Tips to increase engagement from our socials team
Instagram engagement is a measure of how many people interact with the content you post on Instagram. But it’s much more than just a metric. It’s a collection of metrics that tells you how well your content connects with your audience, and how passionate your online community is about your brand.
Instagram engagement is important because it indicates people are stopping to interact with your content, rather than scrolling past it. Furthermore, it indicates that something in what you posted connected with them. Those feelings are the heart of brand loyalty.
Now that we have established the importance of engagement, let’s take a look into how to increase engagement.
Lean into Video
If you’ve been paying any attention to Instagram at all over the past year, you know that videos are still the platform’s current favourite child. Reels are the easiest way to get your content in front of an audience that extends well beyond your current follower list.
All those new views give your content a much greater chance of racking up likes, or even going viral. And if your reels are compelling enough, they can draw new visitors to your Instagram profile, resulting in potential new followers and even more opportunities for engagement.
Run Engagement Prompts
To up engagement you might quite literally need to engage your audience. As much as scheduling your posts saves you time - it is important to dedicate time for other aspects of social media management like engagement and community management.
Identify the concerns or pain points of your audience by conducting polls and asking open-ended questions. By actively communicating with them, you'll gain valuable insights and foster a stronger connection. You'll be amazed by how much your engagement levels increase simply by interacting more with your audience.
Don’t preach – tell stories instead
Instagram is full of brand messaging that forgets that the platform is supposed to be a ‘visual inspiration platform’.
You should captivate audiences through images, video, and text, not simply preach marketing messages at them.
To increase engagement rates, become a storyteller instead, offering stories via your captions, videos, Instagram stories, and overall profile.
People today crave connection, and storytelling is a way to create this experience. When people feel an emotional connection to your content, they are much more likely to buy into it and share it with their peers.
These tips will give you a much needed engagement boost on Instagram. But a one-off spike in engagement numbers isn’t enough. Make sure you’re following these tips consistently to maintain high levels of engagement.