Best Ways to Increase Your Engagement Among Your Instagram Followers

Nowadays, most companies know that their potential clients are found on social media platforms en masse. This has contributed to the dramatic growth of social media marketing. Though this focused mainly on Facebook in the past, Instagram is quickly taking over. Slightly more than a billion people use Instagram monthly, so you are sure of your brand’s visibility among a high number of potential clients.

Instagram is an ideal choice for marketers that want to build a brand following, harness consumer insights, and boost their engagement on social media. Moreover, humans are visual creatures by nature, and Instagram is the best platform for your visual content. With the high expected benefits, there is a lot of competition to get noticed among the many brands advertising on this platform.

To beat your competitors, you should aim for the highest levels of engagement with your Instagram followers. This is not about how many followers you gain, but rather about how people will respond to your content. Comments, likes, shares, mentions, and direct messages are some of the metrics you can use to measure engagement. Below are the most effective routes for boosting your engagement on Instagram.

Pay Attention to and Create Content Based on Your Audience’s Demographics

It is challenging to churn the right content when you do not know the people for whom you are making it. This necessitates the creation of a buyer persona. Your audience’s demographics dictate the ideal content, brand voice, and days you will publish the content. If, for instance, you are targeting people who have a bold sense of humor, it is best to keep your content funny because they will appreciate it. On the other hand, if you are targeting corporates, funny content might not appeal to your audience. 

End Captions with CTAs or Prompts

Showing people why they should interact with your content is one way of increasing your Instagram engagement. This can be done by giving your followers a prompt or CTA at the end of your caption space. The prompt can be in the form of questions, an invitation to leave a comment, or directions for specific tasks. Remember that your CTA or prompt should be relevant to your message for you to get beneficial engagement. At the end of your post, you can also ask clients to review your brand on Google Reviews because most shoppers base their choices on peer reviews.

Aim for Content That People Would Wish To Save

People on Instagram are always saving content to their collections for reference. This can be anything from funny content to inspirational quotes that they want to share later or read again. Ideally, choosing informative graphics is one of your best avenues for getting people to hit the ‘save’ button since this is valuable information. To enhance your engagement with infographics, turn them into a carousel post so people can swipe when they want to learn more.

Share Relatable Memes

Instagram is not as ‘’serious’’ a social media platform as LinkedIn. People here like a bit of humor, even when dealing with corporate brands. Your followers should laugh with you to feel close to your brand. Memes are the perfect formats for sharing your hilarious takes on real-life situations and creative jokes. It might be hard to get industry-specific memes that resonate with your brand image, but you can creatively make those you come across work in your favor. Some marketers assume that watermarking their memes is an ideal way of engaging more clients when they are shared. Unfortunately, this sets you as a brand only trying to make a sale rather than genuinely connect with followers, so it should be avoided.

Interact With Followers

Responding to people’s reactions to your posts is an easy way to boost Instagram engagement. You might get a lot of questions about the prices of your items and where people can get them from. Set aside time to respond personally to these questions to make people feel appreciated. You can go a step further and respond with thank you messages and emojis for reactions that do not involve questions. This makes your brand seem personal and human.

Pick the Right Time for Your Posts

Timing is an essential determinant of engagement. It is easy for your post to sink to the bottom compared to your competitors’ because people post on Instagram every second. As such, you should post your content at the time when you are most likely to get the highest engagement. Several studies have pointed out the optimal times for posting on Instagram, but remember that the ideals will change for different audiences. As such, it is advisable to evaluate your analytics to see when your followers are active.

Regularly Create Interesting and Fun Reels

Since their launch in 2020, Instagram Reels have become quite popular. This feature allows the sharing of short, entertaining videos that are great for driving engagement and visibility. Instagram aims to equal the priority to Reels for big and small accounts, provided they have reasonable engagement rates. As such, you need not worry about being overrun by bigger competitor accounts. You can use Reels to share your before-and-after shots, product demos, POV, how-to, and behind-the-scenes videos.

Measure Your Efforts 

Trying new approaches, strategies and tactics amount to nothing if you cannot measure their effectiveness of them – how are you to know which one is successful? There are many free tools in which you can monitor user data and engagement. Instagram has its very own free built-in insight dashboard which you can use to understand reach, engagement, etc. However, if you care to dive deeper into the data, there are additional plug-ins you can use. It is important to read about how to leverage user data and use it to make business decisions. 

Additionally, it is important to consider your purpose. If you are an influencer you will have different metrics compared to that of an eCommerce business on Instagram. Consider the metrics for ecommerce, influencer, educational, informational, etc. accounts.

Leverage the Allure of Giveaways

Nothing will get more engagement on all social media platforms than getting free stuff. This is why you should include giveaways in your Instagram marketing campaigns. Ensure your giveaway is enticing to both prospective and existing followers so that it actualizes a high ROI. This means it should be relevant and valuable to your target market.

With the above tactics in mud, you might still wonder why engagement on Instagram matters. First, it is crucial for the visibility of your content since the platform’s algorithm prioritizes content that users will likely interact with. This means with a high engagement rate, you have good chances of your content being placed in front of relevant audiences. Engagement will also help you gauge how potential clients are responding to content so that you know the areas you should improve on. There is no specific best rate for Instagram engagement, but industry experts advise brands to aim for 1-5%.