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Steps to Take for a Better Instagram Engagement Rate

With over 1 billion people using Instagram, this is one of the world’s top social media platforms. If you are in business, you not only want to have a social presence you also want to make sure you have great engagement. Engagement on IG is used to measure how many people interact with the content that you post.

We have put together this guide to share how to increase your engagement rate on Instagram. Read on to learn the top ways to increase this engagement and reach more people. 

Reels

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably noticed that Reels in IG are being shown on your homepage. This has become one of the easiest ways to get your content in front of your current following and new audience. 

Reaching new people will increase your chances of going viral or receiving more likes. The key to creating reels is to have fun with them and don’t overcomplicate them. 

Understand Your Audience

If you don’t really know who your audience is, it will make it difficult to make content that speaks to them. Your brand voice should speak to your target audience so that they keep up with what you post. 

The more you understand your audience the easier it will be for people to feel like they belong to your community. This will lead to higher engagement such as more likes and comments. 

Post Consistently

It is important to post consistently vs posting once in a blue. This will help keep your followers intrigued and will keep your feed fresh. 

You also want to post at strategic times because if your audience is asleep, you won’t really see much engagement. Another option is to buy just as many views as you want soon after you post. There are also options to study a heat map where you can see when your followers are more likely to be online. 

Be Authentic and Interactive

It is more important to be authentic rather than perfectly polished because this will make your brand relatable and honest. A perfect way to connect with your audience is through stories and interactive features such as countdowns, questions, and polls.

You can encourage people to interact with your posts by asking questions. By simply asking you will increase your engagement. 

Strong Captions

You don’t always have to keep your captions short and sweet. If you have a good story to tell with your post, your caption can be up to 2,200 characters long. Strong captions will showcase the personality of your brand and will add context that your followers can relate to. 

Study other brands such as National Geographic which does an excellent job at writing longer captions. 

Live Video

A perfect way to connect with your audience and increase engagement is to go live to share news or behind-the-scenes footage. Going live will give you a unique opportunity to answer questions live, make viewers feel special by welcoming them by their name, and ask questions for viewers to answer in the comments. 

There is also a Live Shopping feature where you can build an e-commerce audience while you are live on IG.

Answer Comments

Social media is meant to be social, so you want to respond to people’s comments. When someone takes the time to write a comment on your post, it is only polite to respond. On top of being polite, you will make your followers feel heard and seen.

Besides answering comments left on your post, you also want to engage with others in your niche by leaving comments on their posts. Commenting on relevant posts will help you build new relationships with others in the same niche and it’s also a way for their audience to take notice of your brand. 

Trust us when we say that when you share the engagement love, it will come back to you. Nobody wants the feeling of being left on “read” which is similar to not answering a comment.

Create Valuable Content

One of the best ways to get saves and shares is to create content that is of great value to your followers and to a new audience. The most valuable types of engagement in the world of Instagram are shares and saves. 

People love sharing graphs, charts, infographics, memes, etc. Once you post, use the caption area to help provide more context or share specific facts that will be valuable to your audience. 

Branding

You need to master your aesthetics because, on IG, first impressions count. If you don’t pay attention to your branding, users might not engage again after their first interaction with your account. 

Users on this social media platform want aesthetically pleasing content in their feedback. Anytime a user scrolls through your accounts grid you want them to see images with complementary filters and on-brand graphics. The key is for everything on your page or grid to tie together.

Hashtags

Using appropriate hashtags will give you a higher reach which will equate to more engagement levels. The key is to use hashtags that are tapping into niche communities that can resonate with the content that you post. When someone follows one of the hashtags you use in your post, your post will show up directly on their feed even if they are not following your account. 

Ready to Level Up Your Instagram Engagement?

Now that you learned how you can increase your IG engagement, it is time to take action and put our tips above into your business growth plan. Remember that having a large number of followers doesn’t automatically guarantee that you will have a high engagement rate. 

A good way to measure your engagement rate is to divide the number of likes and comments on a post by the number of followers. Then you take that answer and multiply it by 100. If the result is between 1 and 3, this is considered to be good engagement and anything over 3 is considered to be an excellent rate.   

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