How to Get More Views on Instagram in 2024

Generating more views and impressions on Instagram isn’t as easy as it used to be.

There are over two billion users and 25 million businesses vying for attention. Along with this, Instagram’s constantly-changing algorithm makes it harder to reach your target audience.

In this post, we’ll be sharing 10 tactics you can use to beat the algorithm—and competition—to get more views, increase reach, and boost engagement on Instagram.

1. Post more often

It’s natural that if you post more often, you will get more impressions. A study by Tailwind found that accounts that post more than seven times a week generate the most likes.

The same study also found that accounts that post more often attract more followers.

To get the best results, publish a variety of posts. Here’s what Instagram recommends publishing per week:

• 4-7 reels
• 3 feed posts (or more)
• 8-10 stories
• 1-3 IGTV videos

Check out National Geographic’s account for some inspiration.

It publishes different types of posts multiple times a day, and they’re all high quality.

Instagram’s recommendations are a good starting point, but don’t just stick to what the network asks you to do. Different audiences will prefer different post types, so experiment with various post types (and frequencies) and see which one generates the most views. Then create more of those.

2. Share more videos and carousel posts

A study from Quintly found that videos generate 49% more interactions than photo posts. They also generate 19.4% more interactions than carousel pos

If you don’t currently publish enough videos, you might want to give them a try. To generate the most views, try creating how-to tutorials as a study from Wibbitz found that people want to see this content type most often.

Creating video content can be very time-consuming, but you can cut short the effort with a tool like ImagickPro. It has templates and an easy-to-use editor that make it easy for anyone to create videos.

Your videos also don’t have to be very long. Hubspot found that the ideal Instagram video length for feed posts is 26 seconds.

Reels and Stories will naturally need to be even shorter because of Instagram’s time limit.

For a short video idea, check out this post from Chobani. It’s a recipe tutorial.

Try to create more Reels right now as they generate the highest engagement. Instagram is using this feature to compete with TikTok, so it rewards users who create Reels with more views.

If you aren’t comfortable creating videos or if it is taking more time, you can create more images instead. Publish image posts more often to get the same (or higher) levels of impressions. Compare the time (it takes to create video posts vs photo posts) and track the impressions you get to see which one works best.

While publishing image posts, experiment with carousels as they generate 24.9% more interactions than regular image posts.

3. Use a lot of hashtags

To get more impressions and engagement on Instagram, you must up your hashtag game. One study from Trackmaven found that posts with 9 or more hashtags generate more interactions than those with fewer.

So, add as many as you can, but don’t just randomly add any hashtags that are remotely relevant to the post topic. Instead, get strategic and use three kinds of hashtags.

• Low competition: These are hashtags that have been used in less than 50,000 posts.
• Medium competition: These have been used in 50,000 to 100,000 posts.
• High competition: These hashtags have been used in more than 100,000 posts.

Often, people like to go for the high competition hashtags. But most times, only the largest accounts rank for these hashtags.

Instead, use a combination of the three types of hashtags. It will be easier to rank for low and medium competition hashtags as fewer people use them. Plus, interactions generated from these hashtags will eventually help you rank for the high competition options and get even more impressions.

Along with these three types of hashtags, you might also want to add one or two branded ones.

To find hashtags, you can use HashtagforLikes.

It will not only find Instagram hashtags, but also show you the competition levels.

For some ideas, check out Palmer’s account. It uses a good combination of hashtags.

You will also notice that the hashtags appear in a comment rather than the caption. This keeps the caption clutter-free.

4. Join a pod

Instagram pods, also known as engagement groups, are communities where people like and comment on each other’s posts. Instagram frowns on these communities, but several power users take advantage of them to improve their reach.

A great place to find pods is Telegram.

To find pods, simply type in keywords related to engagement groups and your niche in Telegram search and check out the groups. If you find anything relevant, you can join.

There are also blog posts like this one from Kim Sutton and this one from Hipster Kidster that list pods. You can also ask people you know to invite you to pods they participate in.

There are different kinds of engagement groups available. Some accept members depending on the followers they have, while others consider the niche.

A few consider both the number of followers and the topic. For best results, find groups that take both the number of followers and the niche into consideration as the algorithm looks at the niche/topic of the accounts interacting with your post. If you get more engagement from relevant accounts, your post will do better.

The number of followers also matters. If you get engagement from an account with a huge following, that can help your post perform better.

Groups that take both niche and followers into consideration will only let you in if you have the right number of followers. As your following grows, you can look for new groups that match your follower levels. You might also want to look into creating your own group.

5. Get more followers

You will naturally reach more people with more followers. If you divide the average amount of impressions you get per post by the number of followers you have and multiply it by 100, you can figure out your reach/impression percentage.

This will help you predict how many more impressions you will get if you grow your following. But remember that, as you grow your following, your engagement rate will decrease, as you can see in this report.

Even though the rate will decrease, the total impressions you get will still increase as you will have a far larger follower count.

Here are a few ways to get more followers.

• Set up a good profile: Before people follow you, they likely check out your profile picture, read your bio, and maybe even visit your website. If your profile is up to date with an engaging bio that resonates with their interests, they will follow you.
• Run contests: A quick way to get followers is to run a contest or giveaway. You can run a follow-to-win contest where you ask people to follow you to take part in a contest. You could also ask people to tag their friends in the comments, and like the post. This way you will generate more reach, engagement, and followers at the same time. Before you launch a contest make sure you read and follow Instagram’s promotion guidelines and follow them strictly to avoid account suspension.
• Engage with others: Don’t wait for others to follow you. Actively seek out people to follow. Whenever you see an interesting post, like it, comment on it, and follow the account. Some of these people will follow you back. You can continue following the ones who follow you in return and unfollow those who don’t.

6. Post at the best time

Timing is an essential factor when your goal is to generate more impressions and engagement on social media. If you post when more people are online, more people will naturally see your posts. When you’re just starting and don’t have much information about your followers and their interests, you can use a study like this one from Later.

As you can see, the best time to post varies every day.

Try scheduling at these times more often. You might also want to experiment with occasionally posting at less popular times since most of the top accounts will usually post at the best times. If you post at a less popular time, you might have low competition.

After posting at these times for a while, you can use Instagram’s built-in insights or a third-party analytics tool to find your best time to post. You can then schedule posts with a social media management tool like Radaar.

7. Work with influencers

Influencers can help you reach a fresh, wider audience.

The key to getting the most out of influencer marketing is to work with influencers whose followers you want to target. So, do a ton of research to find the best influencers. You might also want to do your due diligence to determine if their followers are real or fake, as there is a big fake follower epidemic on Instagram.

Once you find the influencers, you can simply ask them to repost your best-performing content. Micro-influencers (influencers with less than 1000 followers) will do this for free or in exchange for a product. In comparison, those with larger followings might ask for payment.

If you have a reasonable budget, you can pay them. It will help you reach a larger audience with less effort. You could also ask the influencers to create original content that will better resonate with their audience.

When they publish the sponsored post, ask them to tag your account handle in the caption. This will make it easy for their followers to find your account and follow you — and potentially grow your audience.

For some ideas on how to get influencer marketing right, check out Gymshark. It works with a lot of influencers on Instagram. The influencers create unique content and post them on the network.

Gymshark then re-publishes some of these paid posts on its page.

Publishing user-generated content can make sponsored posts look more authentic, help build strong relationships with influencers, and also generate sales.

8. Boost posts

An easy way to quickly increase the reach of your Instagram posts is to boost them using ads. You can do this by clicking on the “Promote” button under your posts. You will only see this if you have a business account.

You can run these ads for as little as $5. Instead of boosting every post you publish, only do it for the best-performing ones. If the post already did well, it is more likely to generate more engagement and impressions when you promote it.

If you want to generate more targeted impressions, you can use Facebook ads manager while promoting your post and choose who you want to reach.

You can also promote the posts influencers publish if they turn on “Allow Business Partner to Promote” when they publish.

This will let you turn that post into an ad and reach more people. An ad like this will also convert better as it appears on another account. It will look more credible.

9. Pay attention to insights

On the Instagram Insights, under the “Accounts Reached" section, you can view various metrics such as impressions, profile visits, and website taps.

You can also see your top posts and stories. This will give you a better idea of what posts drive the most impressions and engagement. Use this information to create posts that will help you reach your Instagram marketing goals.

You can also analyze individual posts and find out if a post got you more profile visits, followers, or website clicks.

There’s even a Discovery page where you can see whether users discovered your post on their home feed, your profile, or the Explore page.

10. Get on the Explore page

Every time you publish a post on Instagram, your aim should be to get on the Explore page.

Getting on this page can increase the impressions your posts get as people frequent it to find the best content. If you create quality content and accompany them with the above tactics, you will regularly get on this page.

But there’s an extra technique you might want to try: Get more strategic with the way you use Instagram engagement groups.

One of the factors that Instagram considers to rank your post on the Explore page is how much engagement you get as soon as you post. So, as soon as you publish a post, inform people in your engagement group to like and comment on it.

To ensure that people see it, you might want to set a time every day when you and the other members of the same group publish at the same time and interact with each other’s posts.

This tactic, along with others such as using the right hashtags and sharing more videos (especially reels), will help your posts reach the Explore page more often.

Get more views and impressions on Instagram

Yes, it takes a lot of effort to generate more views, impressions, and engagement on Instagram. But implementing all these tactics is worth it as Instagram is probably the best network to market yourself on right now.

You don’t have to overwhelm yourself by implementing all tactics immediately. Start with a handful for now and gradually incorporate more techniques.

To help you save time creating quality Instagram content and increasing your impressions, you might want to check out the latest Instagram tools on the AppSumo store. We have several lifetime deals on tools and templates that you will love.