amount of competition on Instagram is overwhelming and you must feel like your beating your head against the wall as you put in a ton of repetition and time in building your brand and, while organic growth is possible, it is tough. However, having your audience grow organically is more meaningful, builds a deeper connection, and fosters long-lasting relationships. In this post, we will take you through a series of actionable steps you can take to increase your visibility and engagement through content, community, and consistency. You will learn how to leverage Instagram without ads for your small business. This will help you create an authentic and genuine presence on Instagram that will help you attract ideal followers and convert them into customers.
Understanding Instagram’s Organic Reach
Gaining followers for your small business on Instagram without ads is going to require you to utilize organic reach. Organic reach is the number of people that can see your post without using paid promotion. It is important because it builds a real relationship and trust with potential customers. If you are going to try to grow your organic reach on Instagram then you need to know first how they determine what content is shown and who sees it.
How Instagram’s Algorithm Prioritizes Content
Instagram uses an algorithm appropriate for each of your posts to determine what appears in your follower’s feeds. Their goal is to provide content that users will find interesting or engaging. The algorithm relies on a number of signals including:
Relationship:
The algorithm favors posts from accounts that a user interacts with most.
Interest:
Does the algorithm favor all posts that are most like other posts the user has engaged with?
Recency:
Newer posts tend to receive more visibility than older posts.
Frequency:
The frequency with which users open the app will determine what they will see.
Usage duration:
The more time spent using the app, the more posts users will see.
For your business, this means Instagram favors content that seems relevant and timely to your followers. The best way to improve your posts is to think about what your audience wants to engage with and see.
The Role of Engagement in Organic Reach
Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares and saves tell Instagram that others should see your post. Engagement metrics are the true measure of your post or video performance. As your engagement metrics increase, your reach will increase, as higher engagement rates tell Instagram the post resonated with your audience. There are several strategies to increase engagement:
- Encourage followers to comment by asking for their opinions or feedback.
- Actively respond to the Reels comments in a timely manner to keep the conversation going.
- Employ calls-to-action encouraging followers to share or save your post.
Active two-way engagement will build relationships with your audience, thus improving the reach of your posts to a broader swath of potential consumers without enhancing your marketing costs by using ads.
Importance of Consistency and Timing
By posting consistently, your business will remain visible in a followers’ feed. If you post irregularly, sometimes doing so infrequently, Instagram may prioritize showing your account less regularly. You will need to develop a posting routine that matches your capacity/resources and stick to it, however, when your post is also relevant to your delivery of reaching your audience.
- By posting when your audience is most active, you will benefit from increased early engagement on your post.
- Use Insights to find out when your audience uses Instagram the most.
- It is also acceptable to try different times for posting.
Consistency in posting and relatively good timing will achieve basic positioning of your posts in front of the people.
Using Hashtags to Expand Visibility
Hashtags are a great and simple way to get exposure and reach a broader audience. Hashtags also help categorize your posts so users searching for that type of content can find it. There are a few ways that you can utilize hashtags.
- Utilizing general hashtags and niche specific hashtags that relate to your business.
- Don’t use too broad of tags because your content will quickly become buried.
- Create your brand hashtag for your business so that you can get user-generated content.
Hashtags will act as signposts to lead potential new followers to your page. You’ll want to choose tags that relate to what your ideal customers search for or follow to engage with the right conversations.
By grasping these four areas, you are working with Instagram’s system instead of against it. When your content and user actions are aligned with the way that Instagram ranks posts, organic reach will happen naturally. This creates a solid base to grow your audience for your business without having to pay for it!
Building an Authentic Brand to Attract Followers
When you develop a powerful, credible brand, you should be able to create your differentiation without having to rely on credit or expense ad dollars. The more your followers relate to you, visually and emotionally, as a human being, the more they will feel actual personal connection to you and the more they will want to engage with you. Relationships lead to trust, and finally, loyalty; all elements that are valuable for organic growth. You will not be scrambling for ways to create interactive campaigns; you will be creating engagement by using clear, consistent and credible branding to relate to and connect with your audience.
Creating a Clear and Relatable Brand Voice
The voice of your brand is how you talk to your followers. It should always sound like a real person and not a company. Establishing your voice involves knowing who your customers are and what vibe you’d like them to get from your posts. Are you friendly and casual? Professional and helpful? Funny and bubbly?
Having a voice is good, and once you establish a voice, you want to keep that voice. You want to be forthright and direct about your information. You want to think like you are speaking to a friend. This way, all of your followers will know right away who you are and what your business is. When you share content that reaffirms their connotations of expectation, you’re working to create a real sense of reality, and thus you become easier for followers to connect with.
Maintaining Visual Consistency Through Design and Themes
You want to make your account look good on Instagram. People can become invested in your content when your account carries a cohesive aesthetic. Pick a color scheme, and a font, and filter style that fits your brand’s personality! When your images are cohesive, this can imply a degree of professionalism, and elevates perception of trustworthiness.
Here are some things to keep in mind for keeping visuals consistent:
- All of your pictures should have the same filter or similar brightness and contrast.
- You are only using 2-3 of your brand colors in your posts and stories.
- Your posts have a defined style, whether it is your graphics, text overlay, etc.
- You have all of your posts planned in advance, so you can work out the layout of your views.
Having a visually familiar profile helps you have a better effect and ultimately encourages your followers to come back for more.
Sharing Stories that Reflect Your Business Values
Stories create a different level of connection with your brand that is more than just a service or a product. Tell your audience what you stand for, start a business, what struggles you’re having, or how your business positively contributes to the local community. True stories communicate the soul of your business.
Use the stories and captions of Instagram to take them through moments that showcase your values. For example:
- Showcase customer experiences or testimonials
- Offer behind-the-scenes glimpses into your process
- Talk about your team and what they’re passionate about
- Physical manifestations of how your business supports causes you genuinely believe in.
Real stories will help followers understand your purpose and identify with it emotionally since this builds an audience that will support you not only because of what you’re selling but who you are.
Engaging with Followers in Meaningful Ways
Interacting with your audience is much more than likes and short comments. Respond to questions you receive, thank people for their comments and input, and bring those questions into conversation starting with assumptions, to invite followers to share their own thoughts and ideas. You want to connect by showing that you care about them as individuals.
The following steps will help to ramp up your engagement:
- Reply to every comment and direct message promptly
- Invite comments with open-ended questions
- Use polls, quizzes, or “ask me anything” in your stories to involve your audience
- Provide shout-outs or re-post follower content so they feel recognized and valued.
Meaningful engagement fosters a community. When followers feel seen and valued, they become advocates that organically help to grow your account.
Being an authentic brand is not about being perfect or ‘hard selling.’ It simply means being clear, honest, and present. When you are clear with your audience about who you are and what you’re about, they trust that you are a brand who will stay for the long run.
Creating High-Quality Content Without Paid Ads
If you want to grow your Instagram account without paid ads, creating content to inspire organic engagement and attention will be your focus. You’ll want to think about creating social media posts and reels that feel genuine and valuable enough to your followers that it leads to engagement and sharing. This helps you extend your reach without additional costs. Using the right content formats and having your audience do some of the work for you can greatly increase your reach. Below, we will get practical with some content strategies to help you expand your organic reach.
Using Reels and Stories to Boost Organic Reach
Instagram Reels and Stories are two of the greatest mechanisms at Instagram’s disposal for organic reach. Reels allow content to be seen by a larger audience beyond your followers, meaning you will share with new potential audiences and friends. Stories will help you keep your existing followers engaged and also allow an easy platform for audiences to engage with you quickly.
You only have seconds before someone scrolls away on a reel. Grab their attention right away with a strong hook so they stop scrolling.
Content ideas that work great are:
- Quick how-to or tips
- Behind the scenes sneak-peeks
- Funny or relatable moments
- Trending sounds or challenges with a twist
- Inspirational or motivational clips
Usually keep it simple and clear. Make sure your reel is either giving value in a viewer’s life or just making them feel something. The more they feel connected or like it, the greater chance they will share.
Also make sure to keep your videos short and punchy. As an ideal video length, shoot for under 30 seconds. Viewers are scrolling past your video quickly, so you really want to see why they should stop.
Encouraging Interaction Through Comments
Getting followers to comment on your Reels is a no-brainer for organic growth. You can do it in a way that is unique and even casual but still gets them to engage! You can:
- End with a question or prompt that relates to the content.
- Ask for their opinion or experiences in your caption.
- Pin thoughtful or fun comments to show some love for the discussion.
- Respond to every comment quickly and warmly.
- Make content that encourages debate or casual sharing of ideas.
These strategies make followers feel seen and valued as a part of your community. When people know you are reading their reels comments, they will continue to engage and bring along others.
Encouraging User-Generated Content and Reviews
Customers trust other customers more than any organic messages you will create. You want to encourage your client followers to post their interactions with your products or services to build social proof and leverage for your brand.
- Encourage clients to post about your social media using your products or services and a branded #hashtag.
- Post user-generated content from your feed on your Stories. This can demonstrate to your followers that you appreciate them, plus it can also entice others to share!
- Quality, simple initiatives like shoutouts or small giveaways motivate your followers to create content for your brand.
- Additionally, if you are encouraging reviews and testimonials and sharing them to express appreciation for your followers’ positive experience with your brand, you are improving in this area!
User-generated content extends your message authentically and includes your followers as part of your brand story. This builds trust in your brand and allows you to attract new customers without a paid ad.
Posting Educational and Entertaining Content
Your followers turn to Instagram for value and entertainment. When you post content that teaches or entertains people, it not only grabs people’s attention but also encourages individuals to return to you.
- Educational posts might look like: “How-to” posts product use ideas for your product/service industry insight related to your niche.
- Entertaining posts might look like humorous content (lighthearted videos), humorous anecdotes, or relatable stories about you/your business.
- Different approaches such as carousel posts, videos or graphics, while informative and fun to look at, can also use different approaches.
- Always think about your audience and always give them a clear outcome or solution to their problem.
When your followers are informed (or entertained) by your content, they are more likely to save, share, and engage, which will help your content reach more people organically.
Keeping Content Fresh with Trends and Challenges
Trends and challenges are excellent and optimal ways to enter large conversations where many people are engaged. Participating in popular topics allows you to demonstrate that your brand is current and relatable.
- Follow some trending hashtags and/or challenges related to your niche or industry.
- Create your spin or twist on a challenge and/or adapt a trend that fits your brand style.
- Participate quickly; since trends only last so long, it is best to participate quickly.
- Remember to only engage in trends that fit your message (beyond staying relevant) and do not force trends to fit your brand, as it will show.
Utilizing trends strategically will make your content searchable and even show up in feeds beyond your existing followers – giving you exposure to a potential new follower base, all without spending any money.
These content strategies will allow you and your small business to create your brand and grow organically on Instagram. When you embrace creating content that attracts your audience and gives them ownership by representing your brand essence, you will create meaningful engagement without having to use paid ads.
Growing Your Instagram Community Organically
Growing your Instagram community without using ads will take time. However, growing your audience in a way that creates meaningful engagement and motivates them to interact is entirely plausible. Suppose you can successfully elevate your small business above all the noise in the feed and create real connections with your community. In this section, you will learn realistically – and practically, what it looks like to grow your followers and keep them engaged by collaborating with others, using relevant hashtags strategically, running contests, and staying engaged in conversations.
Partnering with Micro-Influencers and Local Creators
Collaborating with micro-influencers and local creators allows you to now borrow their audiences that they have carefully curated trust with. These audiences tend to be small in number but engaged with the creators they trust.
- When choosing who to work with, your collaborations must make sense with respect to their audiences and where they fit with your customers. The audience of the influencer is more likely interested in what you do.
- Collaborating with local creators and local businesses also brings a community aspect that adds to your reach to local people while creating local awareness.
- These collaborations tend to either cost less or can be in the form of exchanges, meaning you can very effectively grow your account organically.
Working with established creators builds audiences who trust voices that are similar to yours.
Effective Use of Niche and Location Hashtags
Hashtags are another excellent opportunity to connect with people that have already shown they are interested in your products or services, and if you use the right combination of hashtags, your content can be even more beneficial in reaching the users that really matter for your business.
- Use specific niche hashtags and not just very popular hashtags. Niche tags will help to get you in front of this targeted audience.
- Use location hashtags to reach local customers looking for a local association.
- Using a mixture of popular hashtags, moderately popular hashtags, and branded hashtags gives a balanced reach.
- You can track your hashtags to see what performs well using Instagram insights and then assess which hashtags provide you with engagement.
Hashtags are like signposts directing relevant followers to your profile. Thoughtful use of hashtags can help you expand your community without having to pay for promotions.
Running Contests and Giveaways to Boost Engagement
Contests and giveaways allow you to create buzz and engagement for your Instagram profile.
- Along with getting people to follow you and like the post, you have the added option of tagging a friend as an entry!
- You can also use user-generated content if you just prompted them to create a photo of themselves using your product or a branded hashtag.
- Make sure to pick prizes that will allude back to your business for attracting authentic followers.
- Also keep them very simple and easy in order to make sure your followers can participate and make steady and compiled entries, etc.
Contests are an exciting way to generate enthusiasm and encourage engagement that will expand your content to a whole other audience in an organic way.
Responding to Comments and Direct Messages Quickly and Personally
Community is about making your followers feel heard and valued and is part of how well you respond to your followers.
- In order to encourage people to engage, make sure that you respond to comments either as a new comment or in response to something that you have posted, as quickly as possible.
- Make sure that when you are responding to any follower, you are using their name and additional comments that are from a thoughtful or personal connection. You should sound genuine.
- When followers ask you questions, including multiple questions, you should answer every question and do so in a way that makes it clear that you care about the customer experience.
- Keep your direct messages available for feedback, collaboration ideas, or simply to lend support.
Timely and personal responses help to foster trust, resulting in followers turning to loyal followers who recommend you. You show consistency and relatability to your brand while putting people first.
You can grow your Instagram community without investing in ads by focusing on trust and connection and meaningful actions to take. Collaborate with trusted creators who support your values, use hashtags to connect to your community, create engagement through contests, and have authentic conversations. When you draw on these tools and lean into the work, you will build a loyal following who will support your business throughout the natural cycle of time.
Conclusion
You can be successful on Instagram without ads, but you have to focus on genuine connections and provide consistent action. By creating a trustworthy, authentic brand, creating valuable high-quality content to attract your audience, and aiming for meaningful engagement with your followers, you will benefit naturally. Reels, Stories, hashtags and collaborations provide features beyond paid ads that allow your account to organically reach followers in a way that feels authentic and sustainable for your small business. Use these expert tips today to start building a loyal community and increase your visibility! Your small business can reap the benefits of Instagram with the right intentions, sustained effort, and desire to connect with your community and the individual needs of people!
Author Bio:
Kayla Beatrice is in charge of social media content writing at uptopsocial.com, assisting brands to achieve success online. Her expertise includes social media strategy and she’s a regular blogger on marketing platforms.