How To Grow Instagram Followers Organically

Have you noticed your Instagram growth slowing down? You're not the only one. It’s common for brands to reach a point where their follower count feels stagnant, even after trying all the usual tricks and tactics. But the good news? This doesn't mean you're out of options — it's just a signal to try something different.

If you're wondering how to grow followers on Instagram organically, it’s important to understand that periods of stagnation are normal. This often signals it's time to reassess your social media marketing strategy and refine your approach. Focus on creating content that sparks meaningful engagement, helping you achieve a good yearly Instagram Business Page growth rate. By adapting your approach to trends, the Instagram algorithms and your audience’s changing behaviors, you can organically increase Instagram followers and keep your account growing steadily over time.

Instagram growth has evolved significantly over time — it’s no longer just about how to get more followers on Instagram. While knowing how to grow your following organically is still essential, growth now also includes overall engagement, such as likes, comments, shares, saves and interactions with your Stories and Reels. Engagement metrics have become just as important as follower count when assessing what is a good follower growth rate on Instagram.

Why It’s Important To Track Growth

The best way to grow Instagram followers organically is by staying in tune with what your audience demographics and observing the content that they are engaging with. It is all about trial and error. Once you have a type of content that works for you, keep on tweaking it to achieve maximum results.

Tracking your growth and monitoring social media analytics closely allows you to identify what’s working and what’s not, especially when trying to figure out what is a good follower growth rate on Instagram. By regularly monitoring Instagram metrics like engagement rate and reach, you can adjust your content and posting strategy. This helps you refine your Instagram marketing strategy, learn which followers do and don't add value, avoid stagnation and continue learning how to grow Instagram followers organically for free. When you embrace tracking and analysis, you can overcome any plateau and ensure that your brand continues to grow its presence on Instagram.

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The secret to bouncing back from stagnant follower growth isn’t just posting more — it’s about staying relevant, switching things up and keeping your audience hooked.

If your current content marketing strategy isn’t doing the trick, take it as your sign to shake things up and try something new. Let’s dive into what you can do to get back in the game! 

1. Experiment With Niche Communities

Engaging with niche communities helps you connect with highly relevant audiences who are more likely to interact with your content. Join conversations in your industry by commenting on posts, collaborating with micro-influencers and using community-specific Instagram hashtags. The more you show up in these spaces, the more visibility and credibility you build.

Take this example from Shop with Google, West Elm and creator Marco Zamora — they partnered with home decor creator Zamora to tap into the niche plant community to spark home design and gift-giving inspiration for the holiday season. This is a great example of how a tech company can develop its social commerce tactics to reach new people and bring a larger scope to its products.

2. Leverage Collaborative Content

Collaboration is one of the most effective ways to expand your reach and grow your audience on Instagram. By working with creators, brands or even your followers, you can tap into new communities while creating engaging, shareable content.

Leverage collaborative tools like Instagram’s Collab feature to co-author posts or partner with like-minded accounts to run social media campaigns that align with your brand values. Platforms like Dash Social can help you find ideal creators to collaborate with, making the process seamless — from sourcing the influencer to measuring their impact. Collaborations not only boost visibility but also help establish credibility with new audiences, driving organic growth.

3. Use Relatable, Story-Driven Content

Authenticity wins on Instagram. Rather than focusing only on polished brand messaging, lean into storytelling that resonates with your audience. Whether it’s personal anecdotes, customer testimonials or behind-the-scenes glimpses of your process that reinforce social entertainment tactics, content that feels real fosters deeper connections and encourages shares.

4. Optimize for Each Platform’s Unique Features

Every social media platform has its own personality and creating content without considering these differences can hold you back. The same polished LinkedIn post won’t have the same impact on Instagram, where high-quality visuals and engaging Reels dominate.

Tailoring your content to fit each platform's features ensures it connects with the right audience. Pair that with smart social media SEO, which include platform-specific keywords in your bio and captions, trending hashtags and tags — to increase discoverability and drive more traffic. This combination not only boosts engagement but helps you make the most of every channel.

5. Create Evergreen Educational Resources‍

People come to social media either to be entertained or to learn. In fact, media and entertainment industries have the highest average earned media value at $22.8K and the highest average reach at 40.7K on social. By creating evergreen educational content, your brand can tap into that thirst for knowledge. 

Think about creating guides, how-to videos or industry tips that stay useful long after you post them. These pieces of content don’t just disappear — they can be brought back to the feed again and again, offering value every time.

For example, Duolingo uses Instagram not just to educate but also to entertain its audience. Through playful and humorous posts, they engage followers while helping them learn new languages. Duolingo often creates memes, quizzes and relatable content that makes language learning fun. These entertaining elements keep audiences engaged, while subtly reinforcing the educational message, making the learning process feel less like work and more like fun. This blend of entertainment and education helps Duolingo maintain a highly engaged and loyal Instagram following.

6. Engage in Topical Conversations

Joining timely discussions helps position your brand as an authority and boosts discoverability. Whether through Instagram Stories, Reels, or comments, engaging with trending topics keeps your brand relevant and visible.

Monitor industry conversations, social media trends and breaking news that align with your brand’s values. Jump in with thoughtful insights, share your brand’s perspective, or create content that adds value to the discussion. Use relevant hashtags, tags, and interactive stickers to maximize visibility and encourage audience engagement.

7. Host Virtual Meetups or Events

Live interactions create authentic conversation and strengthen community ties. Hosting Instagram Lives, AMAs (Ask Me Anything) or interactive webinars gives your audience direct access to your brand, fostering deeper connections.

Plan your event with a clear focus, whether it's a product demo, expert interview or behind-the-scenes look at your brand. Promote it in advance through countdown stickers, posts and email reminders to drive attendance. During the event, encourage real-time participation with Q&A features, polls and interactive elements to keep viewers engaged. Afterward, repurpose the content by sharing highlights as Instagram Reels, Stories or carousel posts to extend its reach.

Alo expertly collaborates with Vogue while bridging the gap between the two brands with a running club event for its group aloRUNNER, including a health and wellness bar, ice and sound baths and more. This is a great way to share emerging and existing wellness trends with its customers, reach new audiences through Vogue and even shine a light on other brands in its sphere. 

8. Develop and Implement a Consistent Aesthetic

While it’s not necessarily on trend to make sure your feed is aesthetically consistent and overly branded with watermarks and other elements, a certain level of brand recognition is important in your visual marketing strategy. Lean into a consistent brand identity and voice in your content — whether it’s luxe, sophisticated images, consistently hopping on funny memes or UGC creators speaking about your brand, they might not appear uniform among your feed, but are consistent in their own way. 

Another way you might choose to implement a consistent aesthetic without sharing overly stale content is to develop a particular color palette used throughout your feed, a specific selection of visual elements or filters or other tactics that also allow for some variety. Having some sort of style guide for your brand and continually revisiting it is a great way to ensure you stay ahead of trends without becoming complacent.

9. Share Behind-the-Scenes Content

Instagram users today want to feel connected to the brands they support and behind-the-scenes content is the perfect way to make that connection. Sharing glimpses of your manufacturing process, the team at work or even day-to-day operations gives your audience an inside look at what goes into your products or services — didn’t we all love ‘how it’s made’? 

This transparency helps humanize your brand, making it more relatable and authentic. As you share these moments, Instagram users feel like they’re part of the journey, which in turn helps build a stronger sense of community. The more they feel connected, the more likely they are to become loyal supporters of your brand.

In this example from Fifty Flowers, its CEO takes users behind the scenes of a field filled with Alstroemeria plots — she explains the planting and harvesting process, giving audiences the story behind flowers they’ll receive in the mail. This is a great example of taking an everyday part of your organization’s function to expand your brand’s narrative. 

10. Analyze and Adapt Using Insights and Analytics

Data-driven decisions are key to organic growth. Use Instagram Insights and other social media analytics tools to track what content performs best and refine your strategy accordingly. Pay attention to engagement rates, follower growth trends and audience behavior to continuously optimize your approach.

By implementing these organic Instagram growth strategies, you can attract an engaged audience and sustain long-term success without relying on paid ads.

The best way to track your organic Instagram performance is by monitoring the right metrics. Use Instagram Management Tools to check engagement rates, reach and follower growth to help understand what content resonates with your audience. For a deeper dive, Dash Social provides advanced tools to analyze trends, compare benchmarks and optimize your strategy, ensuring long-term growth and success.

Viewing your Instagram metrics on Dash Social is simple — here’s how: 

• First, navigate to ‘Analytics’.
• Then, select the ‘Instagram’ icon.
• From there, you can view an overview of your Instagram account metrics.
• In addition to this, the list includes options to view metrics for: Overall Insights, Stories, UGC, Visual IQ, Boards and LikeShop.

Social Media Dashboards are a great option for brands looking to track Instagram KPIs for specific content types, trends and campaigns. They allow you to dive deeper into your best-performing visuals from a given campaign or content type, allowing you to see what works and make strategic choices for future social content. 

Growing Instagram followers organically requires consistency, creativity and the right tools. Dash Social makes this process easier by providing actionable insights and tools to optimize your strategy.

With Dash Social, brands can identify content that resonates with its audience by analyzing social media trends and performance metrics. Instagram Story Studio also lets social teams use media from owned, earned and paid content to craft visually stunning — and impactful content. 

The platform also helps discover the best times to post on Instagram, track follower growth and monitor the impact of hashtags. Leveraging Social Analytics and Monitoring will help you refine your approach to creating authentic, engaging content that attracts followers organically over time.

How to increase organic followers on Instagram? 

Increasing organic followers can be done in several ways. Viral moments online can spark a big following, but often, authentic content and a deep understanding of your audience and what connects with them are vital to maintaining and steadily growing your following. 

What is a good follower growth rate on Instagram?

On Instagram, the average monthly follower growth rate is 0.7% overall. For growing brands (1-190K followers) this average is 1%, for established brands (190K-1.1M followers) this is 0.6% and for large brands (1.1M+followers) is 0.5%.