Free and paid methods to get Instagram followers in Nigeria

Whether you're a business owner, upcoming celebrity or aspiring influencer, Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms to get your foot down. But the take-off process can be a hard, if not daunting process – getting those first few thousand followers to really define your presence takes time and effort. Or so you thought.

In this guide, I'll talk about how to get the insta following of your dreams, the easy and stress-free way. Some methods for racking up followers on ig are free; others will cost you money. Let's give all of them a rundown.

Building your Insta following the freeway

There are three approaches you can take if you want free followers on Instagram:

• The follow for follow strategy
• The commenting strategy
• The follow trading strategy

1. Follow for follow

You've probably seen this in action before, but the premise is simple – follow other users on Instagram in hopes that they follow you back. I say hope because not every account you follow will return the follow back, and that's okay. Just as there are accounts that won't follow back, there are others that'll definitely follow back. 

All you have to do is play the numbers game. Follow as many accounts as is possible to reach as many people who're open for a follow back.

Note that it's important to optimize your IG profile to make it more appealing to other users. At the bare minimum, you want to make sure you have:

• A really cool profile pic
• A catchy IG description
• A number of likewise cool posts, preferably personal photos if you're a person or product/service photos if you're a brand.

A few other things to note

Don't go all-in on following other users; keep it moderate and spread it out. You want it to look as natural as possible else you get hit by the Instagram shadow ban hammer.

Once you've reached a certain follower threshold, it's a good strategy to unfollow some of the users you've followed slowly. 

Many will notice, and some will unfollow back, but that's normal and part of the strategy. Many others will remain your followers. After a reasonable cool-down period, say two days, you can resume your follow for follow campaign – rinse, repeat, until you reach your desired follower count.

2. The commenting strategy

This is a slightly more nuanced but still effective strategy to gain followers. It basically entails commenting under other user posts to catch some visibility and, indeed, followers. Now, not all user posts will work. You want posts from high engagement, high impressions users. 

Usually, these are influencers, celebrities and content creator pages. If you're Nigerian, think something like Instablog Naija.

For the actual strategy, you must thick these three checkboxes.

• Comments should be delivered early. A good time is shortly after the post goes live, so turn on your notifications.
• Comments should be witty and, for maximum effect, a tad bit controversial.
• Finally, all I said about optimizing your profile still stands here too

3. Follow trading

Of the three free options for getting ig followers, this is the most straightforward without any need for the tact and suavity required for the other two methods. The name tells it all – follow trading – you simply trade followers with other Instagram users.

There are speciality apps and websites that allow for this, and with each, you basically sign up, like, or follow other Instagram users, get credits, and then use those credits to get other users to follow you back. Of the many platforms available, I like Addmefast.com for the relatively clutter-free and easy to use Dashboard. Famoid is a people's favourite, so definitely check that out if you have any issues with Addmefast.

That sums it up for the free methods of getting Instagram followers on IG, and I know all of them require some effort, but rest assured that it's not as tedious as it sounds. Once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing from then on.

Now let's switch to the paid options for getting Instagram followers

Paid options to get Instagram followers

The paid route for getting Instagram followers is extremely straightforward. All you have to do is select how many Instagram followers your need, your preferred country from which the followers will be picked, provide your Instagram page URL and bam, the followers trickle in like pure magic.

Of course, the obvious drawback here is you have to pay money for this service, but considering the fact that some Instagram follower platforms charge less than NGN 500 for 1000 followers, I'd say the price you pay is almost negligible.

But it's not all good news, though. Some platforms for paid Instagram followers use bots mainly, so what you're getting in effect is a swarm of lifeless followers who'll do little to improve your engagement, impressions or conversions if you're a business. Others drop followers like it's hot on your IG profile without tact and without bothering to make it look organic. 

That can, again, get you shadowbanned. To successfully use the paid method of getting IG followers, it's important that you take the time to screen and select only trustworthy IG followers' platforms.

It's easy to tell the real deal from fakes. Here are a few tips to keep you on top of the situation:

• Check their reviews, and if there's no sign of genuine reviews on their website, they don't have them.
• What's the look and feel of their service website? I've found that cheaply made and scattered looking platforms, of which there are many of them, usually only sell bot traffic.
• Too cheap is usually a sign that you're not dealing with humans.

Considering all this, our obvious pick for a top quality site to get Instagram followers is, you guessed it, Really Simple Social. Get started by clicking this link. 

That about sums it up for what you need to do to get Instagram followers in Nigeria today. Like what you read, comment and pass it on by sharing it on your social media feed.