With so many creative brands and influencers fighting for user’s attention, engagement has been harder than before. The Instagram algorithm is also a pain in the neck for social media managers due to strict policies and signals to rank posts, as it makes it harder than ever to reach target audiences, get more followers, and improve engagement on posts. But the good news; Instagram is the highest converting platform for brands, the best place to sell your product and services and gain a highly converting fan base and following. So don’t give up on the algorithm yet, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
In this post, I will be discussing tips and tricks needed to get your account’s engagement back on track and also improve your fan base, some are Advanced level tips anyway.
Increase Your Instagram Engagement in there 15 Simple Steps.
- Start Engaging with your followers.
- Post content for the Millennials, also known as Generation Y.
- Content is King: Develop engaging contents.
- Invest in Video contents.
- Advanced: Delete Ghost followers from your page.
- Remove posts with low engagements.
- Start using IGTV and use stories more often.
- Always check your analytics.
- Advanced: Conduct and Implement Hashtag research.
- Use CTA and impressive captions.
- Reply to DM’s and comments often.
- Get the best value from your stories.
- Improve your profile look and aesthetics.
- Advanced: Experiment and Make use of Powerlikes.
- Dive into viral contents.
One of the fastest way to increase your page engagement is to engage with your already existing fan base, it’s important to build a very loyal fan base for your brand and the best way to do that is to show them you care about them.
I recommend you spend around 30 minutes everyday checking out your timeline and engaging with other users. Show them you care about them, checkout their stories.
Instagram is the third most popular social media platfrom in the world with a billion monthly active users, following Facebook and Youtube closely. This makes it a fantastic place to build your business and get your content viral. Understanding the demographics and audience level of any social media platform you want to invest on is very important, and Instagram is indisputably dominated by the Generation Y (1981 to 1995) and Z (mid-1990s to early-2000s).
A whooping 64% of every member of the Generation Y and Z uses Instagram, so if your content doesn’t suit them you’re executing the wrong strategy. This is why the most engaging pages on Instagram are around memes, college, relationships and other niches that interests those generations.
3) Content is King: Develop engaging contents.
The statement “Content is King” is a well-known quote in Internet marketing, it originated on January 1996 from Bill Gate essay on Microsoft website.
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” he wrote.
The focus on quality content is at an all-time high after the update on Instagram’s algorithm that focuses on engaging contents rather than chronologically arranged feed, that means the better your content is, the more users engage with your content and that gives you a positive ranking with Instagram algorithm on users timeline. Instagram would always show your posts to users that engage with your post often.
Videos now generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined on social. SmallBizTrends.
With that in mind, it is important to have a good video strategy to increase engagements on your Instagram accounts. Instagram has actively been encouraging video contents on thier platform over the last couple of months with strategic in-app placements and new features release like the IGTV.
You should also know that Instagram now favours video contents on it’s explore page with a suggested IGTV video taking a large chunk of space on the explore page.
- Handle contains numbers.
- Low followers, high following.
- No quality content.
- Has weird username.
- Post has little or no engagement.
- Has never liked or commented on your post in 6 months. ( You need an expert to analyze this for you).
When you block a user they automatically unfollow you. The idea is to find ghost followers then block and unblock them, by removing your ghost followers, you increase your engagement rate and the reach of your post also increases. Please note when you remove ghost followers you followers count also goes down, the question is what is more important to you, Engagement or Follower count? I leave that to you to answer.
7) Start using IGTV and use stories more often.
Earlier we talked about Instagram and it’s focus on video contents. Last year (2018), Instagram launched the IGTV feature, IGTV stands for Instagram TV and it purported longer video (15 seconds to 10 minutes) compared to the former 1 minute video length.
IGTV also supports videos of up to 60 minutes but it’s only available on verified or bigger accounts. There is an amazing thing with IGTV, it’s that when someone post on IGTV users are notified just like when someone you’re following goes live. I strongly recommend you add IGTV into your content strategy.
IGTV has successfully combined the power YouTube into the ever-vibrant Instagram community, this allows businesses and content creators the opportunity to grow.
To boost your Instagram engagement, I recommend you check your analytics every day! This is really important so you can track progress and know what and what content works best for your page. Take time to study and understand your audience and engagement, to identify how your followers are responding to your contents.
It’s also very important you know the time your followers are most active and use that to build your content calendar, by studying your analytics often enough you can get to understand the best way to improve your numbers.
Instagram Hashtag is a very effective way to improve your engagement on Instagram. Most social media managers ignore the powerful idea behind hashtags through lacklustre hashtag strategies. Using hashtags like #like4like #followme #food and other non-specific hashtags won’t get your page anywhere.
Hastags are important in growing your audience and showing your contents to users who aren’t following you yet. With the right hashtags strategy you can get your content shown to lot of users who aren’t following you which indirectly can covert to more Instagram engagement for you. To successfully take advantage of Hashtags, you need to stop using random hashtags that won’t help your page, don’t forget Instagram algorithm is a tough nut to crack and you need to do more than just copy and past random hashtags to get your contents very far on the Hashtag section.
Hashtag research is a very complex strategy and you might need the expertise of a social media expert to conduct one, but here are some tips to help you have a successful hashtag strategy.
- Stop/Don’t use 30 hashtags, stay around 5-15 per post.
- Spin your hashtags on different contents.
- Use niche-specific hashtags
- Use popular Influencers hashtags
- Include a small percentage of location hashtags.
- use viral hashtags
Instagram stories are another way to get your audience engaged on your page and content. Get creative with stickers and amazing designs. Stories are good way to reach your audience if they didn’t get to catch your post on their timeline. Instagram has over 600 million active story viewers everyday, you want your content to be part of those viewed.
Try to use added features like polls, stickers, hashtags, locations. Consider making use of CTA too on your stories so as to drive replies and comments.
14) Advanced: Experiment and Make use of Powerlikes.
Take advantage of viral posts and contents around your niche. Look for posts with good engagements and look to repost or create your contents around it on your Instagram page.
Thank you for reading, if you’ve any question feel free to use the comment section. Answering all questions. Don’t forget to share with your friends and family who have a business page on Instagram.