BEST INSTAGRAM GROWTH TOOLS
Want to work out how to increase engagement on Instagram? One of the best ways to figure out if you’re doing well on Instagram or not is to take a look at your engagement rate.
This is a valuable metric that you can figure out by looking at how many people are looking at your content and liking and commenting on it. You can also figure it out by looking at the number of shares on your content as well.
In fact, if you think about it, your Instagram engagement rate can sometimes end up being more important than your follower count – because it’s what brands look at when they’re trying to find someone to work with.
If you have a lot of followers on your Instagram profile, but you don’t have that many likes and comments on your content, then you’re not going to impress, and brands are going to pass you up. This is why you’ve got to keep on top of your engagement rate and make sure that it’s a good enough ratio to stand out and be seen properly.
Let’s take a look at what we believe are eight excellent strategies to increase your Instagram engagement so that you can get your audience to interact with your content more.
How to increase engagement on Instagram: Is Your Content Providing Value?
What do you think your audience thinks of your content?
Do they think that it provides value to them, or are they just as willing to check out another profile altogether?
When it comes to Instagram influencers, there is a lot of competition out there that they have to beat to get to the top, and finding the right people to interact with their content and hang around it long enough to comment on it is tough.
Instagram users scroll through their feed pretty quickly, so if you’re not putting out content that’s providing them with enough value, they’re just going to keep scrolling and not pay you any attention. This is why it’s important that you don’t just post for the sake of posting, even if you feel like you haven’t posted in a couple of days.
Experts say that you always need to be bringing value with your content. Otherwise, you’re going to go out of vogue pretty quickly.
Respond to DMs and Comments
When it comes to working out how to increase engagement on Instagram, you need to make sure that you’re interacting with others, just like you want them to interact with you.
If you come across someone who doesn’t respond to comments or DMs, how popular do you think they’re going to be? Not that popular. In fact, they will quickly lose brownie points all over the place because they are proving that they aren’t interested in creating a community – they just want to get their content out there and have people interact with it.
There are a lot of brands out there that still underestimate the importance of interacting with their audience, and as a result, they don’t end up doing that well. Being responsive on Instagram shows your audience that you really appreciate their support, and in this way, your audience can feel a lot more connected to you and your brand.
Once you start to implement this strategy, you’ll see more people commenting and liking on your content. It’s just the way it goes, and it’s a great way to set up a community that wants to be around for a long time.
Another reason to do it? Instagram will rank your content higher if you respond to comments and likes.
Post When Your Audience is Online
Another excellent trick to working out how to increase engagement on Instagram is to make sure you post your content when your audience is online. If you want to get more comments and likes from those that support you, don’t wait until they’re not online and not looking at your content.
Instagram is always updating its algorithm, which means that you always have to contend with new rules and features. They say that the first couple of hours after you post a piece of content are the most important, and if you don’t get a good amount of engagement within this time, Instagram isn’t likely to promote your content any further.
This is why it’s so important to know when your audience is online and when they’re not. This way, you can post when most of your followers are scrolling through their feeds, so they’re a lot more likely to interact with your content. The best part is that it’s pretty easy to figure out when your followers are online – all you’ve got to do is look at your page’s analytics.
Use Your Captions to Your Advantage
Just like how your content is really important in making those longstanding connections with your audience, so is optimizing your captions so that you can learn how to increase engagement on Instagram. One of the best ways to do this is to use a call-to-action in your caption.
This is a statement that is going to encourage your audience to take action so that they can perform a specific task for you. This can be anything from answering a question in the comments to checking out the link in your bio.
There are a lot of big brands out there that will do this to drum up excitement and hype around their product or service for their community. Another great way to increase your engagement rate is to write longer captions. This is going to force your followers to stop and read it, which is going to increase the chances of them liking and responding to it in the comments.
The longer that you can get people staying on your content, the more you’re going to increase your Instagram engagement.
One of the best ways to get your content seen by the right people is to use the right hashtags. Hashtags might have first been used on Twitter, but since then, they have been used on every social network that you can think of, including, of course, Instagram.
This means that if you’re not using hashtags to your advantage, you’re not helping your engagement rate in any way. While back in the day, you might have been able to use popular hashtags that had nothing to do with your content, you can’t get away with this anymore.
Now, you have to make sure that you’re finding hashtags that are relevant and that are somewhat obscure. You want to go for quality over quantity, and the best way to do this is to find hashtags that haven’t really been used yet by others.
If you get shadowbanned because of the hashtags that you’re using, this is going to have a serious impact on your account’s ability to grow.
Try Out an Instagram Engagement Group
If you want to really get ahead with your content and find a way to grow it authentically and learn how to increase engagement on Instagram, then you need to check out and participate in an Instagram engagement group. This will be an engagement group that consists of up to 15 accounts, all within the same niche. They all have the same goal as well – to grow their Instagram accounts.
People within this Instagram engagement group can help each other by liking and commenting on their posts when they come up. When you’re doing this for 15 other people, and they’re doing it for you, your content is going to start looking pretty appealing to others, and it’s going to help you win a lot of brownie points with your community.
If you want to try and find the right Instagram engagement group for you, just interact and network with other brands. You can find groups like this on Facebook as well. Make sure that you do your part when you have been accepted into a group, though – otherwise, your page won’t do all that well. While the engagement isn’t the most organic, it certainly fits within Instagram’s terms and conditions, which is always good.
Make the Most of Instagram Stories
If you really want to stand out to your audience and make sure that your engagement rate is looking good when working out how to increase engagement on Instagram, then you need to starting posting regularly to your Instagram Stories. As we mentioned, Instagram is always updating its algorithm, which means that your engagement rate incorporates a lot more than just your comments and likes.
It’s pretty easy to get followers to interact with your brand when you’re posting Instagram Stories consistently, because it will appear at the top of their screen, and they won’t have to put too much effort into it. You can even use stickers like the question sticker to get your audience involved with your brand and interacting with your content.
Keep Your Content Diverse
While normal images on Instagram were popular for a long time, the landscape has since changed to incorporate other ways of connecting with your clients through your content. This includes videos as well as mini videos that only last for a few seconds.
Since 2016, Instagram users have been able to post videos onto the popular sharing platform, and since then, Instagram has changed the time limit on these videos from 30 seconds to a minute.
This is a great way to connect with your audience so that you can keep them entertained and coming back for more when considering how to increase engagement on Instagram. If they know that they’re going to see different mediums on your page, they’ll be more likely to stick to following you and commenting and liking on your posts.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it – everything you need to do to make sure that you have a good engagement rate.
When you’re playing the Instagram game, you’ve got to put all of your cards on the table to make sure that you’re giving yourself a good chance of success.
Otherwise, you could end up falling to the wayside as other accounts do better because they’re putting in more time and effort. Find the ways that work for you and your profile best when thinking about how to increase engagement on Instagram, and watch as your engagement rate goes up so that you can connect with brands that you’d like to work with at some point.
Stay on top of the latest technology trends — delivered directly to your inbox, free!
Subscription Form Posts
Written by Jason Wise
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
