Marketers do not just rely on the number of followers in their lists to measure their growth. This means, having 1.3 million followers may be nothing if your content does not have any engagement.
Growth in your accounts and also in sales and revenue comes when those followers are actively interested in your content. It shows that your products or services are making an impact.
This impact is seen when your posts generate likes, shares, comments, etc. Having a high Instagram engagement rate also offers more benefits such as lowered ad cost.
Let's look now at the best tricks to increase the engagement.
What is Instagram Engagement?
Engagement is not merely having followers or many views on your post. It is more of measuring how your audience interacts with your content.
It is the rate of social interaction for your content relative to the number of followers you have. This is measured using several metrics which include:
- Likes;
- Comments;
- Shares;
- DMs;
- Click-Throughs;
- Saves;
- Branded hashtags;
- Mentions;
- Followers.
These metrics show that people aren't just seeing your content, but they are interested in it.
Why is it important? To start with, it means your content is relevant to your audiences and it is making an impact.
Image cortesy Pixabay.
Additionally, when you get a higher engagement rate, it scales up your Instagram algorithm which in turn provide you a higher ranking. Your content is boosted in the newsfeed getting you more attention.
You can measure your engagement based on the goals of your brand or campaign. Gather all the statistics using any of Instagram’s analytics tools, then use an Instagram engagement Calculator to get your engagement rate.
The ideal Engagement Rate
Depending on your campaign goals, there are many ways you can calculate your engagement rate such as by reach, by impression or by followers. No matter if you have to buy Instagram followers UK this calculation will generate the right results.
There is no set rule of what the ideal engagement rate is but marketers have stated that it should range from 1% to 5%.
This range may vary depending on the industry in which your brand falls. Whichever the case, use the following tricks to increase your engagement rate.
14 Best Hacks & Tricks to Increase Instagram Engagement
1. Know Your Audience
When you are creating products or services for a particular audience, it is futile if you do not know what this audience wants. The same goes for advertising. You will be less successful in your ads campaign if you do not know your audience.
You can get to know your audience by using their demographics such as age and gender. Other fundamentals you can incorporate are:
- Location;
- Interests;
- Behaviors;
- Lookalike Audiences among others.
When you fully understand these demographics and fundamentals, you can define your brand's voice and content to resonate with your audience. You also know when is the right time and day to post your content.
2. Duplicate Your Best-Performing Posts
If you often create different kinds of posts, you may have realized their performance varies. Some may get you more engagement while others just get a few likes.
You can use this to your advantage, analyze your past best performing post, and check for commonalities, it could be in the way the image was taken or text aligned. Whatever the commonality is, use it to create future posts.
3. Post Instagram Stories with Call-to-Action (CTA)
Instagram may not allow you to add a link in your post or story, however, you can always add one to your caption or refer to the one in your bio.
Sephora CTA to sign up
Alternatively, make use of CTAs. This encourages your followers' not just to notice but also to act on your post.
Adding CTAs such as 'Learn More' give your followers a chance to head back to your site giving you more leads. What's more, your story and posts get a higher Instagram engagement rate.
4. Post-Great Images
Unlike Facebook, Instagram is mostly a visual platform. As such, you need to be on top of the game with the images you post. Ensure they are unique and stand out to catch your followers attention.
You don't need to be an expert photographer or have a million-dollar camera, there are various tools and apps that you can use to make your photos look professional.
You can make use of a tool such as Canva.com which offers hundreds of templates that make it easy to add some bit of text to your images without altering the main content.
By the way, if you're curious about what does NFS mean on Instagram, it's actually an acronym used by photographers to indicate that a particular image is not available for sale or commercial use.
5. Post Carousels
Carousels are posts with multiple images. They are one of the best means to increase your engagement rate on Instagram.
Once you have mastered the proficiency of creating good images, you can incorporate the skills in your carousels.
Some brands reveal that their carousels generate about 3.1 times more engagement than any other regular post.
This could be attributed to the fact that the carousel is often shown to followers who had not seen or engaged them when they were first posted hence increasing their engagement rate.
6. Post Video Content
Between text and video content, the latter generates more engagement of about 3% even higher than that of images.
Video content isn’t complicated as one would think. You just need to maintain originality and authenticity. Once you’ve shot your video, edit it and get everything in line then post it.
You can also create high quality video by using an online video editor . This will help you to combine scenes, add your desired background music and edit them like an expert.
7. Share Your Audience’s Content
Social media is not merely a broadcast system, it is a conversation platform. You want your followers to engage and listen to you, why not do the same?
You can do this by sharing your audience's content. When a follower tags you in their posts that relate to your product or services, you can take the initiative of sharing their post on your story.
This simple but powerful gesture makes your followers feel valued and heard. In return, it starts a revolution where other followers start tagging you in their posts.
8. Join the Conversation
The purpose of all the advertising is to get engagement from your followers. When they start commenting on your photo, video, or any other content, do not leave them hanging.
Grow your engagement rate Instagram interacting with them and responding to their comments. Answer any question they may be asking.
When you respond to them, it makes your followers feel excited to converse with you as they are seen and heard.
Aside from the conversation happening in your accounts, you may be indirectly mentioned by a follower on a different page.
You need to keep up with this too by setting up a search stream in your dashboard, this way, you will not miss out on anything and you get to keep the conversation rolling.
In other cases, you do not wait for your followers to strike the conversation; you need to start one yourself. This balances the equation of being reactive by responding to comments and proactive; starting the conversation.
9. Drive Traffic from other sources
To reach out to a larger audience not only on your Instagram or Facebook accounts, you need to share your handles in every avenue. You can also, be sure to include it in your company's newsletter, Twitter bio, Pinterest, email signature among others.
The easier it is for people to get to your platform without massive searching, the more the chances they will view your content and possibly engage you.
10. Partner with Creatives
You can also partner with creative to market your products or services. This not only places you in line with a new audience, but also increases the possibility of more leads.
However, do not just partner with any creative. Choose one who has an active audience. With engagement, there is an audience and then there is audience response.
The volume of the latter against all impressions such as followers and views gives you the engagement rate. Use the Instagram Engagement Calculator to get the rate.
This shows that the content posted by the creative isn’t just entertaining but also educative or compelling enough to warrant a comment, like or share from the followers.
11. Write Witty Captions
With advertising, everything you use has to be intriguing to catch your followers' attention. Aside from eye-catching photos, you also need to add some wit to your company's voice and captions.
Also, use words and a voice that people want to hear. This will make them want to engage you.
12. Time Your Posts
When it comes to advertising, posting anytime may not be a good time. This is because you may post your ads when most of your followers or targeted audience is not online.
That means, your post may go unseen and not receive your intended engagement despite it having the most interesting caption or high-quality image.
Some Instagram engagement Calculators may have features such as Instagram reporting. This feature shows you the best time to post.
Your business account also offers analytics for when most of your followers are active. With this information, you can also schedule your posts.
When you know when the best time to post is, you can spend more time engaging your followers in the comment section.
13. Analyze Your Competitors
You might not know this, but keeping tabs on what your competitors are doing is of great advantage. Since the number of competitors in your category could be high, analyzing each one at a go could take time and money.
However, there is an easier solution, there are tools that offer features such as Instagram Competitors Report, with this feature, and you can view most of your competitors all in one go.
It is simple to use, just add your top competitors’ profile in the report and you will be provided with their data such as commonly used hashtags and engagement. This reporting can be daily or weekly, depending on what you choose.
When you know what your competitors are doing such as which hashtags are giving them more engagement, you can tailor your advertising in the same direction.
14. Be Strategic With Instagram Ads
Lastly, on how to increase your Instagram Engagement, more possibilities were presented when Facebook added Instagram into its Ads Manager.
As a marketer, you could easily promote your accounts and get new leads. However, to get maximum results, you need to be strategic.
In the Ads manager, there are retargeting and custom audiences. Through this, you could personalize your target by checking a few things such as their interests.
If you are advertising products such as home décor, you could look into audiences that engage other home décor brands and target them in your ads campaign.
When you fully understand the options available on Instagram Advertising, you are one step ahead of your competitors. Utilizing these options takes you a step further to get more conversions, more engagement, and other benefits.
You can also differentiate your audiences. To do this you need to identify those who have commented or engaged your Instagram or Facebook accounts. Also, identify those from your email list, and people who've visited or purchased something from your store or website.
As you do this, you can proceed to find their lookalike audience and add them to your targeted audience.
How Increased Customer Engagement On Instagram Can Improve Your Sales
Increasing engagement on your Instagram is easy when you apply the above tricks and hacks. Remember, increasing your reach to wider audiences portrays a good picture of your business.
Growing your Instagram takes time but with the right tricks at hand, you can get the benefits sooner. In this article, we have looked at the best hacks and tricks to increase Instagram engagement.
Increased engagement on Instagram also increases your sales as more customers will be inclined to buy your products.
However, you have to create a rapport first by remaining relevant and giving your audience the attention they need.
To sum it all, it’s possible to increase Instagram engagement for your business.
Tags: engagement, instagram, posts
