The average user and brands alike are trying to figure out how to get popular on Instagram in 2025.
Instagram is a great way to connect with friends and family, share funny videos and get creative with your content.
However, if you want to take it a bit more seriously than this, you will need to learn what the influencers out there are doing.
How to Get Popular on Instagram in 2025
This article is going to help you learn some techniques and tips for gaining more followers and getting more likes on your content.
Here’s how to get popular on Instagram.
Let’s dive in.
Getting More Followers
Make sure your profile is set to public. It’s going to be pretty hard to be popular on Instagram if you have to approve everyone who wants to follow your profile.
People also tend to want to see a preview of what you’re offering in terms of your content before they decide whether to follow you or not.
If you want to gain more followers, you need to make sure that your account is set to public.
We also recommend that you link your Instagram profile to the rest of your socials. Consolidating your audiences elsewhere online is a great way to expand your reach.
If you are worried about your privacy, then just make sure to not post anything you’re going to regret.
Don’t put anything too personal or embarrassing up. Also, make sure that you don’t geotag your home address.
Make Sure that You Follow Lots of People.
One of the easiest ways to gain more followers for your Instagram profile is to reciprocate the favor – or do the favor first.
You can’t expect people to just magically find your Instagram profile without you reaching out and interacting with them in the first place.
Follow lots of people out there, even if you think you’ll just unfollow them later. Instagram lets its users follow approximately 160 people every hour.
Follow your friends, and follow accounts that are related to things you are interested in. Also, follow influencers and celebrities, and lastly follow anyone back who has followed you.
Comment and Follow Popular Accounts.
If you want to get seen by a bigger audience, then you need to be interacting with some big accounts out there.
Find influencers that fall within your niche and get to work interacting with their posts. Like their posts, and comment on them.
Just make sure that you don’t spam anyone and try not to follow and then unfollow popular accounts really quickly too much.
How to Keep Your Followers
Choose a page theme and make sure you stick to it.
People are more likely to follow you if you have a cohesive theme around your content.
When coming up with your theme, try to think about what you are likely to post the most.
What are you passionate about? What are your personal interests?
This could be anything from eating, animals and photography to yoga or even home decorating.
Make Sure Your Bio Is Clear and Concise.
When someone checks out your page, they need to be able to figure out what you’re all about straight away.
This is why it’s important to have a clear bio that explains this immediately.
Make sure that your bio isn’t longer than a couple of sentences. Also, don’t share anything that’s too personal.
Take a Good Profile Picture.
The better your profile picture is, the more likely people are going to want to click through to your profile.
Choose a profile picture that fits in nicely with your page’s theme, and make sure that it is clear and in focus.
Leave Lots of Positive Comments.
If you want to get more followers for your Instagram page, then you will need to maintain a consistent presence on Instagram.
People are always appreciative of positive comments, so the more you do this, the more people will be tempted to want to check out your profile in return.
Post Consistently.
There’s no point in posting a couple of times in a week, and then nothing more for that month.
If you want to keep your followers around and interested in your feed, then you need to be regularly uploading content for them to interact with.
Otherwise, they are going to quickly lose interest, and they will look elsewhere for their daily dose of Instagram content.
Thursdays are the most popular day to post on Instagram, and an optimal amount is two to three times a day.
Just make sure that you don’t post more than one or two pictures at a time – you don’t want to flood your followers’ feeds.
Include Shoutouts Where Appropriate.
Posting a shoutout is when you name someone who is following you.
This is going to promote their page, and it’s also going to encourage their followers to start following you.
There are some profile pages out there that will even exchange a shoutout for money.
However, just remember that like with anything else on Instagram, it’s all about a balance. If you overdo it, you will end up losing followers.
Engage with Your Followers.
Remember, people like being entertained. If you want to do really well on Instagram and be popular, then you need to provide people with entertainment.
Don’t just post pictures and wait for people to interact with them. You’ve got to engage with those people.
This includes hosting contests, asking questions of your followers on Instagram Stories, and making a funny comment that people will want to share around.
Getting More Likes
Post at The Right Times.
It’s super important to post your content at the right time of day, especially if you plan on doing really well and becoming popular on Instagram.
The best time to post on Instagram is on Wednesdays at 5 p.m.
The bottom line is that if you post when everyone is looking at their phones, you are going to get more likes.
Remember not to post too many images at the same time, and make sure that you are posting at the right time for your audience.
Take a look at Instagram’s analytics to ensure that your uploads are in line with when the majority of your audience is online.
Include a caption every time. People love it when images on Instagram include a bit of context.
Unless you’re Justin Bieber, you can’t really upload an image and then just leave it for people to interpret.
Captions are a great opportunity to interact with your audience further, include a funny joke, or give people a little bit of background into the image.
The majority of people out there also include hashtags in their captions.
Don’t be afraid to not take your caption too seriously, and make sure to include some emojis in there as well.
Hashtags are a great way to get your pictures in front of the right people.
When people search up a specific hashtag, and that tag is associated with your content, your content will come up.
The more relevant your tags are to your niche, the more targeted your audience will be.
Make sure to use accurate hashtags, and make sure to tag the location on your content as well.
You can include up to 30 hashtags per post, but studies show that the optimal number to use is 11.
Follow those that like your pictures. One great way to maintain a community on your Instagram profile is to follow the people that like your pictures.
This is a great way to reach out to people who like your content and interact with them.
Make sure to like and comment on some of their images as well. This is a great way to show that you’re a real person, and not just a bot.
See What’s Trending.
It’s also important to keep up with what’s trending on Instagram. Make sure you take a look around your niche and figure out what everyone is finding popular right now.
Getting on the trend bandwagon is a great way to stay relevant in your niche, and make sure you maintain that reputation that you’ve worked so hard to create so far.
Use an app or a website to help you get more likes.
Take Better Pictures
Take a Variety of Different Pictures.
When it comes to taking pictures for your Instagram profile, you need to be diverse. Don’t be afraid to mix things up.
Check out the pictures that you’ve already taken and find a way to vary these items, and you can even think about repackaging your content.
Take the time to learn which photos resonate well with your audience, and which don’t. Don’t repost the same picture that you’ve already posted.
Use filters to your advantage. Instagram has a lot of filter options to choose from. Use them to give your images an edge, but don’t overdo it.
The #nofilter hashtag is popular on Instagram, and people like it when users post images that haven’t been doctored with a filter.
This is why you need to experiment with different ones and avoid making your images look too tweaked.
Try to use a high-quality camera, and another thing that’s worth knowing is that Willow is the most popular filter.
Tell a story with your images. It’s possible to combine your images together so that you can tell a story. People also love before and after pictures.
Use a Photo Editing App.
There are a few good options out there when it comes to using a photo editing app.
They can help you optimize your photos, so that you can eventually become popular for the kind of content that you put out there.
Some popular photo editing apps include Snapseed and ColorSplash.
Keep Your Images Clean.
Keep it classy, and don’t share anything explicit. Otherwise, you could end up having your Instagram account suspended or banned.
Yes, sex sells, but just make sure that you don’t share any nudity on your Instagram feed.
FAQs
What Is the Quickest Way to Get Popular on Instagram?
The quickest way to become popular on Instagram is to engage with your audience, and engage with people that might not be following you yet.
The thing that you will probably already know about Instagram is that it is a community, which means the more time you spend interacting with members of your community, the more likely you are to be featured on the explore page and picked up by Instagram’s algorithm.
Instagram loves to see its users interacting with others, so that more you engage on your profile, the more likely you are to become really popular.
How Can I Use My Other Social Media Platforms to Be Popular on Instagram?
The great news is that you can also use your other social media platforms to promote your Instagram profile, through cross promotion.
This is when you upload a piece of content to your Instagram profile, and then as soon as you have done this you talk about it on your other social media platforms, or even upload the same content on your other socials.
You can include a call-to-action as well, which encourages your audiences over on Facebook and Twitter to come and check out what you’ve got going on with your Instagram profile as well.
This is a great way to incorporate all your different audiences and ensure that you are becoming popular on Instagram.
What if I Think that My Instagram Isn’t Worth Growing?
If you’re somebody who has been working at growing your Instagram for a while now, and you haven’t really seen any real growth in a while, then you’re probably feeling a little bit disheartened.
However, we encourage you to keep going, because success might be just around the corner.
As you can see from our article above, there are many ways that you can learn how to become popular on Instagram, you’ve just got to know what the right strategy is for your niche, and how to put the time in.
There is no doubt that you will become popular on Instagram at some point if you put this kind of work in.
Final Thoughts
The biggest downside to Instagram is that it is really competitive at this point, but the biggest upside to Instagram is that there is still a viable chance for you to do well and be seen by the right people.
If you’ve got the time to spend, you can definitely apply the strategies that we’ve talked about above, with one of the most important of these being the fact that you need to engage with your audience on a regular basis.
The more present you are when it comes to your audience, the more they are going to believe that you have something valuable to offer, and the more they’re going to feel valued by you.
Learn how to get popular on Instagram, and watch as your content skyrockets when it comes to people interacting with it.
