How To Go Viral on Instagram: 5 Proven Strategies for Success

There’s no quicker way to juice profits than to go viral on Instagram. A single piece of content can add tens of thousands of dollars in revenue virtually overnight. Unfortunately, it’s not a secret how beneficial going viral on Instagram can be for your brand, so there’s a lot of competition for eyeballs, which is why you need a tried-and-true game plan for going viral.  In this article, we’ll share our proven strategies for going viral on Instagram so that you can start getting the likes, followers, and sales that you deserve. 

What Counts As Going Viral?

At a high level, going viral is exactly what it sounds like: producing a piece of content that spreads rapidly, like a virus. However, because no two viral pieces of content are the same, it’s difficult to nail down what exactly this looks like. For example, 10,000 likes mean nothing to Kim Kardashian, but to you, that might be the most viral thing you’ve ever posted. A good benchmark to strive for is a combined 100,000 likes, comments, and views. If you’re able to reach that benchmark, then it’s pretty safe to say that your content went viral.  Needless to say, it’s not going to be easy getting there. But, thanks to the meritocratic Instagram algorithm, anybody can produce viral content if they approach it strategically, even if they only have a few hundred followers.  In other words, Instagram will show your post to more people if the early engagement is good. If enough people engage with it, then it should make it onto the Explore page, which is where content really takes off.

How To Go Viral On Instagram

The following actionable tips and strategies, if used correctly, will increase the probability of your content going viral on Instagram. 

Know Your Audience

The key to viral Instagram content is early engagement. The more people that engage with your content early, the more likely it is that Instagram will push your content to additional people. Thus, it is really important to know who your audience is so that you can optimize your content for maximum engagement. The best way we’ve found to do this is to create an Ideal Customer Profile. All this means is that you are crystalizing who your content is best suited for. The way you do this is by writing down the:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation
• Annual Income
• Education Level
• Interests
• The Type Of Content They Consume

Of whoever you want to engage with your content. Then, you’ll be able to tailor your content to what they are most likely to engage with. For example, if your target customer is a 55-year-old mechanic, it probably doesn’t make much sense to post memes that only a Zoomer would understand.

Cultivate A Distinct Voice

There’s a lot of content on Instagram. If you want to differentiate yourself from the pack, you’ll need to cultivate a distinct voice that people will instantly recognize as yours. This will not only set your content apart, but it will also resonate deeper with our audience.  For example, take the canned water company Liquid Death. They have built a brand based on humor that people absolutely love, and the result is three million followers for what is in essence a canned water company.  Viral content is, by definition, different and unique. You need to cultivate an eye-catching voice to rise above the sea of generic content. 

Know The Trends (And Hop On Those That Fit Your Brand)

Trends can be a huge help in going viral if you use them wisely. The part that most people mess up is that they are either too late or use the wrong trend, which makes sense as trends come in and out of style very quickly. But, if you’re on time and topical, then trends provide a massive organic engagement boost. Here’s an example from Duolingo on how to properly use a trend:   The post appropriates the “who is, but never how is” trend masterfully by using Duolingo’s recognizable Green Owl mascot (see Tip 2). The result is a massive 214,639 likes.

Study Your Competition

There’s an old saying in sports: “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” Well, this saying applies to Instagram as well.  If your competitors are doing something that’s working, it’ll probably work for you too. This doesn’t mean copying and pasting what they are doing, but putting your own unique spin on it.  So, track which of their captions, images, memes, posting times, hashtags, and jokes perform the best, and then remix it for your brand. 

Run Viral Instagram Giveaways

Giveaways and contests are a magnet for virality and are a great way to spice up your content, boost engagement, and attract new followers. Naturally, we recommend Raffle Leader to run your viral Instagram giveaways.  Considering that it comes with pre-built templates that are also fully customizable, there’s no easier or better way to consistently create viral Instagram giveaways.  Just look at this giveaway and tell me with a straight face that you wouldn’t want to join?

Ultimately, although Raffle Leader is a crucial part of a successful Instagram giveaway, it is only one part. If you want the full guide on how to run an Instagram giveaway, we got you covered here. 

Learn From Your Past Results

If you’re just looking at likes and comments, you won’t be getting a full diagnosis of your content. You need to get beneath these surface metrics to reveal the true impact of your content. This is where Instagram’s Insight page comes into play.

Found in the mobile app for business accounts, this is where you’ll be able to see the age range of your followers, their gender, their locations, and the times they are most active. You can then use this information to tailor your content appropriately. For example, if your followers are mostly girls who are active at night, you wouldn’t want to post a street fight highlight at 6 in the morning. 

Collab, Collab, Collab

Collaborating with others with can drastically enhance your chances of going viral. Why? Because of distribution, baby. 

Great content that nobody sees will not go viral, but decent content that ten million people see will. The name of the game is getting eyeballs on your content, and the best way to do that is to collaborate with others. The most people you collaborate with, the more potential eyeballs there are on your content. And, as you grow, you’ll be able to collaborate with bigger and bigger accounts, which means even more eyeballs. Think of your Instagram as a snowball, and collaborators as a big snowy mountain. Your job is to roll down that hill. Instagram is all about attention, and there’s no better way to get attention than collaborating with others. 

Post Consistently

Posting consistently is probably the most important component of going viral on a consistent basis. Just like you’ll miss all the shots you don’t take, you can’t go viral on content you don’t post.  It’s likely that the vast majority of your posts don’t go viral. After all, it’s hard to produce a piece of viral content. Most of your content is probably going to be pretty average, but if you post enough, eventually you’ll produce a masterpiece.

Even Mr. Beast, the most-subscribed individual on YouTube, had to post for 5 years before seeing any traction:

The ability to keep posting even when you’re not immediately seeing results is a great power that few have. Use it to your advantage. 

Post Reels Instead Of Images

Videos on Instagram are known as Reels. They originally launched in 2020 to compete with TikTok. Because of this competition, Instagram wants to incentivize creators to create videos, so its algorithm is designed to heavily push Reels.  Just take a look at the average number of comments per post.  

What this means for you is that you should be investing more effort into creating video content. As they say in the content creator world, don’t fight the algorithm.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, although what posts go viral on Instagram is somewhat out of your control, there are multiple things you can do to increase your surface area of success.  If you know your audience, cultivate a distinct voice, use trends wisely, study your competition, run viral giveaways with Raffle Leader, learn from your past results, collaborate with other creators, post consistently, and utilize Reels, you will have as good a chance of going viral as anybody possibly could.