Is Instagram a part of your social media strategy? For many brands, Instagram can be a lucrative channel, helping boost brand awareness, and even driving product sales. You can really showcase your brand’s personality on this channel, and as such, it’s become a go to for marketers in both the B2B and B2C spaces.
Before we dive into how you can improve Instagram engagement, let’s take a step back and look at what Instagram is and why you should be using it.
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What is Instagram?
Instagram the most famous photo and video sharing app in the world. Its ultimate goal is to enable users to upload photos and videos to share with your friends and followers. Lately, Instagram has also become a go to channel for brands looking to connect with their audience and grow their business. Instagram has reached over one billion users per month and 500 million active users per day.
Why Instagram?
So, why should you be incorporating Instagram into your social media strategy? Here are 7 excellent reasons.
- Instagram has a high brand engagement.
- It has all the visual marketing features.
- Easy to target your audience.
- More businesses and consumers are accessing Instagram every day.
- Businesses can make money directly from Instagram.
- Easy to attract younger generations.
Features Of Instagram:
Instagram has launched many features for marketers and individuals. While the platform started out very basic, it’s become a complex place with some seriously useful features that your business could utilize to help connect more effectively with your target audience. Let’s take a look.
- Stories – Instagram stories allow users to capture and present their daily moments. It appears in a slideshow format and the lifetime of stories is 24 hours.
- IGTV – IGTV is an app within Instagram, and it allows users to upload long-form videos like a YouTube video.
- Reels – Recently, Instagram launched the reels feature, and it looks like TikTok’s main feed. With reels, users can create fun and entertaining videos for up to 15 to 30 seconds.
- Instagram Live – The Instagram live feature available in the stories feed. Users can receive and respond to comments in real time. It allows other users to join your broadcast.
One important factor that determines the success of your brand on Instagram is the level of engagement you receive and that you give back. Let’s dig a bit into engagement on this channel.
What is Instagram Engagement?
Instagram engagement is one of the metrics businesses can use to determine how well your content shows up in your followers feeds. It is expressed as a percentage of followers.
“Instagram engagement = engagement / followers”
As mentioned earlier, engagement is critical in growing your channel.
So, now you’re probably wondering how to increase your engagement rate? You’re in luck. Today, we’re sharing 5 incredible ideas to improve your Instagram engagement.
Let’s begin.
1. Create Engaging Videos
Instagram likes, comments, and shares are critically important to improve your engagement. So, you have to create content that encourages your audience to click the like and save buttons!
Here are some video ideas to get that can help you get more engagement on Instagram:
- Carousel Post: It allows up to 10 images or videos to be shared as a single post. Like other posts, you can add captions, alt image text, a geotag, and hashtags on each carousel.
- Visually Attractive Images: Instagram is a popular visual sharing platform. So, you can create attractive visuals in your account. Instagram provides various filters, so you can add effects and filters to make your posts more engaging.
- Post Boomerang: The Instagram boomerang feature allows you to shoot short, fun, and engaging videos. It is the best feature to share your everyday moment and turn it into something fun and unexpected.
Here’s a great video on how to use the Boomerang function.
2. Follow Unique Content Style
The best content strategy on Instagram is to share unique, engaging content. Don’t copy other users’ content or style to make your videos. You should upload content that can adds something new to the space and that can bring new people to your Instagram account.
For example,
- Use Templates: whatever content you want to send, you can do it with a unique template!. You can use a plain or designed background to make your content more attractive. If you have a brand and looking to boost sales, you can use a brand image as your template.
- High Quality Images: You should use high quality images with attractive colors, shapes, fonts, light, and exposure. Sharing high quality images is one of the ultimate strategies for getting more views and engaging your followers.
- Funny Videos: Instagram is more famous for fun and entertaining videos. Most users can post videos by adding memes and trending topics. You can include AR filters and GIFs in your feed, which can increase your engagement rate!
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3. Grab Attention Through Instagram Stories
We can’t talk about engagement without Instagram stories. Boosting engagement via stories is one of the most effective Instagram strategies. Creating engaging stories can keep your audience interested and draw attention within a short time.
If you want to enhance your story engagement, you can get views to your Instagram stories. Taking this approach can help you jumpstart your campaigns. It can help to gain more organic views to your Instagram profile. Even Instagram stories have incredible reach and make your posts more popular among other Instagram users.
According to research, half a billion people use Instagram stories to share their daily moments. And if that isn’t enough, 50% of people visited a website and made their purchase after seeing Instagram stories posts.
4. Utilize The Power of Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to help people find your content when they are searching for a specific topic, event, or theme. It helps users quickly find your content around a large number of posts.
If you want to increase your engagement, you should find which hashtags drive more people to your posts.
According to research, a post with at least one hashtag gain can gain 12.6% more engagement than posts without hastags. So, a hashtag is really worth your profile if you want to grow your account and increase popularity.
Here are some unique hashtag types worth knowing:
- Brand Hashtag – Most brands, influencers, and big brands will have branded hashtags. It can include your company name, tagline, name of your products or campaigns. For example, #weddingphotomag, #flightcentre
- Location Hashtag – Location hashtag gives the opportunity to reach people around the world. For example, #Sandiego, #sanFrancisco, #California, etc.
- Industry Hashtag – The industry hashtag is a great hashtag strategy that usually has high competition. You can use your industry name as a hashtag. For example, #blogger, #photographer, #actors, etc.
- General Hashtag – The general hashtag is a familiar hashtag type on Instagram. Simply you can add hashtags relevant to the content of your post. For example, #nature, #instagood, #followforme, etc,.
5. Drive Traffic From Other Social Networks
Cross promotion is an effective tactic for expanding the reach of your content visibility. It helps you to connect your account with potential followers and customers on other marketing channels. You can share your content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., which helps you attract more people to your Instagram profile.
For example, if you have an account on Facebook, you can share your Instagram posts to your Facebook page. When someone sees your content, you will create a chance that they will visit your Instagram profile to see further posts.
Conclusion:
Your Instagram journey is never over!
I hope now you can understand what engagement is and what possibilities there are to improve your engagement. Instagram is undoubtedly a powerful platform for businesses and individuals to enhance your engagement with a massive audience.
By following these 5 steps, you can maximize your profile popularity and become a famous person on Instagram. Anyone can increase Instagram engagement and get more likes, views, comments, and shares!
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- 5 Incredible Ideas To Improve Your Instagram Engagement - June 15, 2021
Caterina, awesome tips here. You gave me a kick in the cyber pants to begin doing videos on IG consistently again. I get lazy sometimes and mail it in, not publishing a video for weeks. But gentle reminders to publish ’em plus my genuine joy of creating videos points me in the right direction. My videos always get more engagement than my photos on Instagram, too. Something to note as far as what works.
Ryan