Engagement has become the biggest factor in the growth of a business or account. You come up with better content when you monitor your engagement. The engagement rate determines not only how well you’re doing but also indicates how well your audience is reacting to your content. Your followers, likes, shares, saves and general interactions with your audience through stories, comments, and DMs, dictate your engagement.
It is very important to keep track of these things and study your account thoroughly. You cannot focus your attention on only one of these aspects as all of them together define your engagement rate. You won’t increase your engagement by isolating one aspect and making it your point of focus, in fact, contrarily might even have an adverse effect.
All of this being said, there are some tried and true methods of increasing your engagement rates right now:
1. Use Instagram’s full potential:
With an overabundance of users, the app keeps updating its features thereby making it more and more interactive. You can connect with people everywhere, regardless of barriers in location, language, and time because of Instagram’s various features. Be sure to use all of its features as these definitely get your followers’ interactions higher. Your engagement rates increase as a result.
2. Create carousel posts:
Carousel posts are posts that involve more than one photo or video. Ever since Instagram introduced this feature, engagement rates spiked sharply. People tend to engage more with your content when they get more to see in one go instead of constantly having to wait for an update or having their feed filled with posts from one account. Carousel posts are not only highly informative but also very encourage your audience to interact more and save the posts.
3. Use good hashtags and geotags:
Hashtags help boost your posts further. With this in mind, it is important to research the best kind of hashtags to put in your captions. The ideal number of hashtags is 30 so be sure to use those wisely.
The best way to figure out which hashtags to use is to search up the various hashtags related to your content. You can then subsequently choose those hashtags that have followers anywhere between 5000-500,000. Another point to be noted is to keep your hashtags fully related to your posts with the exception of using trending hashtags.
The same can be said about geotags as well. Make sure to be neither too specific nor too broad with your geotags. Geotags also help your audience know where you are based and also help you find more customers within your area.
4. Post interactive stories:
With every new update, Instagram keeps bringing out new ways to interact with your audience. Interactive stories are the best way to not only gain feedback from your audience but also enable you to collect data about the general needs, wants, and expectations of your audience.
Your engagement rates will only go up if you make the effort to engage with your audience. You can engage with your audience with the help of Instagrams stickers. They allow you to post polls, and Q&As, ask for ratings and get emoji reactions. The best part about this feature is no matter what your content is, it allows you to make your posts interactive which will only lead to higher engagement rates.
5. Use Instagram’s many video features:
Video content is a lot more widely consumed and thus is the best way to get across your information and content. Instagram recognized the importance of video content and created a bunch of different video formats to get across different kinds of content. Story videos allow you to share 15-second videos, for relatively easy and quick information spreading.
The live feature allows you to interact in live time with your audience. Furthermore, it can be used for product reveals and exclusive content. IGTV allows you to post longer videos and keeps your audience on your page for longer thereby increasing your engagement rates. You then have your regular video posts that will remain on your feed but can also be just as interactive and informative.
It is imperative to utilize these various forms of video content as all of them provide different kinds of engagement and any and every form of engagement is required to grow your page.
To sum it all up, your audience is of utmost importance. Hence, it is very important to cater to their needs. When they engage with your account and content, your engagement rates go up and as a result, your page and brand grow.
On account of this, you have to put in the effort to draw the engagement of your audience. You will have to keep experimenting with various features to get recognized. One fact to note is that even with all the experimentation, it will still take time to increase your engagement. Do not give up. Keep striving until you get where you want to.