Gaining new followers on Instagram is not as easy as asking people to follow you; but it is not a great mystery either. One simple way to gain more followers is to connect to other social media platforms.
Connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page. This will automatically make people connect and follow you. Not only will it ask them to follow you on their timeline, it will post new images, updates and inform people when new images are shared on your Instagram account. Facebook is still one of the most (if not the most) popular business social media platform; utilize it, and connect your accounts to let your current followers you also have an Instagram account. You can even ask them to follow you through Facebook.
Engage and follow other people to gain new followers. This is also an easy way to gain new followers. Some people who see you are viewing their images and post comments on them will follow you back, even if they are not interested; others will wait for you to request to follow you back. And if you are following other businesses, this is a great way to gain new followers. If they follow you back, many of their followers are automatically going to follow you back as well.
The use of popular hashtags is another easy way to gain new followers; but you have to use those which are relevant to your business if you want people to follow you. If you are using hashtags related to one industry when you are in a completely different industry, it is going to upset people and they will immediately unfollow you.
Using relevant hashtags is a way for people to see the images you post, even if they are not following you. From there, they can view more images and if they find your account to be of interest or something that they are looking for, it will more often than not lead to them following you.
Even if new followers do not lead to more sales, it does lead to more recognition and the more people seeing images of your products, the more people will be learning about your business online. This is always a good thing.
So, get yourself out there, engage, follow and connect. Doing these three things will greatly result in an increase in the number of followers you see, and the number of visitors you will see coming to your business site over time as well.