Growing engagement on Instagram is a challenge for many businesses who are not equipped with the tools and skills necessary to grow their accounts. For most businesses, it’s a long process of trial and error. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip that process?
Go with successful methods from those who have gone before. Here are 10 tested and proven methods to increase your Instagram engagement.
1. Track Engagement Metrics
Those who track their engagement metrics, including follower rates, likes, comments, reach, and more, are more likely to see account growth. It lets you see your current position are so that you can see your growth potential.
Track Instagram analytics to grow your engagement rates with a third-party app, which provides more in-depth insights that your Instagram insights tab. As you watch these numbers grow, you can clearly measure your success and fine-tune your strategy to meet your needs.
2. Cross-Promote Content
Don’t pretend like Instagram exists in a vacuum because there are dozens of other social media platforms out there, and the average user gets on at least three of them every single day.
The most popular social platforms for cross-promotion with your Instagram account include Facebook and Twitter. Instagram lets you post the same thing to both Facebook and Instagram if you wish, and you may choose to do that to extend your reach of an important post. Other times, you’ll just want to post a similar piece of content on another social network to extend the reach.
3. Post Daily to Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories has an impressive reach with more than 500,000 viewers every single day. More than that, the Instagram algorithm tends to favor accounts that use Instagram Stories, so you’re more likely to reach people.
Businesses can make a killing on Stories if they use it correctly. You can post product reveals, behind-the-scenes footage, useful tips and tricks, well-placed advertisements, and more content to get people constantly engaging with your presence.
4. Use Instagram Stories Stickers
Posting daily to Stories is a great way to start the content train, but you’ll receive better engagement if you optimize your stories with stickers. You can use mention stickers to acknowledge your followers or other Instagrammers within your niche. There are also location stickers to show where you were when you made the post, hashtag stickers that help your posts become more discoverable, polls, questions, and more.
5. Network with Similar Accounts
Even though those with similar accounts are your competitors, their followers are your followers. Engaging with content on similar accounts puts you in front of those who are likely to engage with your own content.
Be respectful of other brands, and don’t try to poach their business, but you can provide helpful links that augment what another brand is sharing.
6. Reward Followers with Giveaways
Engagement from your current followers is arguably more important than engagement from followers outside of your network. Reward those who have stuck it out with a giveaway of your favorite products or services.
Along with making your current engagers feel special, you’ll extend the reach of your content to those outside of your current reach. As your followers share, comment on, and like your posts, others will see it and are likely to engage as well.
7. Schedule Your Posts
Instagram posts receive the most engagement they’ll ever get within the first few hours of you posting it. After that, engagement drops off significantly, thanks to the algorithm Instagram uses to show consumers the freshest, most relevant content on the platform.
If you want to get the most engagement per post, schedule your posts for the times of day when your target audience is most likely to be online. You can see these metrics by monitoring your Instagram analytics, which will show you the times of day when your consumers are online and engaging with content.
All in all, a good Instagram strategy requires tested methods and techniques to get the best result. Give these tactics a try and watch your engagement analytics jump.
8. Improve Your Captions
Sometimes photos or videos elicit enough of a reaction to get likes, comments, and conversions, but most of the time, you need a great caption that tells your followers what to do with a piece of content. A great caption will provide context for your photo, show off a little personality, and give you more engagement overall.
One way to improve your captions is to write longer text. You have up to 2,200 characters, and while you don’t need to use them all the time, you can maximize your audience engagement by getting close. Long-form photo captions tend to receive more engagement on Instagram than short-form because people invest more time to read it. They usually feel that it deserves a like after that.
9. Post More Photos of People
When was the last time you posted a great photo of you or one of your team members? Photos of architecture, products, nature scenes, or other non-human subjects have their place, but photos that feature faces get 38 percent more likes than those without.
Don’t worry about perfectionism here. While you want to avoid blurry or overly goofy pictures, imperfections and personalities shine through with candid photos. This is a great way to humanize your brand and cement more connections with your followers.
10. Utilize Trending Hashtags
Hashtags make your posts discoverable, both by your niche followers as well as potential followers of your business. You should be using branded hashtags that are associated with your brand, but it also helps to use trending hashtags relevant to your industry.
These hashtags have already generated a lot of traffic, and you can utilize that traffic for your own account. Aim for long-tail hashtags that catch the eye and will direct specific traffic to your posts. You can use up to 30 of these hashtags to increase your account following.
