With over 500 million active users, Instagram is a social media application primarily for young people, creative people and photographers. But how can you increase your Instagram followers?

Keeping track of Instagram will help you get more sales for your business, more visibility to your talent, more traffic on your website and a stronger community for your brand.

There are hundreds of Instagrammers with thousands of followers, but how in the world do you get so many people following you?

Today, I have six effective tips to help you grow your Instagram network.

I have a photographer friend who started from scratch (0 subscribers) and started following every photography account he could find. At the end of an hour, he followed nearly 670 accounts, and it is surprising to see that 175 follows him (follow back), and 50 other similar accounts followed him later. In addition, after posting several images of his portfolio, he liked 10 to 15 photos on other accounts and left positive comments and praise on their work. These numerous actions have earned him nearly 700 followers in one week and his network is growing more and more.

I would recommend this to each new Instagram account because it helps people to discover you. Plus, start to like the pictures in your category. Use similar hashtags so that people can also start to find your photos easily. This is the most authentic and organic way to increase your Instagram followers for free.

So you have already started following other accounts. Great, people will now start to notice your photos. It is now time to give them something they like.

I have discovered that people like a well presented account with a beautiful theme and you will get lovers and a lot of followers with this strategy. Create a small but impressive biography to inform people of your photos.

Well, that's the goal of social media! Start commenting on other photos and posting them to your account. Answer the comments you receive and maintain the authentic side rather than spam with words like "Nice photo, I like ...". In 2017, it's the easiest way to increase your Instagram followers.

Who said the new hashtags are only for Twitters? Many companies and brands have created their hashtags and encouraged their followers to use them on Instagram as well. You can also find using an app to generate Instagram Hashtags for you.

A very simple use of this trick is to expose your brand to new people. An online store entirely based on Instagram offers free gifts when people share their T-Shirts and use the particular hashtag to be discovered by the brand. If you were lucky enough to share it with more than 500 people, it is likely that other people would recognize it automatically.

It's a strategy to test once you've got a good base followers of about 5-6K subscribers. If you think you can promote your sales by offering free gifts, then get started. Ask your followers to upload a particular type of image and include your tags and the Instagram account in the caption. This is a great way to grow your fan-base offline and online.

Nowadays, all means are good to have more visibility on Instagram. As a result, third-party companies offer sites where you can buy Instagram followers in any discretion. It's a kind of growth hacking to give weight to your account so you can recruit more followers in an organic way. Let me explain: George to a new Instagram account and knowing that the users of this network usually follow accounts before at least 1k followers, George can order a pack of 1k Instagram followers to make it look popular so to give more credibility to his account and ultimately recruit more fan organically.