Instagram has surely won a titul of a social media that gives the best opportunities for business and communication with the audience – in 2022 it has over one billion monthly active users and the number just keeps on growing. All the niches are occupied by talented content creators, companies and small brands that offer all kinds of services and products; if you don’t know where to find something, look it up on Instagram. 

Moreover, it gives a nice diversification and an opportunity to find something local or somebody like-minded, so that a person would be able to not only buy, but also support something that they truly like. This social media is clearly not only about business, but is also about philosophy and opinions, and if you’re coming here to promote and advertise you should keep that in mind while doing it. 

This is why daily and nightly people keep on signing in Instagram and looking for opportunities there – and despite the common opinion that there is no way to promote a profile on Instagram for free, we’re here to prove it wrong. In this article we will talk about 6 unpaid development tools and 2 paid ones, and will give a clear explanation why a chance to buy Instagram followers shouldn’t be ignored, as well as a possibility to develop your content via hashtags and influence PR. Let’s start with the free options. 

What can you do for free

• Right after you organized your profile the right way, you should start thinking about where to get PR – and if you don’t want to spend any money yet, you can look for free PR from bloggers and brands who have nearly the same amount of subscribers as you do. This is called mutual PR and is a very handy tool for those who just start out on the platform and who are not aiming at millions of followers from the very beginning. Actually, today this is not quite necessary, because in 2022 the only way of promotion that works is a realistic one; the one that keeps your reputation safe. So find people in your niche who have the same number of followers and write them an offer to collaborate – they will almost surely gladly approve it and you will be able to exchange and conjoin audiences for free. 
• What is also free? Hashtags. You should try to collect and use them the right way, otherwise you’re simply going to make your post look like spam. Don’t put 30 tags into one post, that are “bad manners” in 2022. Stop by 5-15 and use only those that really matter. Start collecting them from the widest term that you can use to describe your content and move to the narrowest ones. Think of your product or service as if you were your own customer or reader who is looking for it. Include specifics of all kinds – names, dates, numbers and everything that matters in your particular case. 
• Be creative with choosing the geotag for your posts. It might seem like a very boring thing that nobody uses, but trust us on this one, you need to think closely about which tag to put on your publications. Many people use Instagram to look up different interesting events and places, and they are using locations to surf through them. And if your post is going to be amongst the other posts of interesting places, you’re sufficiently increasing your chances of being seen by various circles of people. And this is exactly what a beginner Instagrammer needs. 
• Choose the timing. When are you going to post publications, when are you going to put forward stories and when is time to show a new reel or IGTV. All of that is very important, if you need to post consistently and never forget about your audience and your profile’s growth. Yes, a content plan consists not only of ideas, but also of the timing – and to figure out the right one (the one when your posts are going to get the most attention) is to follow the routine of a bigger blogger in your niche. Note, when they are putting forward posts and when they are posting stories, how many times per day they do it, and is the feedback good. You can examine several people and then come up with conclusions and create your own perfect schedule of posting (with personal adjustments, for sure). 
• Always have a list of ideas for posts on hand. This might be your own version of a content plan – you don’t need to keep it highly detailed, a list of ideas would be just enough. However, you should be always working on it and always putting more fresh ideas into it (and delete the ones that became irrelevant). If you’re unsure of your abilities to keep up with it, delegate this to a professional – there are many professional social media managers or content managers who will do all the work and show the best quality services. 
• Learn how to process photos and make them trendy. Instagram is living by certain laws, and one of them is to always have changing visual trends. Those are getting affected by all possible spheres of life and market; you shouldn’t try to figure it out (not in the beginning of your online path for sure), but you should always watch and analyze them to make sure that your visuals accord. You can find tons of presets and different apps that will help you process your pictures in the right way, so don’t worry about that; and once again, if you don’t have time and desire to work on visuals, you can delegate it to a content manager or a graphic designer. 

What can you do for money

So in 2022 there are 3 decent ways of promoting your profile for money: targeted ads from Instagram itself, influence marketing through bloggers and a chance to buy real Instagram followers and likes. The first and the second one should be taken after the third one, but why? 

You see, if you’re starting off fresh (with no subs and no likes), people are not going to take you seriously. There are millions of beginner bloggers who are just trying themselves out on a platform and then stop leading their blogs; knowing that, people take small pages skeptically and rarely decide to support them. But if a page has a certain number of followers and they see that it is constantly growing, if there are thumbs up, comments and various types of activity – the chances are growing seriously. This is why we’d recommend you to start with purchasing subs – these become an initial base that you can rely on while promoting your page further. You don’t need to worry about the statistics, you can concentrate on more important and hard things, such as generating content and communicating with your audience. 

Targeted ads should be taken on after the purchase of subs, and influence marketing (buying PR from big bloggers) should be the top of the cake. Make sure to follow the right order and remember that all of the paid options are only a support to your own efforts, time spent on development and interaction with readers and creativity.