Whether you’re a digital marketer, social media influencer, small business owner, or someone who wants to enhance their online presence and personal image, you’ve probably considered multiple ways to boost Instagram engagement. Of course, keeping it authentic and telling your brand’s story is the tried-and-tested method of communicating with followers. But let’s be honest, you can’t always spare time for this, and given Instagram’s super-smart algorithm, it’s far from certain that it will work.
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Instagram influencers and marketers worship the engagement and pay a lot of heed to this metric. The increase in users’ likes, follows, shares, and tags of other users on the site, makes it easier for potential clients to find your business. Many tiny companies, from coffee shops to make-up artists to vintage clothing stores, as well as huge celebrities, have had success engaging their Instagram followers. You want to be a part of that action, with over 1 billion people using Instagram every month.
Number of active Instagram users (in millions)
So, how do you go about doing it? The simplest answer would be to make your content relatable for the audience yet make it amicable to the algorithm. For that, it’s critical to understand the many sorts of Instagram engagement. It all boils down to the level of engagement your audience has with your posts.
Now you may be wondering, what exactly is the definition of engagement. It is how people connect with your stories, posts, and comments reveal their level of interest in and interaction with your content. But this is the short version of the complicated process. Let’s understand the concept of engagement in further detail.
What is Instagram engagement?
Let’s try to grasp what defines Instagram engagement before moving on to the actual techniques that can benefit your business.
On any social media platform, engagement rates can be used to gauge how loyal your fans are to you. It’s not about the number of people on the account. What matters most is their level of engagement with your brand’s Instagram content. It’s a metric for how much they care about and connect with your posts, Stories, Reels, and other content.
In a way, Instagram engagement is very similar to your audience’s engagement with your own blog.
That is what marketing success entails. When you invest in paid social media ads, data like engagement rate comes in handy. Keeping an eye on aspects like the comments, shares, impressions, and reposts on your company’s Instagram page can help you get a leeway to gauge your engagement rates.
Why is engagement important?
There are several reasons why engagement is important. For starters, it displays how people are responding to your material. Your engagement will be stronger if your audience can relate to your material. This is a strong indication that your social media plan is working.
Next, engagement remains one of the most important ranking features in Instagram’s algorithm. The algorithm works such that when Instagram loads your feed, it strives to display the posts you’re most likely to interact with. Due to this, the posts from accounts and topics you engage with frequently will likely show at the top.
How to boost Instagram engagement?
Now that you understand that focusing on engagement can help you reap sweet fruits, let’s move ahead and explore the different methods that will help you boost your organic engagement.
Know the User Persona
This may sound the most cliche tip, but it is highly underrated. Companies keep pushing their social media teams harder to churn out huge quantities of content irrespective of the traction that it brings. They’re amateurs living under the rock of blissful ignorance. All this while Instagram’s algorithms are being refined every day to focus more on the user’s intent.
In order to get your audience to genuinely engage with your brand’s content on this social media app, you have to understand their perspective. Therefore, the first step to increase engagement is to step into the shoes of your target audience.
This will help you learn about their habits. It’s difficult to create excellent content if you don’t know who you’re writing for. The user persona’s demographics will influence the type of content you publish, your brand voice, and even the days and hours you publish.
Hold a Conversation Through Instagram Story
Instagram Stories provide a plethora of tools for increasing Instagram engagement. You can use Stories to alert your followers when new posts are published. Because of the way Instagram’s algorithm works, your followers may miss some of your posts, particularly if they weren’t initially interested. Direct them to your account’s stories to see the full image or video! In your Instagram Stories, don’t forget to include locations and hashtags. People who don’t follow you (yet!) will be able to find them this way.
Every day, Instagram Stories are viewed by over 500 million unique users. This tool has the ability to generate a lot of engagement for your brand, regardless of what type of business you own. In addition to providing uninhibited communication with the audience through stories, Instagram also provides engagement-boosting “stickers” that you can use to increase the number of interactions on your Stories.
The stickers allow you to make polls, quizzes, and emoji sliders with Instagram Stories stickers, or even hold a Stories-based Q&A. They’re entertaining and interactive features that your audience will like. The finest part is that they are able to go over any content.
The nicest part about Stories is that you can be incredibly creative with how you create and show content, and the fact that it’s ephemeral means you can test and assess what works and what doesn’t. You may drag stickers on top of your Story content, whether it’s a video, photo, Boomerang, or an attractive graphic, to get greater benefits from your content strategy. If you need help coming up with the design, you can always use an Instagram story maker.
Make Trending Reels
Social media networks have a habit of promoting their most recent features. Instagram Reels, the app’s newest feature, already has its own tab on the Instagram page. Therefore, if you have missed the opportunity and haven’t jumped on the trends revolving around Reels yet, you’re already behind your peers. The most recent Reel Algorithm Update further emphasizes the necessity of producing enjoyable and fun videos.
Meaning, content with a high level of humor and entertainment value is more likely to be seen by more Instagram users! To spot rising trends, keep an eye on the Reels tab. Don’t be afraid to add your own hilarious touch on these trends to make fun, engaging Reels!
Use Carousel Posts on your Feed
Carousel posts are a gold mine for engagements. Instagram posts let you upload up to ten images, videos, and text graphics with your followers in a single post. Carousel articles that provide some form of value, whether it’s offering instructional knowledge or promoting a social cause, can help generate saves and shares. The logic is pretty simple, each slide in your carousel post is a chance to increase interaction tenfold – it’s a 10-for-one deal.
Quotes, pictures, and graphics are all over Instagram, and they’re great for getting people to engage. Instagram users are fond of sharing quotes on their stories, especially if they’re both emotive and visually appealing.
One of the recent trends that have helped attract traction is repurposing tweets into Instagram feed posts. On Instagram, this type of material is extremely interesting and popular. We recognise the irony. These kinds of visuals, like meme production, don’t demand a lot of resources. You can create such posts by using the filters and themes so this strategy works wonders even if you don’t use Twitter.
Leverage User-Generated Content the Most
User-generated content, or UGC for short, can help your company gain legitimacy in the same way that influencers can. In the same way that you ask a collaborator who aligns with your target market to give you content that looks more natural than traditional advertising, UGC produces a similar outcome as an influencer post. 79% of the audience is likely to trust your brand if they find it through user-generated content.
Any type of user-generated content (UGC) is a great way to add validity to your Instagram profile. Genuine individuals using your product or service in real settings can engage audiences on a deeper level than a traditional advertisement. Brand ambassador programmes, for example, can be a wonderful method to develop consistent, high-quality UGC that can be used on a regular basis.
You can also take advantage of customer-generated content by giving them exciting things to post about, like delicious food, Insta-worthy decorations, or contests where they can win something. You see this most often in restaurant Instagram marketing, where even famous brands like Burger King or KFC repost customer stories and posts on Instagram.
You can even get clever with how you use UGC. For example, fanfiction and fan art are forms of UGC that get tons of organic participation from both creators and consumers that get shared even beyond Instagram and found on sites like Commaful, AO3, and Wattpad. And yes, Ronald McDonald does indeed have a lot of fanfiction and fanart about him!
Find Relevant Long-Tail Hashtags
Long-tail hashtags are more descriptive and detailed, reflecting the context of your message more properly. If it is true that your hashtag game isn’t all that strong, it’s about time to take action in this regard. With every 1 in 8 US digital ad dollars are estimated to be captured by Instagram, you have got to make sure that your posts have the appropriate reach and engagement.
Hashtags are an important part of making your material visible to the rest of the Instagram community. If you can rank as one of the ‘top posts’ of a specific hashtag, for example, your engagement for that post might potentially explode. The idea is to make the hashtag highly relevant to your content since this will ensure that you attract an audience who is really interested in your industry.
If you drill down to long-tail keywords (i.e., super-specific hashtags like “#redmaxidress” rather than broad ones like “fashion”), you’re more likely to rank for a hashtag and generate more targeted interaction. Hashtag Search Tools make finding hashtags to rank simple by displaying average engagement, level of competition, potential reach, and more for each hashtag. You can try a few for free and see how much of a difference the perfect hashtags can make.
Make the Most of Influencer Marketing
Instagram influencer marketing has become immensely popular, this lets the brands collaborate with major thought leaders in their industry, reaching a larger audience as a result. Because influencers are perceived as ‘independent,’ associating your company with their authoritative voice can give your messaging actual validity.
Collaborating with an influencer extends your reach even further. The influencer marketing sector is expected to be worth $13.8 billion by the end of the year. And Instagram is the preferred channel for influencer marketing, with 68% of firms citing it as the most important platform.
When you combine that with the reality that many consumers rely on influencer referrals, you’ve got yourself a powerful marketing tool. Combining the value influencers provide with the advantages of a giveaway has proven to be a winning combination.
The average Instagram ads cost per click is $1.54, so if you have the budget, paid advertisements can help you reach even more people.
However, choosing the appropriate influencer might be difficult. Marketers often get caught up in the glamour of working with a celebrity rather than concentrating on the value that the influencer can bring to the table.
Marketers must first grasp what an influencer is and then design an influencer strategy that includes a brief trial campaign period to determine how receptive the influencer’s network of followers is to your brand. After finding the appropriate influencer, you can use tools like Datanyze to find their direct contact details.
As with any other type of marketing campaign, measuring the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns is essential. You can either issue tracking links or promo codes, but ideally, it’s better to find software that will be able to track the performance of your influencer campaigns, and do the reporting for you. Constantly monitor your results and tweak and make more informed decisions for your future campaigns.
Use closed captions and Instagram video subtitles
According to Instagram, 60% of stories are watched with sound on, with the remaining 40% being viewed silently.
With video increasingly dominating the online domain, audio has become a second-class citizen, with many users opting to watch videos without sound. It’s for this reason that subtitles have become so important for marketers, as they allow fundamental messaging to be provided on-screen with pictures.
Captioning videos increases average video view times by 12%, according to research from Facebook (Instagram’s parent firm). Messaging effectiveness is also greatly improved, with an 82% success rate compared to 18% with sound on and no subtitles. According to another poll, 80% of individuals stated captions would encourage them to watch the entire video.
You can either build your own dedicated captioning file or produce an auto-captioned video on Facebook that you can save and publish to Instagram (though be sure to double-check any captioning for problems).
While no one can deny the power of captions to draw attention, they aren’t currently included in Instagram’s best practices for stories. The majority of stories are still watched with the sound turned on. And, once a user turns on sound, it stays on until they turn it off, so it’s still crucial to invest in good sound.
Keep Track of the Best-Performing Posts
Learn the content “formula” that will increase your Instagram engagement rates and apply it to your Instagram marketing strategy. There are a variety of methods for doing so, including finding the most effective hashtags and graphic styles, as well as learning when the ideal times to publish are.
You may build best practices for your own brand by monitoring it in this way. Social listening and analytics will aid in the refinement of your marketing plan and the growth of Instagram engagement. Most leading brands are using the power of social listening to improve their engagement rates and it has worked perfectly for their social media presence.
Parting thoughts on How to Boost Instagram Engagement
There are a variety of techniques to increase Instagram interaction, from using hashtags and Reels to releasing interactive stories. To find your best-performing posts, keep an eye on various engagement indicators. Also, remember to use a variety of material types, such as carousels and movies. What methods do you employ to increase Instagram engagement? We’d love to know about your insights in the comments below.