Instagram is often considered one of the best apps for influencers and for those who want to build a name for themselves, either personally or for their brand, through direct access to customers and clients.
With so many different content formats available, from standard grid posts to Q&As, stories, live streams, reels, and DMs, engagement underpins a great deal of the Instagram experience for all users – whether you’re connecting with friends, fans, or customers.
It’s easy to look at this model and assume that the most you post, the more people will engage with you.
But successful and sustainable engagement requires more than just a high quantity of posts.
In this article, we’re sharing some of the biggest tips to increase your Instagram engagement – focusing specifically on business and creator accounts.
Why Does Engagement Matter on Instagram?
Instagram is a platform built for community. Whether building up a client / customer base or establishing a legion of fans to boost your profile and elevate your status as an influencer, Instagram supports communication – both direct and indirect through shares, likes, and more.
‘Engagement’ as a statistic is what tells an account holder how many followers they have and how regularly their content is being liked, commented on, shared, and interacted with in some way.
It can be measured as a percentage of followers who interact with your content in some way – giving you some idea as to what percentage of your followers are active and what percentage are dormant. This is calculated by adding up all your engagement and dividing it by the number of followers you have.
Monitoring Engagement As a Business / Creator Account Holder
So, what’s the point?
When you know what your engagement stats are, using the insight linked with your business or creator account, you can uncover more information about the best time to post, what sort of content to post, and which posts generate the most likes, shares, and onward journey for customers and followers.
Here are some tips on increasing engagement on Instagram.
Tips For Increasing Engagement
1. Speak Directly to Your Target Audience
Everything that you post on Instagram should be geared towards directly communicating with your ideal follower or target audience. That includes the captions of your posts, any direct-to-camera video you do, and even your bio.
And while we’re on the top of your target audience…
2. Know Who Your Target Audience Is
Knowing who your target audience is will help you to determine your tone of voice, messaging, the best time to post, and the best actions and CTAs to use to inspire engagement.
Different demographics interact in different ways on Instagram, so the better you know your audience the easier it will be to engage them.
3. Post At The Right Time For Your Audience
This is crucial if you want to increase engagement. Posting outside of the core hours of activity across your target audience will just increase the chance of them missing your updates.
Note: This becomes even more important when you post time-sensitive updates such as stories and live streams.
4. Add CTAs To Captions and Stories
A great way to inspire engagement is to ask for it directly.
Ask followers to send you their questions on a story pop-up, or encourage them to like, share, or comment on your posts.
5. Recognise The Value of Give And Take
You can’t keep asking followers to engage with you if you don’t give something back.
Create shareable content which focuses on adding value to your followers’ experience, or why not host a giveaway or something which is designed to create quick engagement but with a tangible reward for those who get involved.
Whatever it is, remember to combine each ask with something beneficial for your community.
6. Combine Professional And Personal Content
You may have noticed that even the most professional and industrial of business profiles are now segmenting industry-specific content with the more personal, behind the scenes updates from their office. This is because Instagram is very much a social platform, and one which connects accounts with their followers in the most personal of ways.
To increase engagement particularly on a business profile, keep it really personable and approachable.
7. Use Relevant Hashtags
This one may seem obvious, but don’t forget to use hashtags if you want to continue growing your profile and appearing in relevant searches where you might benefit from additional engagement.
Making sure that your content appears against specific searches will only benefit and highlight the value of your content in the eyes of Instagram!
8. Focus On Both Existing And New Followers – Grow AND Nurture
There are tons of different ways to do this, but the main point to focus on is the importance of growing your community while at the same time looking after and nurturing those who already support your profile.
While it is of course important to focus on ways of increasing your following, balance this activity with things which reward and add value to existing followers, to make sure that you don’t alienate your community in your search for more followers.
We hope this helps! Instagram can be a really exciting and engaging online space for businesses and influencers, connecting them with likeminded individuals and ensuring that they can interact directly with customers, clients, and fans.
Engagement may not be the only goal available to successful Instagram users, but it is certainly one of the best and is a surefire way to build a sustainable community for years to come.
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