Have you seen Instagram accounts with several hundred followers? And then you look at their post engagement and you see just 10-15 likes. And NO comments? I’m sure you must have seen at least one! It’s alarming to have such a low Instagram engagement!
There’s always some suspicion involved around such accounts, and you don’t want your account to be amongst them!
Most Instagram users start quickly and stop quicker on this visual platform. Why? Because they don’t know the right tricks to hook engaged followers to their accounts!
In this guide, we will discuss the best ways to get genuine engagement on your Instagram account in 2022! Let’s begin by understanding what it means. Then discuss ways to measure and improve engagement. This means greater reach and remarkable growth!
What is Instagram engagement?
Engagement on Instagram refers to every interaction happening on your account. It includes:
- likes, comments and shares
- saves, mentions
- DMs and story replies
- link clicks, reel plays and even swipes on a carousel post!
- The time spent by the viewers is also counted as an indirect matrix of Engagement.
So, in order to maximize engagement, you have to quite literally “engage” with users on the platforms and more importantly, have them engage with your content.
Why is Instagram engagement important?
It feels so frustrating when you create content, but no one likes it or comments on it! You spent hours creating that single piece and you want it to get seen! So primarily, it is essential for your motivation.
For many small businesses, engagement is a crucial source for lead generation, which directly affects how they create opportunities for sales and business.
Besides that, you also have to consider the omnipresent algorithm. A lot depends on it and your optimization for it. The higher your engagement, the more the algorithm understands your content as valuable and relevant. It then uplifts the posts to show on the top of your follower’s feed and recommends it to non-followers as well.
When you open the explore page, the posts ranking there are usually chosen by the algorithm understands to be most valuable and relevant. It is fed by your behavior and your engagement. So you see more of the content that you “enjoy”.
The machine learning of these Social Media Platforms is quite intelligent and advanced. It knows whom to show what! This means you can tell a lot about your friends by quickly browsing their explore feed. (I do not recommend doing this though).
Since most of it depends on engagement. So let’s dive in and check out powerful ways to get engagement on your Instagram handles.
How do you improve engagement?
1. Create great content
If you create scroll-stopping content that resonates with the problems of your ideal audiences, they will spend time on it.
To make such content, you can use websites like answerthepublic, Quora, or even Reddit. You can see the kind of questions your ideal audiences are asking on these sites. You can then use them to create content pieces that solve their problems.
Design matters too. Create eye-catching graphics to stop them at your post!
Talking about the type of content, in 2022, you should focus on creating saveable or shareable formats such as Infographics, Carousel posts, Reels, Quotes, or memes.
Your posts get shared because they trigger sentiments. This means your content has to resonate with those who see it. You need to understand your audience segments and craft great customer personas to help with this. Including them in your content strategy can boost your game on Instagram.
2) Show up, then show YOUR personality!
A strong personal brand is a way for the future, even for product-based businesses.
Adding a human touch and showing your face on stories, posts, and videos is your best bet to build an engaged following.
You can then combine it with the methods we discuss as we go further in this article.
For product-based businesses, team members taking turns and showing up can be a wonderfully compelling strategy to engage the current following and grow it further.
3) Use Effective CTAs in every post:
Writing engaging captions and giving a call to action, in the end, is a sure-shot way to get engagement on your posts.
Call to action (CTA) could be simple open-ended questions, that prompt response at the end such as:
– How does this resonate with you?
– What will you do differently today to make a change in your life?
– What are your plans for 2022?
It could also be a simple request to share or save your post (as in the image below) or.:
– Share this post with your friends, so they can also learn from it.
– Save this post so you can come back to it later easily when required.
Remember to ask genuine and relevant questions that maintain the flow of your captions. And don’t seem like you are just seeking a couple of comments or some vanity reactions in the process.
4) Use engagement stickers on Stories:
Engagement stickers on stories are the best way to engage your new and existing followers. They are a great way to initiate conversations with your ideal audience and followers, as in the example above.
Polls, Countdown, and Question Stickers are some of the most engaging ones.
The best part is that Instagram has made it so easy-to-use and it takes minimal creation time.
5) Timing
Timing matters too—post at a time when your audience is most active. Use your Analytics and Insights data to your advantage. Experiment with different times and frequencies to find out what works best for you (as can be seen in the images below).
A lot of marketing is iterative and requires the old trial-and-error. So embrace the process! you don’t need the “right” time. You just need the best possible one!
6) Track your insights
At the end of every month, analyze your insights and look for the posts with the most saves, shares, or comments.
The objective is to identify what type of content your audience likes and then make a strategy to create content on similar lines. Be clear about the kind of objectives you set. The SMARTER goal-setting framework can help be clear about this.
7) Engage to get engagement
This is the most effective way to get engagement when you’re just starting out. Initially, you need to go knocking on doors and say, “Hey. I’m available!” and get in front of your ideal crowd. You have to take an interest in what’s going on and be active in doing it.
No, I’m not asking you to spam people!!!
Hang on! I’ll tell you how!
- Engage on the top accounts in your niche. Mark notifications from them and try to be the first one to comment. Leave a valuable one that stands out, and this should get you new followers and even engagement.
- Engage on your feed and stories 10 minutes before and after posting. Leave an insightful comment, send reactions to stories that appear at the top.
- Build Relationships – Social Media is about being “social.” So spend time building some quality relationships. Don’t wait and initiate conversations with your ideal clients and competitors. If you speak to someone in the DMs, the machine learning then makes sure to serve your content to them on priority! So you got to make those DMs your Jam!
- Giving a shout-out to your competitors, collaborating with them on reels and posts, or doing IG Lives together are some of the quick hacks to collaborate, grow and get engagement on Instagram!
What not to do ?
These actions can land you in hot trouble with Instagram as they crack down on suspicious accounts! So be careful with:
a) Spammy Behaviour
b) Follow-Unfollow
c) Buying followers/engagement
d) Getting into engagement groups
How to calculate Instagram engagement?
Putting it simply,
Engagement = (Likes+Comments+Saves) ÷ total impressions x 100
Another measure of engagement rate is to divide (Likes+Comments) by the number of followers. There are several variations of the calculation but it’s best you pick one and stick to it to measure your efforts and track progress!
To make things easier, there are many online resources where you can track your engagement rate for free. Like Ninjalytics and Phlanx
For bigger accounts of more than 10k+, a paid subscription from websites like Sprout Social, Agorapulse, or Hootsuite can be a good idea. They help you to stay on top of conversations and track all insights, so you can keep improving them!
What is a good engagement rate?
There are several estimates and models to gauge the “success” of your engagement, But what I use is:
- <1.0% is HORRIBLE
- 1.0-2.0% is POOR
- 2.0-3.5% is AVERAGE
- 3.5%-5% is GOOD
- 5%-6% is GREAT
- Above 6% is AMAZING
Conclusion
With these tactics and actions, you can look beyond the follower count and focus on getting your engagement up! Since it will genuinely contribute to your growth and conversions via Instagram. And if you do it as we discussed above, you can see some great engagement rolling in, in no time!
If you want a customized plan to help boost your Instagram engagement, GET IN TOUCH!
Insightful post.
Learnt quite a few things from it.
Itís difficult to find experienced people for this topic, however, you sound like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks