Entrepreneurs and marketers are always seeking new methods to engage with their customers. Instagram has a vast potential for growing your business, with more than 1.4 million active users per month (Source: Statista). But to use this platform, you need more than just an account and an audience.
You must be involved. Comments, shares, likes, saved items, and other behaviors demonstrate how well your audience connects with your material.
This article will outline 12 strategies for boosting Instagram engagement and creating an emotional connection with your followers.
Why is interaction on Instagram Important?
Instagram engagement is determined by how your followers respond to your posts, not by the number of individuals that follow you. Metrics of engagement include:
Comments
Shares
Likes
Saves
Articles views
Story interactions using stickers
Brand references
Click-throughs on links
Instant Messages (DMs)
High engagement not only shows that your audience is receptive to your material, but the Instagram algorithm also takes engagement into account when determining what content to display to viewers.
Your posts will be more likely to show up in the feeds of individuals you often interact with if they get a lot of interaction, which will broaden your audience and raise your profile.
How to improve Instagram engagement
Given Instagram's prominence, effective social media marketers place a high focus on Instagram engagement. Here are some tips for boosting Instagram engagement.
1. Recognize your audience
The first step in keeping your fans interested is figuring out who they are. You can't create material that will engage people if you don't understand what interests and drives them. What to do is as follows:
Create buyer personas. This is a precise illustration of your ideal client. What are their needs and pain points? What do they like doing? What kind of employment do they do? How is their schedule?
View the insights for Instagram's audience. You may obtain demographic data about your audience right here. Click "Audience" under the "Insights" section. You may see information on the individuals who are responding to your postings, such as their age, gender, and location.
Look at the profiles of your rivals. Who comments and likes their posts? What information do they share? How do they communicate with their fans?
Utilize tools for social listening. You may use this to keep tabs on any mentions of your company or its goods. Take note of what others are saying and what you should address.
2. Utilize compelling captions with CTAs.
Strong captions achieve three objectives.
Give the photographs in your post some context
Bring out the individuality of your brand
Encourage your audience to act
Important is the final one. It's time to encourage people to act once you've written a captivating caption describing the post's subject and included hashtags and emojis. For instance, "Comment below and let me know what you think," or "Click the link in our profile to discover more."
3. Encourage audience participation with innovative interactive stickers.
You may utilize the many interactive story stickers available on Instagram to increase interaction with your posts. The stickers may be applied in a variety of ways:
Ask your followers entertaining questions, such as multiple-choice ones, with the quiz sticker.
Use the music sticker to animate your story with music or lyrics. Be inventive and choose a song that fits the occasion, such as upbeat music for a Monday encouragement post or maybe a tragic tone for news that has been anticipated for a while.
Use the poll sticker to get feedback from the public. They may favor certain packing options or certain items over others.
Use the questions sticker to ask your followers what they think about something. They may approach you with a question if you so want. Host an AMA if you're willing to invite participants (ask me anything).
Stories stickers provide your audience with a sense of recognition and the value of their input. Every inquiry made or survey conducted adds to the engagement.
4. Produce engaging Instagram Stories and Reels
Who doesn't like Instagram Reels, mainly when they are captivating? For marketers and company owners, these quick, engaging films are a great way to increase page exposure and interaction.
There are many uses for Instagram Reels, including sharing before-and-after movies, customer experiences, interactive how-to videos, and behind-the-scenes looks.
5. Make advantage of carousel articles to boost interaction
Carousels have the greatest engagement rate of all Instagram post formats, according to SocialInsider, with a rate of 1.92% (and 2.33% when you utilize all 10 carousel slides).
You must take advantage of this to raise your level of participation. Use carousel postings in a variety of ways; don't simply choose any picture and expect your followers to flock to it. To encourage even more participation, be inventive and use videos. Employ them for:
User-created material
Tutorials for products
Product views
Photos of the before and after
Brand history
Customer feedback
Weekly design challenges are held by Canva, and the highlights of each week's topic are shown in carousel articles.
Every slide in the carousel offers the possibility to increase engagement—10 chances in 1 post. Don't let yours pass you by.
6. Produce and share relevant memes
Your followers can become weary of seeing just flawless photos and spotless goods on your feed. Memes are more genuine and may draw in your audience, mainly if they are relevant and hit a chord with your fans.
Because they don't feel like they are sharing an advertisement, followers are more willing to share, comment on, and even repost them on their stories. Who, after all, doesn't like a good laugh?
7. Consistently provide useful content
Sharing humorous content is fantastic, but you should also remember to provide your audience something of value. Create original material that people may return to or share with their networks. There are a ton of Instagram post ideas here, but to get things started:
Infographics with eye-catching advice
Data visualization using graphs and charts Step-by-step instructions
Creative concepts
Include a "Save this Article" call to action if you're writing a carousel post that includes a step-by-step instruction manual, a recipe, or a list of suggestions. Encourage your audience to bookmark it and return to it later for reference.
8. Host industry influencers and work with them
An interactive platform is Instagram. If you aren't connecting and interacting with other accounts, what's the point?
Engaging with other accounts that have similar interests widens your reach and attracts new followers. Even better is when the other accounts are those of influential persons in the sector who have far wider networks. Influencers may improve your exposure and expose your business to consumers who would have been difficult to reach without them since they have devoted fan bases.
Find influential people in your business, get to know them, and then work with them. Include them in your pieces, republish their writing, and collaborate with them to produce new material.
They will interact with these posts and spread them among their own followers. You will get more publicity as a result, and you will also gain more targeted followers.
9. Manage Instagram lives
Your Instagram followers want to sometimes see the person behind the account. Why not give Instagram live a try, given that 82% of followers prefer it over reading social media posts?
Instagram live videos provide a more engaging experience for your fans. They get to meet you personally and engage in interesting conversations with you.
Real-time interaction between viewers and your brand is possible with the ability for viewers to ask questions, express opinions, and post comments. Try the following if you're unsure about the kinds of material you can publish on Instagram live:
Q&A sessions of your company, your goods, or pertinent subjects.
Sessions for early access to a product you're planning to release.
Discussions of recent developments or trends in your sector.
FAQs for customer service.
Opportunities for learning with key figures in the sector.
Utilize Instagram Live Shopping to increase sales during live sessions (one of our digital marketing trends of this year). You may engage with your audience and sell to them directly using this function. Save your live streams so that viewers may purchase the promoted items later.
10. Use surveys and questionnaires to solicit opinions.
Do you want to discover how your audience feels about your goods and brand? Post surveys and quizzes to your Instagram stories.
In contrast to competitions, polls are simple to make with stickers. Additionally, you don't need a solid justification to make one. Just come up with a brief inquiry that you'd be pleased to answer.
Use polls to ask questions about preferences, choices you'd rather make, and more.
11. Make use of hashtags' strength
You are passing up a great chance to have your material appear in the feeds of prospective followers if you are not utilizing Instagram hashtags. To classify your posts and be discovered by readers who are interested in a particular subject, use hashtags. Whether they are followers or not, this is a terrific approach to get your material in front of the audience most likely to interact with it.
You may use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, but you shouldn't use them all on every post. Focus on the ones that are most pertinent to the article so that you can draw the right audience to each one. Simply typing a hashtag into Instagram is one of the best methods to locate it.
12. When your audience is most engaged.
Even though your memes are funny, and your articles are helpful, if you upload them after your audience sleeps, well...
If only they could watch from the comfort of sleep. However, there isn't. Therefore, publish when your audience is most engaged.
Depending on your audience, region, and kind of material, there are several optimum times to publish on Instagram.
Check out the benchmarks from the article mentioned above to get a starting point, then utilize your statistics to determine what times are best for your audience.
Utilize these recommendations to boost Instagram engagement.
Engaging your audience on Instagram not only helps you with the algorithm (which increases brand visibility and exposure), but it also forges an emotional connection with your followers.
The following are our top tips for boosting Instagram engagement:
Know your audience
Use forceful captions.
Use dynamic stickers
Make captivating plays and films.
Implement carousel postings
Send out funny memes.
Post valuable stuff often.
Work together with influential businesspeople
YouTube live videos on Instagram
Use surveys and questionnaires to solicit opinions.
Use hashtags to your advantage.
When your viewers are most active, post
Also, don't forget the fundamentals! Plan out your material in advance, make sure your Instagram bio is designed to reflect the values of your company, and periodically check your Instagram statistics to see what's working.
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Salty Red Dog Marketing, LLC is a marketing agency in Red Bank, NJ, Westport, CT, and everywhere in between. We service businesses with marketing strategies, digital marketing, social media, and consultations.
Contact: info@saltyreddogmarketing.com
Phone: NJ: (732) 802-6205 // CT: (203) 429-9671