Instagram now has more than a billion subscribers. 800 million of these subscribers log in at least once every month and more than 500 million check their accounts on a daily basis. There are more than 95 million posts every day that generate more than 4.2 billion likes a day.
With such statistics, it makes a lot of business sense to enhance your engagement on Instagram to have your account higher on users’ feeds.
Here are a few powerful ways you can use to boost your Instagram engagement.
Create a Relatable Brand Look
Always remember that no matter what you do, Instagram is a visual platform. Users are first attracted to what you post before they can get down to what you are offering.
You have less of a choice when it comes to the images and videos you post. They must be visually appealing for your audience to even think of engaging with you.
Once you know your target audience, you will know what is visually appealing to them, and you will know what to post and the theme to maintain throughout your account.
If your audience can identify with your theme, then they are more likely to interact with you and others enhancing your engagement.
You can head to some renowned websites for Instagram hacks like Quantum Marketer. It will help you a lot to get the idea of engagement and more.
Use Instagram Stickers
Instagram has grown to be more than just a platform of likes and comments. It is now an avenue of exchanging ideas and engaging with each other. You can use stickers to increase engagement with your audience.
You can use question stickers, where you ask your audience questions related to your brand. Questions stir up conversations as people respond with different ideas and suggestions. It is a good way of having your followers learn more about your brand.
Another type of stickers is a poll and vote stickers. You can initiate a poll where your audience vote for different ideas or products.
This is a good way of understanding what your consumers want and what you should improve. With more than 500 million people viewing Instagram stories everyday, it makes a lot of sense to post these stickers on these stories.
Curate Your Instagram Stories
As we have just mentioned, Instagram stories provide a great platform for users’ engagement. With too many users also posting their stories, you need to have your story stand out to get this engagement.
For instance, you can use mention stickers, where you mention other brands or businesses that you are working with. These accounts usually get notifications of that mention and can also mention your brand and re-post the same on their accounts giving you a lot of exposure.
Another way of increasing your stories’ visibility is to geotag the stories. Instead of simply posting that particular story and leaving it at that, you can tag the location of that event. Users looking for that location will view your story and can respond in various ways thus increasing your engagement.
Use Hashtags Creatively
Hashtags expose your posts to other Instagram users that are not your followers. Posts that use at least one hashtag get 12.6% more engagement than those that do not.
Make sure that you use the right hashtags that resonate with your audience. The right hashtags ensure that your content is placed in the most relevant categories.
The number of tags you use is also important. New influencers tend to use a lot of tags, some even using the maximum allowed which is 30.
However, as you get savvier with using these tags, you will soon realize that using just about 8-12 tags is enough as long as you use the right ones. These tags, in addition to being popular, they should also be topical to have your target audience relate with them.
Post at the Right Times
Knowing your audience, you also most likely know when they are likely to be online. This is the best time to put out your content since your followers and fans are more likely to see your posts then.
There is no one optimal time to post considering users’ different interests and different time zones. It is up to you then to study your users’ behavior to know when they are most active and then schedule most of your posts around this time.
If you have a business account, you can take advantage of Instagram’s analytic feature that will show you the best time and on which days to post. If you just get the time right, then you will see a significant increase in engagement with your posts.
Send Direct Messages (DMs)
When we post content, most of what we get are comments praising your images or just some funny responses on your wall. We also get likes expressed simply by a thumbs up or a heart emoji.
It is important that you know there is more to these sites than just commenting on posts and liking them. A good way of getting to engage with your followers in a more direct manner is to send direct messages. Such messages create more personal connections than other forms of interaction.
