How should I approach this situation?

So I live in a very small town, there’s a girl I really like that lives in a larger town about an hour away. Here’s the thing: we’ve never met, we have several mutual friends including her mother, and we have a lot in common. I’d really like to start dating her, but we both work a lot and meeting by chance seems unlikely. She followed me on instagram a few weeks ago, would it be weird to send her a friend request on Facebook, then start messaging her? What should I do?