Top 10 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Engagement
If you have been trying to grow an Instagram account lately, then you are probably more than aware of the fact that increasing your engagement is way more important than gaining more followers. In other words, having people interact with your content is more important than them following you.
The best way to increase your engagement on Instagram is to post valuable and saveable content. On top of that, you want to have a good hashtag strategy, be consistent, interact with other people in your industry, analyze your insights, post reels, and much more!
If you are ready to kick-start your Instagram growth and get more eyes on your business, then keep reading to learn the best ways to get more engagement on Instagram.
Use the Right Hashtag Strategy
Hashtags are often overlooked however, getting your hashtag strategy right can increase your reach by almost double what it would have gotten if the hashtags didn’t work. This will help get more eyes on your post and further can help you gain followers and make sales.
Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your accounts hashtag strategy:
Use all 30 hashtags available for use
Use hashtags that are relevant to your post and your account
Use a variety of niche, industry-based, and content-specific hashtags
Use the right-sized hashtags, the smaller your account, the smaller the hashtags
Use a variety of smaller and medium-sized hashtags
Create 2-5 different hashtag groups to test out and switch between
Switch up your hashtags every few months
If you want a more in-depth look at how to create a successful hashtag, check out this blog post on How to Create a Hashtag Strategy That Works.
Post On Your Account Consistently
If you want to see real growth on your page and build genuine connections with your followers, you must show up consistently on Instagram. Whether it is through posts or stories, trying to show up every day is going to be the key to seeing consistent growth.
I recommend posting anywhere from 2-7 days a week, either as a post, reel, or IGTV. However, you should try and post in your stories daily, so you stay at the forefront of your followers' minds.
Showing up consistently also proves to your audience your passion and commitment to what you do, this can help build trust and further assist you in making sales through your account.
Answer All Comments & Direct Messages
Making your followers feel like what they have to say is important is key. Just as in real life you wouldn’t completely ignore someone who complimented you, or asked a question, you also shouldn’t on social media.
The goal is to be social! Remember to answer all comments and direct messages as soon as you can, and be as kind as possible, you never know who will be a potential customer.
One exception, however, is hate comments or messages. In this case, you have no obligation to answer these comments for obvious reasons and unless it is a genuine customer complaint or misunderstanding it may be best to just let these slide.
Follow Others in Your Industry
While you don’t have to follow anyone to be successful on social media, and Jenay Rose is proof of that, it can be helpful to follow others and connect with people in your community.
With that being said though, this should not be your strategy for growth. I suggest only following around 500-600 other accounts so you can engage with these accounts regularly. Following accounts in the hope that they will follow you back is not a good strategy. The goal of following others is to help you expand your knowledge and get to know others in your industry.
Don’t Post & Ghost
While it is tempting to have posts set to be uploaded automatically, it could be bad for your engagement.
When you post you want to remain on your account for at least 10 minutes to engage with those commenting on your post. You also want to take some time to engage with accounts on your feed, the explore page, and hashtags. This will notify people that you liked or commented on their post, and it may influence them to check out your account and your new post.
Bonus Tip: Engage with accounts before you post to help boost your chances of appearing at the top of your follower's feed.
Analyze Your Insights
Analyzing your insights is something that everyone dreads, however, if done right, it can lead to massive growth on your account. By doing this, you will be analyzing direct feedback from your audience about what is working and what is not.
Here are some key analytics that you want to keep track of on either a weekly or monthly basis:
Follower growth
Profile visits
Website clicks/Email clicks
Account reach
Engagement rate
You also want to look at which posts have the best engagement and reach so you know how to adjust your content strategy moving forward.
Delete Bots & Ghost Followers
While I do not live by this advice, many people do and it has helped their engagement immensely. Although, you don’t want to delete followers that may one day be potential customers, so be careful with this advice.
If it is clear to you an account is inactive or a bot then removing it can help increase your engagement rate as Instagram will see that there is a higher percentage of your followers engaging with your content.
Post Reels With or Without Your Face
If 100 people haven’t already told you, you need to start posting reels! Yes, it’s true, there may be people who are successful on social media who don’t have to post reels. However, if you are trying to grow your account, reels are an incredible opportunity to reach double, triple, or even quadruple your reach that you would have with a normal post.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to show your face if you don't want to. Instead you can show your product, how you create a product, your office space and so much more!
Engage With Other Accounts
One of the most essential ways to go about increasing your engagement is to increase how much you engage with other accounts!
Spend 10-20 minutes every day (when possible), to comment, like, and interact with other accounts. Remember, genuine comments work better as it shows people you took the time to read their caption and understand their post, increasing the chance of them checking out your account.
As for who you should interact with, you want to engage with accounts you follow, potential customers, others in your industry, posts in your explore page as well as posts you find in hashtags.
Bonus Tip: Do not join engagement pods, buy followers or join follower loops—these are all guaranteed ways to decrease your engagement!
Post Valuable & Saveable Content
Most importantly, you have to post content that is valuable to your audience and makes them want to save it for later. Without value there is no hashtag strategy or consistent strategy that can help you.
To do this, you want to post content that is relevant to your target audience, helps them or benefits them in some way, and is unique compared to what others in your industry are posting.
To learn more about this, you can purchase my detailed 10 Steps to Be Successful on Social Media downloadable resource. I talk about everything you need to do to grow your account and go more in-depth on how to create valuable content.
Increasing your engagement is more important than increasing your followers nowadays and by following all of my tips above you are sure to increase your engagement and with that, grow your business.