How To Get 10k Instagram Followers in 2024

Getting to 10K followers is a huge milestone for any Instagram user. It takes hard work, persistence and a knack for content creation to make it this far. Only 19.63% of Instagram accounts have 10K or more followers.

If you’re serious about growing your Instagram account and want to join the 10K club, we have 16 strategies to help you achieve this goal in 2024.

16 Tips To Get 10k Followers on Instagram in 2024

Want to reach 10K followers this year? Follow the tips below to start growing your audience.

1. Stick to a Niche to Gain Followers

Have you chosen a niche for your Instagram account? If not, there’s no better time than now to choose one. 

If you’ve already chosen a niche, then are you sticking to it? Or are you posting content on all kinds of different topics?

If you want to reach 10K followers, you need to stick to a niche. Why? Because if you consistently post on the same topics, you establish yourself as an authority or thought leader. People know that they can visit your account to learn more about whatever it is you’re posting about.

You’re reliable. You’re trustworthy.

But if you’re posting about everything under the sun, you can quickly lose any authority you’ve built because people don’t really know what your account is about.

If you haven’t been focusing on your niche, then make a new content plan that does. Over time, you’ll reestablish yourself as an authority and build up your following naturally.

2. Start Making Your Voice Heard on Other People’s Accounts

The purpose of social media is to build a community, network and engage with others. Instead of waiting for people to interact with you, take a proactive approach. Start making your voice heard on other people’s accounts by:

When you comment on posts, make sure that you’re adding something relevant and valuable to the conversation. If someone asks a question, for example, give them a helpful answer. 

Engaging with other people’s content will give your account more exposure and help you reach more potential followers. A helpful answer or an insightful comment can lead to a few – or more – new follows.

3. Pay to Boost Posts

One simple and effective way to get more followers and engagement is to boost your posts. When you boost a post, you’re paying Instagram to promote your content.

Essentially, you’re turning an existing post into an ad. Advertising your content will greatly expand your reach and help you get more followers.

Once that’s out of the way, the rest is easy.

If you don’t mind investing in your Instagram account, boosting is an easy way to get your content and account in front of more people.

4. Create More Content Your Audience Likes

If your goal is to hit 10K followers, we’re going to assume that you already have an account, you have a decent follower count, and you’re already posting content.

You can use insights from the content you’ve already posted to:

If you haven’t already, make sure that you’ve switched from a personal to a business or creator account. Switching account types will give you access to Instagram Insights, which allows you to see your:

Once you make the switch to a creator or business account, Instagram will automatically start tracking engagement for you. You’ll be able to view insights for each individual post, including:

These insights are so valuable because they tell you who your audience is and what they want to see. Make sure that you’re checking your insights regularly and creating more content that resonates with your audience.

5. Grab Free Followers from Us

Want a quick boost to your follower count? Take advantage of our free Instagram followers tool and enjoy 50 followers on us.

All you have to do is:

We’ll start sending your free followers right away. While you’re at it, why not check out our followers packages? Our followers are real, so you can start growing your audience today and watch new followers pour in organically over time.

6. Make Your Profile Public

Is your account currently set to private? If so, you’ll have a hard time reaching your goal of 10K followers.

Why?

Because no one will be able to see your content (only your followers). When non-followers visit your profile, they won’t be able to see any of your posts.

Most people don’t want to jump through hoops just to follow people on social media – unless it’s someone they know personally.

Plus, you can’t switch to a business or creator account if your profile isn’t public. In fact, you won’t be able to monetize your account at all if it’s private.

7. Post, Post and Post More – BUT Be Consistent

Followers want to follow active accounts. If you’re not putting the effort in to be a creator, there’s a good chance people will see your account and not follow it. You should create a social media calendar that outlines:

Posting frequency will depend on your niche and audience, but you’ll want to remain consistent in all cases.

8. Buy 10k Followers

Even if you consistently post fabulous content, interact with followers enthusiastically, or listen to your audience’s preferences, you may still not reach the right audience.

Instagram’s algorithm can make you sick with its unpredictability!

Even if you reach them, they may not hit the Follow button – especially if your existing follower count is low. 

So, a great alternative is to buy followers. This has always been an industry secret for both growing and established creators – so don’t feel guilty!

However, if you place your order from cheap service providers, they’ll send low-quality, cheap followers with lots of bots or fake accounts.

On the other hand, Instagram has strict guidelines against such activities. Once Instagram suspects the presence of fake accounts and bots, your account may get penalized, restricted, banned, or even deleted!

So, it’s important to avail of such services only from the biggest and most trusted players in this industry, who will provide you with real followers.

This makes it seem that your page has grown organically. It boosts your page’s credibility and increases the reach of your content.

Viralyft has amazing packages for you to buy 10,000 high-quality and premium Instagram followers. Our followers are 100% authentic with real people with every account and a genuine online presence.

We also offer added benefits like no drop-offs, guaranteed refills, and a secure payment gateway. 

9. Optimize Your Bio

Instagram bios are so important that we have an entire guide on optimizing and creating them. Your bio may mean the difference between people following you or clicking off of your account, and it’s one of the areas that a lot of people overlook.

If you spend time optimizing your bio, you’ll notice that more people will begin following you because they don’t have to guess which niche you’re in or what you’ll be posting. 

10. Team Up with Others in Your Niche

Solo account growth is fun, but it’s a slower path to 10k followers than if you team up with others in your niche.

You reach out to your friend who has 3,000 followers and ask if they want to cross-promote.

Now, you have access to 3,000 potential followers, but you’ll need to:

Teaming up with others empowers you to grow your account fast and do it while helping someone else. Collaborations are a win-win, but you do want the other person to be someone who you envision your followers wanting to follow.

11. Cross-Promote on Your Other Social Channels

You’re growing your Instagram, but you likely have other social media accounts that are already established. If you have accounts in similar niches, there’s no harm in cross-promoting them once in a while.

We see a lot of YouTubers using this strategy. People want to connect with their network across multiple platforms, and they’ll often go to your bio or profile to find your accounts. You can even use a link in bio service that makes it easy to add multiple links to one central “bio” page.

12. Up Your Hashtag Game

Hashtags may not be as valuable as they were in the past, but they’re still one of the easiest ways for you to gain followers. You’ll want to select hashtags with:

We recommend that you use 3 –5 hashtags per post, but you are allowed up to 30 total. Your strategy for hashtags needs to be unique to your audience and niche, but we recommend that you consider:

Your goal is to have your content seen, and if it’s good, people will go from your post to your profile and follow you.

Strategically choosing your hashtags does take time, and we do have a tool (try it for free) that can help you get started. If you don’t want to use a tool, you can click on the Instagram search and add your main seed keyword to see what autocomplete recommendations Instagram may have.

13. Run Your Own Contests

A contest is a fast way to get followers. People always want to win something, and if you run a contest, you can build your follower base quickly. You can do this in a few ways, but you’ll need to:

If you have a sponsor, see if they’ll let you promote their product or service as a prize.

But how do you get followers?

As part of the contest, people have to tag their friends in a comment. When their friends see your contest, they’ll want to join, so be sure that one of the rules is that contestants need to follow you in order to win.

You can promote your contest on other promotion sites and even ask contestants to share the contest with others on their account.

If you select a prize that people really want, you’ll be amazed as your follower count rises.

And we almost forgot to mention: you can use our Instagram giveaway picker to help you select a 100% random winner based on the criteria that you set.

14. Create a Personal or Business Brand

Instagram for personal branding – or to build a business brand – is an extremely powerful tool. If you have 10,000 followers, you can even monetize them and make a decent side income. However, there’s a difference between a brand and an individual account.

Brands offer more:

We recommend always starting with a goal. What do you want out of your brand? Do you want to share your expertise, entertain people or do something completely different? No matter your goals, you need to:

Branding allows you to be easily recognizable across all social profiles. Imagine your favorite influencer. If you go to the person’s TikTok, X or YouTube account, do you know it’s them? Often, the answer is “yes” because they use branding and the same profile photo on each account.

15. Start Tagging Popular Locations That You Visit

Do you visit awesome locations? How about big cities? If you said “yes” to either of these questions, you’ll want to start leveraging location tagging. Perhaps you’re in Dallas or Chicago at a major event, tag yourself in it – even if it’s after you’re already home.

Why?

People love browsing location tags, and it gives you just another area on Instagram where you can have your posts seen. You’ll want to do this at:

Even tagging yourself at a local gym or cafe will help you get noticed. You do want to be mindful of not putting your entire life in tags because anyone will be able to see it.

And you don’t want people to know your daily schedule because social media can be used to find out personal details of your life that you don’t want to share.

However, if you’re at the beach, a concert or in a major city, tag the location and you’re likely to get a few random followers.

16. Buy Shoutouts

Finally, if you’re doing everything possible and still not seeing your follower count tick up, it’s possible to pay for shoutouts. You can do this using our guide on shoutouts, which talks about three main platforms:

We won’t dive into each platform – read the guide for that – but we do want to mention that shoutouts work best if you choose the right influencer. You want to have followers who are engaged and really want to see what you’re posting.

It doesn’t make sense to buy shoutouts from accounts that have zero relevance to you.

Why?

You’ll be spending money on accounts that don’t engage with you and the influencer’s shoutout is likely to convert to followers at a much lower rate.

Do your due diligence to ensure that the account doing the shoutout is one that you know your audience likely follows and will lead to the highest return on your investment.

Conclusion

Growing an Instagram following to 10k followers is just the beginning for your account. Hitting this milestone means that you’re now an influencer in your own right and have a follower base that trusts your opinions and recommendations.