6 simple tips to improve your Instagram engagement today

posted byPatrick Chemoul10/12/2020

Wondering how to increase engagement on your Instagram account?

Then you’re at the right place!

So why is Instagram engagement so important?

Instagram engagement rate allows you to measure your audience’s loyalty within the platform.

It is an important measure in digital marketing and it looks at metrics such as likes, comments, and level of interaction.

The more your audience is loyal to your brand, and the more likely they are to take actions that benefit your brand - whether it is sales, sharing content, or helping you build a positive reputation.

Read more about our 6 simple tricks for Instagram engagement:

1. Engage daily with similar accounts

You might wonder, why would I want to spend time researching and commenting on other people’s accounts everyday?

It is the easiest of all tricks to make your account more noticeable to other users!

Engaging daily with other people that share similar interests and content is a great way to promote your own account.

Because your username appears in the comments section, it can draw people to click more on it and to discover your account.

This of course applies to accounts that have a smaller comment section.

Most importantly, engaging with similar accounts can allow you to strike a conversation with someone like-minded that could genuinely help you.

Instagram collaborations are for example a great way to increase attention from potential new followers and to start building engagement towards your content.

Whether you are a blogger or a brand, it is also important to spend more time engaging with micro-influencers (between 1k to 10k followers).

Micro-influencers are today perceived by Instagram audiences as providing more authentic, and trustworthy content.

Their engagement rates are usually much higher than macro-influencers and celebrities.

Since they are also trying to grow their accounts, reaching out to a micro-influencers and proposing a mutually benefiting collaboration can be a great way to get more exposure to a loyal follower base on Instagram.

2. Find the best posting time for your audience

Keeping tabs on the best time to post on your account can really help boost engagement on your posts and stories.

If your goal is to make your content standout, then you definitely need to post when your audience is active on Instagram.

You can simply keep track of your latest posts’ performance and compare the posting time between each of them.

Comments, likes, level of interaction, are all important metrics you want to look at.

For example, if you find out that the content you share in the afternoon performs better when posted between 4 and 6 pm, it probably means that a bigger portion of your audience is navigating the platform in the late afternoon.

Monday and Thursday afternoon are commonly referenced as optimal time slots to post on Instagram.

Optimizing your posting time will really help to increase your Instagram stories views and make your posts more noticeable on users’ feeds.

If you have an Instagram business account, you can take a look at your Instagram insights and use the Instagram analytics tools.

Start by opening your Instagram analytics page, and click on the “audience” tab to see where your audience is located.

For example, if you’re located in the U.S and know that 50% of your audience is in Europe, it would be beneficial to adjust your posting time according to the time difference between the two regions.

Later on, you can also schedule your Instagram posts in advance with marketing platforms such as Later.com and Hootsuite.com.

Those platforms allow you not only to schedule your Instagram posts for a specific time, but also to analyze their performance.

3. Optimize your Instagram stories

Creating Instagram stories is key to building a larger audience for your Instagram accounts.

They’re not only easy to create; Instagram stories are fun, short, and simple to watch!

Most importantly, your Instagram stories can help you draw more attention to your feed and gain loyal followers for your account.

Since most users don’t scroll for a long time on their Instagram feed, it is key to use your stories to help make your posts noticeable.

You can use your Instagram stories for example to promote a new post that could get unnoticed in a user’s feed.

Start by selecting the post on your account that you want to re-share and tap on the share button (the paper airplane icon) at the bottom of the post.

Then select the option “add to your story”.

From now on you can get as creative as you want with GIFs, a funny caption, and drawings, that could raise interest from your audience.

Since Instagram stories usually generate more views, this feature is a great to use to increase attention to your new posts on the social network.

Your Instagram stories are also a great way to collect feedback from your audience that you can actually apply to your feed.

For example, polls and the questions feature are a great way to know what type of content your audience wants to see in the future.

It is also a fantastic way to start engaging with your audience and to build a loyal following base that feel that their opinion is valued.

4. Increase engagement with your audience

Since engagement is first and foremost about loyalty, it is so important to engage daily with your audience!

Answering rapidly the comments you receive on your posts is an easy way to start interacting with your audience.

Whether you are a blogger or a brand, it demonstrates that you care about your audience and take the time to address each comment.

Customizing your answers to each comment can also help engage more your followers, as they feel that their comments are being personally addressed.

Another way to increase interaction with your followers is to answer your direct messages (DMs).

Your followers might want to bring up topics that they don’t want to write in the comment section or to ask questions/inquiries.

For example, a follower might have seen that you are going to a music festival and wanted to give you their best tips to enjoy your experience there.

Sometimes, receiving encouraging and positive messages from your followers in your DMs can be a great highlight to your day!

It is then highly important to take the time to answer your DMs and to create more conversation with your followers.

Finally, your Instagram stories can also help increase the level of interactions with your audience.

More specifically, you can use your stories to re-share user-generated content that has been created by other users within the platform.

For example, the hair care brand SheaMoisture dedicate an enormous portion of their Instagram feed and stories to re-posting photos and videos generated by users that have had beautiful results using their products.

Many bloggers also use user-generated content to interact more with their audience.

Usually, they re-post content when they are tagged in a publication or Instagram story about something they share with their audience.

For example, some bloggers have created Instagram filters on their accounts and are re-posting in their stories the photos/videos of other people that have used the filter.

5. Write captions that target your audience

Instagram captions are often thought nowadays as less important or less useful to engage your audience compared to visual content.

Well, amazing visual content will for sure help attract an audience to your feed.

However, it is through your captions, and the ideas you decide to share, that your audience relate to your content.

And that’s where engagement starts.

The first step would be to determine the type of content you want to post on your account and the global tone that you will adopt.

For example, are you creating lifestyle and entertaining content? In that case, would a tacky and witty tone apply to it?

Or are you creating more informative posts about different topics- i.e. technology, health… etc. ?

Determining the main theme for the content that you will post and the tone that you want to adopt will help you start writing better captions.

Then, it is also important to ask yourself the questions: What do I deeply care about? What do I want to share with my audience?Would they be interested in this content?

Writing Instagram captions that are authentic and genuine is simply the best way to create a connection with your audience.

When you care about something, it shows.

In terms of captions length, you can also write longer captions about topics that are important to you.

Longer captions will not prevent interest from your audience if they are appropriate to the topic and if it’s something that interests them.

6. Use hashtags more efficiently

Last but not least, using hashtags smartly can also be a great way to raise attention to your posts.

An easy tip is to research for hashtags on Instagram that are commonly associated with certain content categories (i.e. maternity clothes, gardening, food).

Once you’ve found those hashtags, you might want to focus your energy on finding more specific hashtags that relate to niche and sub-categories.

For example, you might want to post about street art in Los Angeles.

You have the option to use the hashtag #streetart that has 49.4 M posts associated, or the hashtag #streetartlosangeles that has 28.2 K posts associated.

You could also use an even more specific hashtag like #muralslosangeles that has 100 posts associated.

But while the shorter hashtags have often way more posts associated to them, they are not often the best for discoverability through Instagram algorithm and engagement.

And this is because they are so popular that every post that includes them goes at the bottom after only a few minutes.

Ultimately, it makes your posts less easily discoverable. That doesn’t mean that you must stop using those hashtags.

But mixing them up and adding more niche-targeted hashtags might help your post stay longer associated to a hashtag and easier to find by users.

* Bonus: How to track your engagement

After applying those 6 simple tips to increase your Instagram engagement, you might want to track your posts' engagement overtime.

There are a few tools that you can use to learn more about your Instagram engagement:

  • triberr.com (free tool)
  • phlanx.com (up to 10 free searches per day)

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