There’s no question that social media has become one of the most powerful tools in a business’s marketing arsenal. These media platforms are teeming with content-hungry users looking for news, entertainment, and the latest products and services to get their hands on. And while Facebook might be King of social media, Instagram has taken the scene by storm since its inception in 2010. Today, the photo-sharing platform hosts more than one billion users worldwide and has been proven to generate four times as many interactions as Facebook.
These interactions, or engagement, are the true drivers of your Instagram success; having a big audience is pointless if they’re not interacting or connecting with your content. This is because the Instagram algorithm uses each account’s engagement rate to boost its visibility and recommend it to other users. If you’re not getting much engagement, your account will eventually be drowned out by others who are.
So, let’s take a look at how you can increase your online engagement and best leverage your Instagram account to achieve your brand goals, whether business or personal.
What Counts As Engagement?
In order to increase your Instagram engagement, you first need to know what metrics you’ll want to play at. These metrics basically measure your audience’s interactions with the content you share, and are the things you’ll want to focus on in order to increase your engagement.
On Instagram, the following metrics are all constituents of your overall engagement rate: –
- Likes
- Comments
- Saves
- Shares
- Mentions
- Direct Messages
- Brand-specific hashtags
- Click-throughs
- Followers
It might sound a bit vague; can you really influence your audience to save or share your content to their personal platforms? The answer is yes, and luckily, we’re about to tell you exactly how to do it!
1. Define Your Brand
First and foremost, you need to have a distinct brand persona that is true to your personality as a business or individual. How do you want your audience to perceive you? What look, style, tone, and voice do you want to have?
It is essential that this persona is consistently reflected across all your content. Audiences find it easier and more enjoyable to relate to a brand that has a set of characteristics because it makes them feel more connected to it.
For example, Nike is cool, athletic, motivational, exciting…
What do you want to be?
2. Define Your Target Audience
Okay, so now your audience knows who you are. But, do you know who they are?
You have to know exactly who you’re targeting. How old is your audience? Where do they live? How much do they earn and spend? What are their interests? What kind of content do they consume on Instagram?
The more information you can gather about your audience, the more you can cater to their needs through carefully-curated content.
While you can roll up your sleeves and do the grunt work of researching all these questions, Instagram has made things easier for businesses by providing a Follower Breakdown. This gives you several audience insights such as Top Locations, Age Range, Gender, and Most Active Times.
3. Keep an Aesthetic Account
Yes, we all know beauty is subjective. But, there are just certain things on which there’s a general consensus.
You want your audience to have a pleasant experience while scrolling through your page. That won’t be the case if your posts are full of mismatching colors, random layouts, and erratic text.
Try applying and maintaining a theme to all your posts. For example, you can decide on a specific color palette for your posts, or have a sequence where you alternate between different types of content (text, photo, video, etc.). If you prefer uploading posts with white margins, then stick to that; having different layouts throughout your page can make it look messy.
For more inspiration on how to make your page aesthetically-pleasing, check out this article by Hootsuite!
4. Diversify Your Content
While looks are important, they certainly aren’t everything. You can have the prettiest Instagram feed, but if your content isn’t relevant or interesting in the eyes of your audience, you won’t get anywhere.
Diversifying your content is the best way to ensure that you’re catering to your audience’s different tastes while keeping it fun and exciting. You can post different types of content such as photos, videos, or informative text, and you can display this content in different forms; photos, IGTV videos, carousel posts, stories, live videos, etc. Instagram provides a bunch of options, so why limit yourself to just one?
The display form you use for your post can also affect the amount of engagement it garners. For example, carousels have been shown to get more engagement than single-photo posts.
Stories allow you to use stickers and polls to get your audience interacting with your content, which all adds up to your engagement rate.
Similarly, try posting content that you believe your followers would want to share on their pages or save to look at later. Remember, shares and saves are both counted as engagement metrics!
5. Incorporate CTAs in Your Posts
Incorporating calls to action in your posts, such as clicking on a link in your bio, tagging a friend in the comments, or using a branded hashtag is an effective way to make your audience feel involved and connected with your brand and, in turn, boost your engagement rate.
A smart way to get people to take action on your post is by asking them a question or inviting them to discuss a topic.
For example, you can end a caption with something like “Can you relate?” or “Have you tried this before?”. You can be as creative as you want with the questions, but always make sure they’re relevant!
6. Be Transparent
If you really want to reach people, brand transparency and authenticity cannot be emphasized enough.
Your audience doesn’t want to see a fake, made-up version of your brand. They want to see it like it is; the good and the bad.
You can encourage transparency in your brand by giving your audience a look into what happens behind the scenes. What kind of processes take place in order to produce your final content? Does your business have employees? Let them share their stories.
People don’t relate to perfection. You have to be you.
7. Post Consistently
Finally, you need to be able to keep your followers hooked!
You know what they say, right? Out of sight, out of mind. You want your audience to see your content on a daily basis and have it become a part of their Instagram experience. On the other hand, you also want to avoid bombarding them with multiple posts on any given day.
A good rule of thumb is to post 1-2 times a day. Obviously, things don’t always go as planned, and you might find that you’ve missed a post or two. That’s fine! Just try not to go more than two days without posting any new content.
Growing your Instagram business and increasing engagement is not an easy task. However, it’s a learning experience, and you can rest assured that you’ll get better at it with practice.
Use the tips above to get yourself started on the right track, and if you do it well, you’ll be seeing those engagement metrics going up in no time!
