How to Become Instagram Famous: Step-by-Step Guide for 2024

80% of users research brands on the platform when deciding whether to make a purchase. When you consider how well Instagram lends itself to showcasing products through posts and reels, it’s easy to see why the platform holds so much potential for brands that use it well.

While many people want to figure out how to become an Instagram model or how to be an Instagram influencer, brands can often enjoy even more benefits of creating business accounts with a strong presence and an engaged following.

To help you find your place in a platform used by over 200 million businesses worldwide, let’s dig deep into how to become Instagram famous while prioritizing tangible outcomes for your business.

Instagram for Brands: Why It Makes Sense

Becoming famous on Instagram can seem like a strange goal to set. But Instagram fame comes with followers, likes, and engagement, all of which can be incredibly useful for your business.

Here are a few of the most impactful reasons why figuring out how to become Instagram famous makes sense.

• A Large Audience. Instagram has over 2.4 billion users, so it’s a huge audience that you can make aware of your brand, build relationships with, and sell your products.
• Ease of Marketing. The visual nature of Instagram makes it a great platform for showcasing your products. You can use beautiful images to generate desire for your offerings and then utilize the built-in Instagram Shopping features to allow your followers to buy directly on the platform.
• Partnership Opportunities. Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for partnerships and influencer marketing. By building a strong presence and becoming famous on the site, you can then forge relationships that help you expand into new audiences and accelerate growth even further.
• Authenticity and Relatability. Making your brand more authentic and relatable is essential when building a loyal audience. Instagram allows you to use posts, stories, and live events to engage your audience, showcase the people behind your brand, and emphasize the values your company stands by, all of which will help you attract the right people who align with your brand.
• Viral Potential. When you build a strong enough following on Instagram, you’ll have a much easier time creating viral campaigns around your brand. You can introduce new products, utilize holidays or occasions, or build on the trends that are popular on the platform.
• Valuable Insights. As you become more popular on Instagram and get more engagement with your posts, you’ll gain valuable insights into the habits and preferences of your audience. You’ll see which products tend to get more attention and what types of posts people respond to, using that information to improve and optimize your marketing campaigns.

How Do You Become Famous on Instagram?

When trying to learn how to be famous on Instagram, fast results won’t always be possible. While you can grow your following relatively quickly, it’s important to be strategic and have patience when implementing the various strategies that can help give you a boost.

The list of steps and tactics below is by no means exhaustive, but it does cover the various ways you can get more people to see and respond to your posts.

1. Define Who You Are

Your business presence online won’t be the same across different platforms. Each social media site has its principles and audiences, which means you will need to adapt to ensure your content is relevant and engaging to gain popularity.

That being said, you should start by figuring out who you are as a brand, and how you can channel that core message in everything you do. On Instagram, that means being deliberate about how you set up your profile, understanding your competition, and finding a voice that allows you to showcase your brand and products in a way that gets you in front of the right people.

Here’s how that can look in action:

• Your Profile. Your profile is the central hub of your Instagram presence. Many people will check it out before following, so make sure it makes your brand easy to understand and recognize. Include a logo you use across your social media platforms, create a short and catchy description, and add a CTA with a link to your site to drive traffic to your offers.
• Competition Research. Analyzing the competition is crucial for understanding how you can carve a niche on the platform. Check out your main competitors, looking at their profiles, the types of posts they create, how they engage with followers, and what you could do to be different while implementing some of the things that they are doing well.
• Find Your Voice. Nobody likes to follow generic brands that speak in corporate lingo. Whether you’re a boutique online store or a larger company, you need to find an authentic voice that aligns with your values, audience, and goals. For inspiration, check out other brands that do a great job of maintaining a consistent brand voice their fans love.

2. Provide Value

Becoming influential and popular on Instagram means you need to get people to want to engage with your posts. And that will be hard if you can’t offer them something that they find 1) entertaining or 2) valuable.

When it comes to being entertaining on Instagram, there are many things you can do, such as leveraging trending content, using memes, or creating engaging content around your products. But for brands, being entertaining alone rarely works, as you always need to consider how to offer value that your best prospects will be attracted to.

That’s why when figuring out what to post on Instagram, a good place to start is figuring out what your audience wants to learn. If you can solve a pressing problem your customers are facing or create a desire for something they want, you will be well on your way to creating content that people will want to see, engage with, and share.

And then, it comes down to connecting your content and the value you provide to the solutions or products you offer. Since your ultimate goal is the sale, make your products and the customers using them a key part of your Instagram messaging if you want to balance offering value, developing entertaining content, and creating opportunities for sales.

3. Make Your Content Professional

The ideas behind your content are the driving force when figuring out how to become famous on Instagram. However, even the best ideas won’t make a difference if you can’t execute them on a level that today’s Instagram audiences expect.

And while you don’t need a production studio to create great content, it’s a good idea to consider how you can elevate your content quality beyond the basic filters offered by the platform.

Taking pictures with a professional camera can help your content stand out and make your products look more appealing. If you have someone on your team who can handle the visual side of your posts, it might be a good idea to utilize their skills if you want to maintain brand consistency and have a better chance of gaining traction on the platform.

Bonus tip: With Instagram Reels popularity rising every year, it’s a great time to utilize video content to get more engagement. It can help you access a broader audience, drive traffic to your profile, raise brand awareness, and offer a new way to promote your products and show them in action.

If you don’t want to create video content around your products yourself, you can always hire professional UGC creators who can produce publish-ready videos that showcase your products and help drive sales.

4. Nurture Conversations

One of the toughest challenges for brands trying to build a social media presence is connecting with their audience. Brands often have a difficult time coming off as authentic and creating content that people actually want to see and engage with.

That’s why besides providing value and finding your authentic voice, you should also be proactive in engaging with the people who comment, nurturing conversations that help grow your following, and creating a genuine connection with people who show interest. Even simple replies show that there’s a human on the other side of your profile, making it seem much more accessible.

If you want to take engagement to another level, you could create content that is designed to encourage it. For example, you could host a live event on Instagram, answering questions or sharing valuable insights, which will get people to participate rather than just consume the content you put out.

As a bonus, this can help you collect great insights about what your audience likes and cares about, guiding your choices as you improve your content strategy on the platform.

5. Partner with Influencers

Figuring out how to get popular on Instagram takes time. Even if you’re persistent and create great content, chances are you will see slower progress initially until your posts start reaching more people. But one way to bypass that and get followers faster is to partner with influencers on the platform who have a larger audience you can tap into.

These partnerships could take the form of paid sponsorships, affiliate deals, or other types of collaborations, but the goal is to get them to showcase your brand or products on their account, driving clicks to your profile that can turn into followers or even sales.

The key to succeeding with influencer marketing is to find the right people. You don’t want to choose someone simply because they have a lot of followers. It’s important that their audience overlap with yours and have people who are likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

Here’s how to approach working with influencers:

1. Figure out your goal and key performance indicators (KPIs). If you want to grow your account, the goal should be to gain more followers.
2. Make a list of potential influencers to work with. Look at people who create content or promote offers that are relevant to your audiences. Sometimes, it might make more sense to work with a smaller influencer if their audience is a great fit.
3. Reach out and offer them to partner up. They might have a process for working with brands, but you can also show initiative and specify the deliverables, payment, content development process, and timeline yourself.
4. Once you reach an agreement, determine the people who will be responsible on both ends, put together a plan, and establish a timeline for the project.
5. Once it goes live, track and analyze the performance so that you can learn from the experience.

6. Leverage Trends

Instagram is always evolving. And with millions of businesses competing for the attention of the same audiences, only those who can adapt to new trends and grow together with the platform will see long-term success.

At the same time, the fact that Instagram is fluid means that brands with a smaller presence can leverage new developments to supercharge their growth. If you can become an early adopter of a new content format or identify what audiences respond to today, you can gain a huge advantage over your competition and get your follower count numbers up quickly.

But what are some of the newest and most impactful trends on Instagram you should be aware of? Well, here are a few trends you can leverage in 2024:

• Reels. Instagram launched Reels a few years ago, but they only started really getting traction more recently. Developed to compete with YouTube Shorts and TikTok, Instagram Reels has recently introduced a variety of new features to help make your reels more engaging. So if you’re not using Reels yet, now is the time to make it a central part of your content strategy to drive more traffic to your profile.
• Threads. The most recent big launch by Instagram is the introduction of Threads, a platform meant to compete with X (former Twitter). While it’s still in the early stages, brands that get on early and start engaging with users can boost their following and set themselves up for a bigger presence in the future.
• UGC. Users who engage with UGC were 102% more likely to convert than those who don’t. And since Instagram is the perfect platform to showcase UGC photos and videos, it makes a lot of sense to make user-generated content a central part of your marketing efforts on the platform.

7. Fine-Tune Your Hashtags

Instagram uses hashtags to categorize and show content to its users, so businesses that want to get in front of (the right) people must be deliberate about which hashtags to use and how to include them in posts.

One way to get started with hashtags is to look at the most popular ones in your niche. These hashtags get a ton of searches and traffic, which can help your posts get some early traction and engagement. You can also look at the hashtags your competitors use, mixing and matching them to find a blend that produces the best results.

But how many should you use?

Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags on a single post, but that doesn’t mean you should use them all. The Creators profile that’s run by Instagram suggests using between 3-5 relevant and specific hashtags for best results.

Bonus Tip: As you get a bigger following on the platform, consider creating your own hashtags to run UGC contests. That can provide a significant boost for your profile while also generating a ton of content you can then showcase yourself.

8. Be Consistent

The strategies you use when learning how to become Instagram famous matter a lot. But only if you follow through and stay consistent in your efforts, even during months when it seems you aren’t seeing any progress.

It takes time to build an initial following and get your posts the engagement you want. Sure, you can fast-track that process using influencer marketing or paid ads, but you’ll need time to figure out what types of posts work best with your audience and how to create content that gets you closer to your goals.

The most straightforward way to push through challenges on the platform is to create a plan you can fall back on when you’re not sure what to do next. That plan could take the form of a weekly content schedule, the time you set aside for research, or a process for interacting with followers and getting them more involved with your profile.

It’s also crucial to continually look for new opportunities to grow your popularity faster. Whether it’s running a variety of contests to see which ones perform better or experimenting with trending formats, there’s always something new you can try to discover a new way to get followers.

Examples of Famous Accounts

1. Lego (@lego): 10M Followers

LEGO is a brand with instant recognizability around the world. In most cases, their marketing focuses on catering to children and young audiences.

But on Instagram, LEGO adapted their approach to the platform and started catering to more mature audiences, often using user-generated content to highlight the possibilities that LEGO offers.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by LEGO (@lego)

In fact, LEGO uses Instagram to promote various collectibles and sets specially designed for adults, which receive a lot of attention. And since the brand has the licensing for so many movies, games, classic cars, and a variety of other pop culture items, they can leverage that to get the attention of people who are interested and then engage them by running quizzes, polls, and contests.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by LEGO (@lego)

Key Takeaway: As LEGO has shown, you should utilize the unique advantages of a social media platform to engage your audiences. Or even target an entirely different segment of your audience and promote offers that don’t typically get as much attention in your regular marketing.

2. Recess (@takearecess): 118K Followers

Recess is a unique brand with an aim to help people unwind and relax using non-alcoholic drinks. The positive mission and delicious non-alcoholic mocktails that offer various health-boosting benefits have made the brand a hit on Instagram, and the brand’s strategy on the platform has helped it capitalize on the positive momentum.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Recess (@takearecess)

The company uses a variety of images and videos created by their customers to emphasize its core value proposition, showcasing how its products can help people find balance in their lives and substitute alcohol with a much healthier alternative.

At the same time, Recess introduces the value of its products through giveaways, special offers, and other posts designed to drive engagement and get people to respond.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Recess (@takearecess)

Key Takeaway: Sometimes the most important thing when figuring out how to become Instagram famous is simply having a good product, knowing who your audience is, and using UGC to show real-life examples of how the solution can help. Plus, Recess really nails its brand voice, coming off as friendly, funny, but also understanding of the stress people often face.

3. Madewell (@madewell): 1.5M Followers

Madewell is an apparel brand known for its chic style that’s seen a lot of success in recent years, and its social media strategy plays a big role in the company’s growth. With over 60% of Instagram users falling in the 18-34 age group, it’s the perfect platform for showcasing its fashion and attracting new clients in the process.

But how does Madewell succeed with Instagram?

Well, for starters, the brand uses a ton of content that displays various outfits and new collection editions in everyday situations instead of studio shots. That helps make the brand more approachable, attracting women under and around 30 years old who are looking for fashion inspiration.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Madewell (@madewell)

Madewell also creates posts that help connect with its audience, including books their audience likes, timely holiday messages, and posts showcasing the brand’s values, such as the charities that it supports.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Madewell (@madewell)

Key Takeaway: Madewell uses Instagram as a virtual storefront, showcasing products in environments and worn by people the target audience can relate to. Instagram marketing is all about authenticity, and Madewell manages to maintain its chic aesthetic while also remaining approachable to people it wants to reach.

Bottom Line

Instagram is the place to be if you’re a brand looking to establish a stronger online presence. It’s perfect for showcasing your products, engaging prospects, and even gaining insights about the preferences of your best customers.

By taking the time to figure out who you are as a brand and what value you can offer, creating high-quality content, and leveraging the newest trends on the platform, you can quickly gain a following and discover how to become Instagram famous in your situation.