Instagram is one most popular and successful social media platforms. It is one of the best places to reach the audience and build a community where fans will remain engaged.
Amongst the huge number of people who are on this platform, almost 80% follow various brands.
Naturally, you want to enhance your engagement on Instagram. Now engagement is measured by the number of likes, shares, and comments that your post achieves from consumers.
And Instagram boasts of registering a whopping 4.21% rate for this. That is almost 55% better than Pinterest, 10 times more than Facebook, and 84% higher than Twitter.
But despite these enigmatic figures, you should know that some challenges dim the marketing potential of this platform because of the tough competition posed by other platforms and reduced engagement.
Now to be successful on Instagram, just focusing on your posts is not going to do the trick. You also have to make the best use of all tools that are at your disposal.
Not just that, you have to also strategically make all your moves. So if you are thinking of enhancing your Instagram engagement, then here are some tips for you. Just take a look.
SignUp for Instagram Business
Your brand must have a business account. These accounts not only have a more professional aesthetic but also facilitate easy access to ads and offer extra analytics. Moreover, you can also provide links to the stories. Additionally, you can add a contact button which can help you a lot.
Dedicate Time to Make the Profile Attractive
Remember just creating an Instagram account is not going to serve any purpose. Your profile must be interesting, attractive, complete, and accessible. To trigger interest amongst your Instagram followers you should start with a great profile picture relating to your brand like your logo.
Then write up a bio stating how your product or service is solving problems and why people should follow it. You should also add a web address that will ensure that you can be found easily. Again to augment your traffic to your blog or landing page, you should amplify your products or services and make original, informative, and exciting content.
Post at the Right Times
The times when you post your update can be crucial for improving reach and generating engagement on Instagram. Usually, the best days are the weekdays from Monday to Friday and the best times are 2 am (middle of the night), 8 am (before work or while commuting to work), and 5 pm (after work or during tea break or when stuck in the traffic).
However, you should test the best time for yourself. You should post updates at different times and check when you are getting the maximum traffic and most engagement. Instagram Insights can also tell you when your followers are most active.
Use Free Instagram Tools
The business profiles on Instagram are similar to that on Facebook. You can view statistics like engagement data, impressions, and more. You can also get to see a breakdown of the demographic of your followers including info on their location, age, gender, and most active hours.
Not just the generalized data, but you can also get specific insights on weekly posts that show your top posts and how many impressions are earned by you. These free tools are valuable because you gain some idea about how your followers are interacting with you through these which will help you to boost your engagement.
Use Different Formats of Contents
Though Instagram just started as a simple photo-sharing app. But it has evolved to a great extent and you can now use carousel posts, ads stories, videos, and highlights here.
So there is no need to use the same contents time and again now. This is not just exhausting, but even the robots want you to use all the features. Again video posts have far more engagement than carousel posts or images.
Leverage Hashtags
Instagram is one platform that was built on hashtags depending on which it still sorts and filters posts. You may just use 1 or 2 hashtags on Twitter. But in Instagram, one can use up to 20-30 hashtags per post.
But, again, too many hashtags on a single post can make the system believe that you are trying to spam users leading to an Instagram Shadowban. Hashtags leading to topic pages can be used in the Stories and bio or may be used to create user-generated content or be location-based for enhanced visibility.
Instagram hashtags are more descriptive than Twitter ones and those like location hashtags are very useful for boosting engagement. These hashtags may or may not be trending but are used commonly and therefore improve the SEO of the posts as users use them to find the topic. You can use hashtag analytics to track whether you are using the right hashtags or not.
Interact with the Followers
If you want to drive more engagement for yourself, then it is advisable to engage more with other users. This is true for all social media sites. You should start with your followers and browse through their latest images, and videos and engage.
You can also repost the best ones by choosing from them. For the others, you can just leave likes and comments for more involvement. You should also search for new people to engage in. You can monitor the locations or search for the right hashtags to find users with similar interests or good content that can help you to engage further.
Apart from these, the experts of reputed digital marketing companies opine that you should also post stories daily, experiment with longer captions, use locations in your post, add a single filter, and keep an eye on the latest features for diversifying the updates.
Don’t be afraid to step out of the norm on Instagram. Who knows when done aesthetically and with some logic, such posts can turn out to be a trend as well. By implementing these you can boost your Instagram engagement and generate more traffic and conversions for your business.
