With all top brands having accounts on Instagram, the audience expects to see the best content from their favorite top brands.
Also, several small businesses have benefited a lot from Instagram in the recent past.
They noticed that they receive engagement in terms of likes, views, and comments. The increasing number of brands and businesses getting into Instagram leaves pressure on boosting and maintaining Instagram engagement for your profile.
How to Boost Instagram Engagement
Use the Whole of Instagram Features.
The Instagram algorithm has started to show results according to users’ interests and preferences. Also, it gives top priority to accounts that use all tools and the latest updates of Instagram. It means that you need to post content in diverse formats to boost your Instagram engagement rate.
After all, Instagram invests a lot of time and money to develop newer technologies, and it is no surprise that people who make the best use of it will be the priority. For this, you first need to either sign up or switch to an Instagram business account as it has got many features to try and benefit from, like analytics, ads, and aesthetics.
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Share Instagram Stories Daily.
Instagram no longer displays content in reverse chronological order. Instead, it displays content for each user based on user interests and preferences. When a post of another user account shows up in your feed, or when your post shows up in others’ feed, there are several logical reasons for this to happen.
With that said, keeping it a practice to post to stories daily is an effective way to ensure that your content stays at the top of your followers’ feeds and hence maximize and maintain Instagram engagement. Limit your time on in-feed posts and shift your focus to creating and sharing unique stories that interact more with your audience.
Post Videos in Different Formats
Instagram, which started as a photo-sharing app, now offers various content formats for you to post, such as carousels, stories, ads, IGTV videos, reels, and highlights. The algorithm prefers you to use the whole lot of options that come every day with the app.
Recent statistics report that carousel posts are said to receive more engagement than videos or static images. Meanwhile, it might not be possible for you to share just videos, so you can still post pictures that your audience finds damn interesting to watch.
When you get significantly less engagement, you can get automatic Instagram likes for your content as an extra boost for your content. That will, in turn, tap more organic engagement for your content l in terms of views, shares, and saves.
In-feed videos appear permanently in your feed. Therefore, you need to spend some time to attain the best quality. Remember to add appropriate hashtags while you post these videos to your feed because these videos are searchable. Using the right hashtags helps users to find the videos easily.
Create videos that provide more value to your users and serve as a solution to their problems. Product announcements, tutorials, and major brand campaigns are some video content ideas that work well to post in the feed. Videos put as stories vanish after 24 hours.
Though this is a downside, the main upside is that stories need not be over-polished like other video formats. Stories allow you to post a video as such and help you prove your authenticity. Small portions of events, live announcements, and curtain snapshots are great content that will treat your audience.
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Schedule Posts at Peak Times
Though this is an old tip, the best time to post is an essential factor influencing engagement. It is necessary to identify the best posting times because your competitors do not miss out on this. Scheduling is a feature that has been available only very recently.
There are several scheduling apps in the market, and you can choose the one that best suits your budget and requirements. Scheduling your content helps you get your content visible to your audience whenever they are active, and certainly higher are the chances the post will appear in more users’ feeds.
Identify New Ways of Interaction.
People have massive trust in Influencers and will listen to what they’ve got to say. However, sometimes it might not fall under your budget. In that case, you can check out the different ways your followers, fans, and friends collaborate. Behind-the-scenes, tutorials, takeovers, and contests are examples of content types that work well and serve as a modified method of interaction. They are likely to gather enormous engagement on Instagram.
Rely on Influencers
Besides creating and sharing appealing content, you also need to communicate with your followers and audience through various strategies. One such strategy is Influencer marketing, where you’ll have to determine the right influencer in your niche and make them run campaigns for your brand. It is not mandatory to choose huge influencers with millions of followers.
Some Influencers have a few thousand followers but have increased social proof among the audience. Influencers know what will work for your brand. So give Influencers the complete liberty to take over your account and gain plenty of Instagram engagement. It should be noted that you must have to keep your profile secured from hackers as if they can’t hack Instagram you’re using.
Listen to People Around You.
Instagram is a social media channel, and you need to embrace two-way communication. There is no certainty that your post will receive the expected engagement. So, you just can’t keep numb. Instead, you need to work to find and reach new followers and understand what type of content interests them.
Taking a look at comments, captions, and Instagram conversations now and then is something that you should do seriously to scale up Instagram engagement. Create content specific to your audience, and look at what other brands are posting to attract and engage new audiences. Track if your competitors use any new ways to increase Instagram engagement, like branded hashtags and relevant hashtags.
Use Polls in Stories
Instagram polls are a kind of call to action for your users that will drive more engagement for the content and your profile. They are a bit the same as contests but take very little time and effort to create. Just by knowing information about the main choices of your audience, you can create a poll that’ll undoubtedly get engagement flooding.
Some example questions to ask in polls include “What is your favorite coffee flavor: Cappuccino or Espresso? What is the content format that you mostly prefer from us? When your question is easy and quick, more people respond to your poll, increasing Instagram engagement.
Final Words
Social media marketing is not a cakewalk. It all takes reasonable time and consistent effort to gain engagement and direct more traffic for your business. On the other side, it is a powerful hub of new opportunities and ideal customers. Just put your right foot forward to win the game.