No matter whether you have been on Instagram or you are just joining the platform for the first time you will most likely have come across the term engagement rate.
The engagement rate refers to an algorithm that decides how much your community engages with your content based on likes, shares, saves, comments, and even views. Based on the engagement rate the platform will decide to promote your content to other users in your niche.
By increasing your engagement rate, you will be more likely to see an increase in your audience on Instagram. To help you increase your engagement rate we have created a list of the top 5 tips that you can use to engage more with your community and followers. All these tips can be used for free, and won’t need you to pay for a service like Twicsy (here is our favorite Twicsy review for reference).
Enjoy!
Tip 1: Engage with your community
Truly the best way of actually increasing your engagement right is by directly engaging with your community. From having live streams where you answer Q&As to replying to people’s comments, all of these little interactions can help you increase the engagement levels in your community. As much as possible you will also want to use interactive tools where those are available.
For example, on Instagram stories, you have the option of adding question boxes or Polls. These are elements that your followers can interact with directly and thus, increase your engagement rates.
Tip 2: Always include a Call to Actions
Your captions on Instagram can be an extremely powerful tool if used properly. One of the best things to encourage engagement is to either ask questions in your captions or simply post thoughtful captions that people will want to interact with more strongly.
If you want to be even more direct you can also use your Instagram captions by including a call to action on them. That call to action could include asking your viewers to comment or share or even like your posts.
You can also use a call to action in your stories by linking them to your posts and encouraging your viewers to go and view your actual post. All of these little actions will help encourage your audience to engage more with your content.
Tip 3: Use all of the Instagram features
A great way of encouraging engagement on Instagram is by using all of the different features to promote your posts.
For example, if you had an Instagram live to answer some important questions you can post about it in your stories. Anyone going through the stories will then be able to view your live stream and potentially engage with it. Similarly, you can edit your Instagram live and turn it into shorter reels that you can then post. ArXe Ventures found recycling main feed content into shorts provided an easy way to boost outreach.
By utilizing your content as much as possible and linking all of your posts to one another you will see an increase in the number of people who engage with your posts through all the different features.
Tip 4: Create a competition or giveaway
An Instagram campaign that includes either a competition or a giveaway is normally a great way of increasing your engagement rate.
If for example, you ask all of your followers to send you a photo using a certain hashtag or to comment and like your posts as part of a giveaway you will notice that a lot more of your followers will engage with your posts as they will be trying to win the prize or item you are giving out.
This can give you a temporary boost in your engagement rate and it can help introduce your account to more people in your niche.
If you are planning on running a campaign on your Instagram account to increase engagement then we definitely recommend adding as one of the stipulations that they should not only follow you but also commune on your posts tagging a couple of their friends that may be interested.
In this way, your post will appear in more people’s feeds and your follower’s friends will be made aware of your account.
Tip 5: Use Popular and Relevant Hashtags
Instagram is built on the use of Hashtags. Since there are so many active users at any given time, hashtags provide creators with the chance to categorize their posts and associate them with a specific niche and community.
By becoming a part of a community, you will suddenly find more people who are willing to interact with your posts and even follow your account.This is why it is important to always ensure that your tags are targeted.
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