For starters, what exactly does growing organically mean. When we talk about organic growth on Instagram, it is the growth of followers achieved from the page itself. So suppose you have an Instagram page; you post some pictures and like some pictures of others.
Your organic reach is the people your page reaches that moment. The followers that result from that are your organic growth.
For example, if you have an Instagram ad running, the people who will follow you, as a result, are not organic.
The people who will follow you by liking photos or following others are organic because the page achieves this.
The situation
How it was:
If you posted a photo on Instagram three years ago that was of high quality, with the right hashtags, the chances of landing on the explore page were guaranteed. 
Not only that but even if you had, for example, 50,000 followers and many people liked your post, this photo was also explored page shown by friends of your followers.
In short, growing on Instagram was much more accessible. In this time, you saw many Instagrammers grow organically very quickly.
How it is now:
At the moment, we see an evident trend that coming to the explore page and therefore growing automatically and without real effort on Instagram is a thing of the past. How is that possible? The platform is getting saturated.
Many users, many photos. Instagram wants to keep you on the platform as long as possible, which means that they only show the images that they are sure they like you. This also applies to the explore page.
Source: The Indian Express
In short, this means that it is much more challenging to get to someone’s explore page because the requirements are much stricter. It is also no longer the case that the friends of your followers see your photo on their research page.
Even if you have many thousands of followers, increasing without strategy is very difficult—the niche with the biggest problems in the fashion niche. There, prominent influencers (200K+) grow, but with an average of 10-100 followers per day, below some data from three major fashion influencers.
The three profiles below do not use a specific growth strategy (besides good photos and hashtags).
Why the incredible fashion niche?
There is an excellent saturation here; it is almost impossible to top this with a rapidly increasing amount of Instagrammers. What are prominent places for organic reach?
Fitness and travel. However, if we look at the fitness niche, we still see a lot of organic growth. We also see that men have it more difficult than women. This is because 68% of Instagram is made up of women. Below are three major fitness influencers. The three profiles below do not use a specific growth strategy (besides good photos and hashtags).
How to make sure you grow organically on Instagram:
Even though the opportunities have diminished, organic growth without strategy is still possible, even in fashion. There are two dominant options for this:
Viral content:
Posting viral content speaks for itself. Content so catchy it’s going viral on Instagram. People like and share, i.e., so it’s an extensive reach. How do you create viral content? Well, there is no quick recipe for that; for starters,
- you post something literally stupid enough that it becomes a meme and goes viral (louder with crowder).
- You post a cake baking recipe that is just too much pleasing to the eye, it goes viral
Examples of viral pages:
Be the authority in your niche:
Being the authority in your niche is nothing more than being the person everyone looks up to. You achieve this by creating the very best content within your place. This can be any niche.
What happens then: reposting pages in your niche will repost your content because it is the very best there is. And your account becomes the benchmark for the entire place. The result is a lot of exposure and, therefore, organic growth.
The authority in the men’s fashion niche is @rowanrow. He follows 0 people and posts nothing but highly high-quality content. The result: Rowan Row is reposted by every prominent repost page on Instagram, resulting in massive reach.
Conclusion:
Growing organically on Instagram without a targeted strategy is very difficult within the current Instagram algorithm. The hardest part is for the fashion niche.
However, the fitness and travel niche still have opportunities to grow, provided the page is high quality already has enough followers (50K+). Namely, also in the fitness niche, small Instagrammers have a hard time due to saturation.
Organic reach is even less for the fashion niche, especially with influencers to the 1 million followers, with exceptions, of course. Users with 1 million + are not affected much by the new algorithms; the growth in this segment is relatively stable.
Companies on Instagram have an even harder time because the content here often cannot compete with that of influencers. It turns out: even if you have many thousands of followers, growing without a strategy is very difficult; the expectation is that this will only become more difficult with the increasing number of Instagram users.
It is no longer the case that once you have a few thousand followers, it will automatically lead to more followers. At least not to the extent that it was three years ago.
Growing Organically on Instagram, The Solution
Content king, try to become the authority within your niche or create viral content. This is very difficult, and the truth is that in today’s Instagram environment creating viral content or becoming the authority is incredibly labor-intensive, expensive, and complex.
Of course, there are other ways. In our opinion, the best solution is a targeted Instagram marketing strategy that is actively tracked and seamlessly connects to your target group. It is essential to interact with your target group actively.
This way, you maximize the chance to be seen. This strategy guarantees organic growth because it leverages the core of Instagram.
Namely: actively participating in your community. Applying other methods is of course also possible, there are of course several ways to Rome!
Like Instagram Ads, buying a repost on a significant page, or deploying sub-accounts to promote your main page. Use multiple ways to create diversity in your growth strategy, ensuring more robust growth.
Do you want a custom-designed system for your page or help to improve your content strategy? Contact us or view our services for companies and influencers.
Until the next blog!
