If you're using Instagram for business, you would understand that it's a powerful tool for building your brand. In literal terms, an engaged Instagram audience directly translates to reach and sales.
See, many businesses know this. That's why we're constantly searching for new ways to improve our engagement rate on the platform.
With the Instagram algorithm evolving as quickly as you learn the ropes, brands must keep looking for new or improved techniques to publish quality content. If increased Instagram engagement is one of your missions now, best believe that you're reading the right blog post.
But before we get right into it, let's have a quick introduction to engagement in the Instagram marketing context.
What's Instagram engagement?
Simply, it's a list of actions that Instagram users can perform when interacting with your content. This list contains Likes, Shares, Comments, Click-throughs, Direct Messages, Reposts, Saves, Profile Visits, etc.
These actions are evidence that people do not only see your content but they're actively interested and are impacted by them.
Why is Instagram engagement important?
For one, it's a crucial indicator that your content is making the desired impact on your audience. Typically, an audience that pays attention will pay for your products in the near future.
Secondly, strong engagement is a critical factor for Instagram's ranking algorithm. A higher engagement rate increases your chance of getting your content boosted to relevant feeds, which can attract millions of viewers.
So, to reap any of those massive rewards, you don't just need followers, you need a healthy engagement rate.
It'd help if you have Likes, Shares, Comments, Reposts, and other actions that prove your content resonates with the people who see them.
So, how do you measure engagement?
This answer entirely depends on your brand's goals and objectives, as well as the industry you operate. However, as a rule of thumb, you should aim to have 5% of your followers or audience reach react to your content.
If you're not hitting this mark, then definitely people are ignoring you or your content simply doesn't resonate with them.
It's essential to note that engagement only has value when it's genuine and organic—coming from real people who are positively impacted.
Some business owners try to play a fast one by purchasing bot followers and buying likes for their posts using third-party apps. Asides from the fact that such black-hat practices pose a serious security risk for your Instagram account, the ensuing engagements actually count for nothing.
In reality, there's no shortcut to earn quality Instagram engagement. You have to take time out to learn the craft of making great posts that are genuinely relatable and can elicit great conversations.
Read on to learn some proven ways to make a lasting impact on your Instagram audience. All organically. No ifs, bots, or maybes.
On another note, Like4Like sells real likes from real people. This can help your posts appear more engaged, attracting even more engagement. That's a ripple effect.
(As long as you can generate organic engagements, enhancing it with Stormlikes adds to its effectiveness and you don't risk getting banned. It's being smart and safe.)
5 easy steps to increase the engagement rate of your Instagram page
1. Get to know your audience
On IG, "great content" means "relatable content." So to increase your engagement rate, your content must have a positive impact on the audience. If you don't know who you're curating it for, it's hard to develop engaging content.
You can get to know your audience by identifying the demographics of the people who could potentially patronize your business or use your products/services.
For example, if you sell sneakers on your Instagram store, you expect your audience to be young. If you sell make-up, your content should be geared towards women's perspectives.
The demographics of your target audience will enable you to define the type of content you post and the appropriate brand voice to utilize.
Once you know the specifics, you can then proceed to create content that your audience can relate to.
For maximum engagement effect, ensure that (some or all of) your posts are savable and shareable. The idea is to upload videos and photos that buyers will engage with and share with other people in their network.
If you can implement this effectively, you're well on your way to expanding your reach.
2. Start up a conversation
Instagram engagement involves getting people to think and talk about your brand. One of the most effective ways to make people discuss your brand is actually to strike the conversation yourself.
There are a lot of features and techniques that you can deploy to strike engaging conversations with your audience.
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Instagram Stories & Stickers: Stories have been well-accepted since the feature debuted in 2019.
Stickers, though, are a great way to encourage your teeming followers to chat with you, thereby building a loyal following that feels connected to your brand.
Stickers like the Question tag or Countdown feature work great for starting genuine conversations in real-time.
Countdowns are particularly useful when you have a product launch or important announcement coming up. It helps you stir excitement in your audience while you carry them along on your journey.
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Organic Conversations: This presents an alternative way to stir up conversations among your audience. It involves asking direct questions or directing your followers to perform certain actions.
These can be quizzes about your brand or industry to stir up some conversations.
"Did You Know" and "Ask Me Anything" sessions, too, can be very effective in engaging your viewers.
3. Join a conversation
Engagement is a two-way street. Don't be afraid to jump into topics that currently dominate the airwaves.
You can join in on a trending topic using humorous news-jacking to make light-hearted content that your followers can relate to.
You can also create content around Industry-related news to keep your audience informed. Makes your feed both interesting and educational.
When you do this from time to time, your audience will visit your page more often and ultimately buy more of your products or services.
4. Explore creative captions
One of the easy routes to improve your Instagram engagement is to write longer captions.
According to prominent influencer marketing platform FOHR, the average length of Instagram captions has more than doubled since 2016; notably highlighting that posts with longer captions get the most engagement.
Writing a full sentence rather than just a few emojis could instantly increase Instagram engagement. But again, make it interesting and easy to read.
You don't have to go overboard, writing 100s of words in your captions. It might end up boring your readers. A decent Instagram post should have an average of 65 to 70 relevant words. So get creative with your captions today!
5. Figure out your best time to post
Despite having feeds of quality content, your engagement could still be limited by posting at the wrong time or posting irregularly.
It's wise to monitor and track your Instagram analytics to understand when your audience is online and most active. This can vary from one industry to another.
Essentially, the Insta algorithm ranks posts that generate high engagement within a short time. Such posts will often be moved to the top of your followers' feeds.
You can use Instagram's Insight feature to find out periods when your posts generated the highest engagement during the previous month. This should give you an idea of how you should schedule your content in the future.
Scheduling tools such as Coschedule and Hootsuite can come in handy in this regard.
[Bonus] Figure out the best content to post
The Insights feature also shows you posts that had the most engagement in the previous months.
You can then examine these contents to know why people reacted to them more. Look out for distinguishing factors that you can replicate in the future.
Conclusion
No doubt, marketing on Instagram is very competitive. It's imperative that you up your game and develop creative ways to grab your audience's attention.
Try out some of these tips and see how they react!
