How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate
Whether you are an individual or a business, the desire to increase the engagement on your Instagram remains consistent. We all want appreciation for the time taken to create the content, and most of all, you’ll want your target audience to feel valued and relish the community with other members.
To do so, you must create engaging content. Easier said than done, right?
Engagement has become of paramount importance to social media influencers, marketers and brands. As the social media platforms continue to grow, a larger audience becomes available. Your audience begins to tag their friends in posts, like, comment and share posts, increasing your brand awareness and in the end, your audience. But the only way this can happen is if you are to create engaging content.
How can you measure engagement?
It’s important to understand the variety of measures available to define the engagement success of your Instagram content. To get started, we will identify these:
- Followers
When it comes to Instagram, it’s not the total number of followers that matters. You could have 5,000 followers, but if you’re only getting 15 likes, chances are you’re not followed by your desired audience. It would be much better for you if you had 500 followers and averaged 300+ likes, as this is reaching an audience that will provide an ROI. It also means that you know what content gets the most engagement, thus you can create that content going forward.
- Likes
Likes are very straightforward. If your followers enjoy the content that you’re sharing, they will like it. For you, it’s a good baseline. You will begin to understand what content is appreciated by your followers, and can change it up if necessary.
- Shares
A customer sharing one of your posts onto their story or sending it to a friend shows a willingness to be associated with your brand. They are happy to share your content, and let their followers know they like your brand and the content you share. This is a great measure of engagement, just like comments, as it takes time to do so.
- Comments
A comment on your posts should never go unnoticed. For one of your followers to comment on a post, they are showing a commitment to your brand. Comments could be tagging a friend for them to see, replying to a question you asked your followers, or providing their opinion on a product/service.
5 tips to improve your Instagram engagement rate
Now that we’ve addressed the variety of measures for engagement on Instagram, let’s look at how you can improve your Instagram engagement rate.
- Consistency is key
To keep your audience engaged with your content, and to keep your brand at the forefront of their minds, posting regularly is crucial. Construct a social media strategy, implement the tactics and ensure you are posting on a regular basis.
In addition to this, consistency can be maintained through the design of your content. If you’re using colours, ensure you use your branding colours. By using the same colour palette, the audience will immediately recognise your content. For example, it’s easy to recognise the red and yellow branding of McDonalds. Of course, to have the brand awareness that McDonalds has is a goal we all hope to achieve, but you have to start somewhere! So, get started with the consistency of your branding!
- Post on your story
If you haven’t noticed already, when providing links in Instagram post captions, the link is unclickable. Annoying, right? Well, there is a way around this! Instead, use the stories feature. The stories feature allows you to provide a link to an external site, drop a location, mention others, share a poll and much more!
Using this feature also means you will appear along the top row on the Instagram app. Albeit, not at the front. However, as the audience clicks through their stories, as long as they follow you, yours will appear!
- Share video content using “Reels”
Video content is huge in 2022. If you’re not sharing video content already, you should definitely consider adding this to your content creation. According to SproutSocial, 85% of social media users want more videos from brands (SproutSocial, 2022).
We recommend you use the Instagram “Reels” section to upload your video content. TikTok grew rapidly throughout 2021 and 2022. The ease of scrolling through endless videos quickly became the norm. Instagram introduced their own feature like this - “reels”. When sharing content via a reel, the video will appear on more feeds, as it isn’t limited to your followers.
- Don’t forget to use hashtags
Instagrammers may use up to 30 hashtags when sharing content. However, be careful not to use too many, as the system may think you’re spamming, or a bot. Instead, use a few hashtags that relate to your product/service and brand, as well as some trending hashtags. This will enable your content to appear on more “Explore” pages, and hopefully gain engagement from the viewers.
- Collaborate with others
Of course, when sharing content on your Instagram profile, the content goes to your followers. However, by collaborating with other brands or influencers, your content can be shared to appear on their audience’s feeds - which opens you up to an audience that may not have known you existed.
This is great for brand awareness. In turn, those that follow the brand or influencer you’re collaborating with may then like or share your content, and hopefully follow you if they like the content they see.
There are plenty of ways to make your content more engaging. It takes time, and will not happen overnight. Continue to be consistent and welcome new content ideas.
By tracking analytics of posts and channels, you will better understand your audience, which will help you in the future.
If your business is in need of digital marketing support in the form of Social Media, get in touch with us. We will use our collective expertise to take you to the next level on platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Our overall aim is to generate the best possible results for your social campaign through regular content updates, profile management and advertising campaigns.
Contact the team for more information regarding your online potential.
