To find clients on Instagram, spend 10 minutes a day on three things: search for the kind of business you want to work with, leave a useful comment on a recent post, and send a short direct message only after they have seen your name more than once. Pick one type of buyer and one way of searching (a hashtag, a location or a keyword), and write down every account you touch. Below is the routine minute by minute, what to look for in a profile before you write, a DM that does not read like a pitch, and the cases where Instagram is the wrong place to look.
Pick one buyer and one way to search
Instagram search lets you look up accounts, places and tags. That gives you three ways in. A location search finds local businesses ("Dayton hair salon"). A hashtag finds people posting about a topic (#bakerylife, #personaltrainer). A keyword search finds accounts with your buyer's words in their name or bio. Choose one and stay with it for two weeks, or you will spend the whole time deciding where to look.
Rae is a made-up web designer who builds sites for hair salons. She searches "salon" plus her city, opens each profile, and looks for a problem she can fix. Salons are a good example because the profile shows the problem: the link in the bio goes to a page that no longer loads, there is no way to book, or the last post is eleven weeks old.
What to look for before you write to anyone
Open the profile and check six things. Write the answers in a sheet, one row per account.
- Does the link in the bio work, and where does it go?
- Can a customer book, call or email without leaving the app?
- When was the last post, and does anyone comment on it?
- Are there unanswered questions in the comments ("Do you take walk-ins?")?
- Do the posts show a business with steady customers, or a dormant account?
- Is there an email or contact button on the profile? Business and creator accounts can show one.
An account with a working booking page and a post every two days does not need Rae. An account with a dead link and eleven unanswered comments needs someone, and she can say exactly what she noticed. That specificity is the whole reason the message gets a reply.
The 10-minute routine
- Minutes 1 to 3: Run your search and save five accounts that fit to a collection, so you can find them again.
- Minutes 4 to 7: Comment on one recent post from each of three accounts. Say something that shows you looked at the post.
- Minutes 8 to 10: Send one DM to an account you commented on in the last week, and log it.
On a five-day week that is 25 accounts saved, 15 comments and five DMs. It is slow on purpose. Ten minutes a day is a number you can keep up, and a number you can keep up beats a burst you abandon on Thursday.
Comment first, in plain words
A good comment answers or adds to what the post says. On a photo of a balayage color result, Rae writes: "That blend at the root is hard to get so smooth. Did you do it in one sitting?" A bad comment is "Love this! Check out my page!" which looks like spam, because it is. Leave your services out of the comment entirely. Your profile does the introducing when they tap your name, so write a bio that says who you help, what you do and how to reach you: "Websites for hair salons. Booking pages that work. Email below."
The DM, once they know your name
Messages from accounts someone does not follow usually land in a separate Requests folder, and some people rarely open it, so keep the message short enough to read in the preview. Rae sends this after her third comment on a salon's posts:
Hi Tasha, I've been following your color work for a few weeks. One thing I noticed: the link in your bio goes to a page that doesn't load, so someone who wants to book from Instagram hits a dead end. I fix that for salons. Want me to send a quick screen recording of what a visitor sees?
It names a real thing she saw, it describes what it costs the salon, and it asks a question that is easy to answer. It does not give a price, attach a portfolio or ask for a call. If there is no answer after five days, send one line ("No worries if the timing is off, I'll leave it here") and move on. Do not send the same text to every account. Instagram can limit accounts that send many similar messages, and the people on the other end compare notes.
Take the conversation to email
A DM works for starting. Quotes, files and invoices belong in email. If a business shares an email on the profile or the website linked from it, reply there once they say yes in the chat. If you can't find one, the owner's name is often on the website's About page, and how to find a business owner's email address walks through the other places to look.
Your own profile has to close the sale
Everyone you message will tap your name. Check it as a stranger would: a clear photo, a bio that says who you help in one line, a link that works, three posts that show results, and a recent date. One pinned post that shows a before and after (or a short client result with permission) is stronger proof than ten posts about your process. If you are not sure whether you are targeting the right buyers, how to find clients for social media management covers the same audience from the other side.
When Instagram is the wrong place
Not every buyer lives here. A commercial roofing company, a law firm or a manufacturer may have an account with six posts from 2021. Before you build a routine, check five of your best past clients: do they use Instagram for the business? If three of five don't, the clients you want are somewhere else, and how to get clients on LinkedIn or how to find clients on X may be a better start. Do not use tools that follow, like and message accounts automatically. Instagram's terms don't allow automated access, and the people you message can report you.
Instagram is slow, hand work, and a DM sitting in Requests is easy to miss. The second way in is email, and Rocketship does that search for you: describe the owners you want and it finds them by name, finds their emails, and writes to them from your own Gmail. You can try it on your own list with a 7-day free trial; a card is required.