Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms and has been for quite a few years. It’s a great platform for small businesses to advertise their products and grow their audience.
It’s changed a lot since it was first launched and it’s practically unrecognizable in its features since it first started out. But the addition of new features has made it a lot easier for you to utilize them to help increase your engagement.
If you’re looking for ways to increase your engagement on Instagram, then you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find out everything you need to know!
Make Use Of Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories have been a feature on Instagram for quite a while now, but they haven’t been a part of the platform since the beginning.
Since they’ve been implemented, Instagram Stories have become incredibly popular, and people often utilize the story feature more than the actual post feature.
Stories allow you to add temporary content that disappears after 24 hours. It lets you engage with your followers, shows you’re active on your account and you can play around with different ideas on your stories.
You can ask questions, make polls, make short videos, and show your face. If you can get creative with your story content, you can keep your followers engaged and interested.
Using Hashtags And Engaging With Hashtags
Hashtags have always been a big part of Instagram and it’s no real surprise as to why. Hashtags help with your overall reach. So when you use the right hashtags, you can reach accounts and people that would usually never come across your account.
You can add a maximum of 30 hashtags to a single post and it is highly recommended that you use all 30 to get the best results in terms of engagement and reach. Keep your hashtags on topic and on trend with what you’re posting.
Look into relevant hashtags that are popular in the relevant subjects and utilize them in your posts.
It also helps to engage in the hashtags you’re using. Click on the hashtags and engage with any content that also uses those hashtags. Watch reels, like people’s posts, comments, etc.
The more you engage with the hashtags, the more likely your posts are going to get good engagement too.
Include Call To Actions In Your Captions
“Call To Actions” usually come in the form of a direct question in your post’s caption to your followers.
When you address your followers directly with an interesting and thoughtful question, this will encourage them to engage with your content. Keep the questions genuine and relevant.
If you just post a picture of yourself and then ask your followers a random question, it can look like you’re just fishing for likes and comments, which will turn your followers off engaging.
If you’re talking about a certain topic, which is included in the picture and then you ask a question about that topic, that would be a more genuine “Call To Action” question.
As long as you stay genuine and creative with the questions you’re asking, you’re sure to see a better result in your overall engagement.
Host A Giveaway
Depending on what sort of account you are, you should definitely consider hosting a giveaway.
Everyone loves free stuff, that’s the bottom line! If you can offer free things to your followers, they are definitely more likely to engage with your content.
Giveaways are a great way to reel in new followers as well because a general giveaway rule is you must be following the account to be entered.
Your giveaways need to be thoughtful and genuine though, so don’t just do one for the sake of it and make it look professional. You need to build trust with your followers in order for them to want to engage with your content.
If you do host a giveaway, make sure you take it seriously and you’ve covered all your basis.
Successful giveaways are fantastic for engagement though, so if you can utilize this option, you definitely should.
Make Use Of Reels
Reels are one of the newer features Instagram has implemented on the platform. They are very reminiscent of TikTok videos and are very popular with all Instagram users.
Reels let you make short videos in a portrait format where you can talk about things, take part in popular challenges and share things about your business or life.
People love to watch shorter videos as it keeps them engaged more than the longer video formats. If you’re creative in your approach, you can put a lot of information into your reels and still keep it fun and engaging.
Post When Your Audience Is Most Active
This is one of the best ways to have better engagement with your followers and audience, but it will require a bit of trial and error on your part.
Though there are lots of different studies in to when the best time of day is to post, it largely depends on your own personal audience.
If you switch your account to a business account, you can get insights into your audience, where they are from, their gender, age, etc. This information can be extremely helpful when you’re trying to work out when is the best time to post.
You can just experiment with the times as you go. Observe when you get more consistent engagement and cater to that.
Conclusion
There are lots of things you can do to increase your engagement on Instagram. Because it’s such an interactive social media platform, all you really need for success is a burst of creativity, trial and error, and understanding hashtags.
If you’re just starting out, don’t be afraid to experiment with these different tricks and features to see what works best for you and your audience.
No two audiences are the same, so the better you understand your followers, the better your engagement will be. Show your followers that you genuinely care about their engagement!
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
