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12 Easy & Effective Ways to Increase Engagement on Instagram

12 Easy & Effective Ways to Increase Engagement on Instagram
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Marketers and entrepreneurs always look for new ways to interact with their target audience. Instagram has serious potential to build a brand because it has around 1.4 million active monthly users.

However, you need more than just an account and an audience to unleash the full potential of this platform. Engagement on Instagram is visible in the form of likes, shares, saves, tags, and other actions.

If someone is doing this, then your content speaks to them. If your posts have high engagement, then your page will be suggested to other Instagram users. Therefore, you need to know the effective ways to increase engagement on Instagram.

How to increase engagement on Instagram

Instagram is highly popular with young people and catches up with any trending social media patterns. That’s why a brand needs to be active and constantly engaging with its target audience. Here is how you can increase engagement on Instagram.

1. Know the target audience

You can only engage with the audience if you know who they are. Once you know the target audience, their habits, what they like, dislike, motivate them, and other things. Then, you will be able to create content that they can relate to. Otherwise, you will fail in performing the basic social media marketing tasks. Here is how you can do it:

  • Define your buyer personas- This is a representation of your ideal customer. What are their pain points and their desires? What do they do for a living? What are their hobbies? What’s their schedule like?
  • Check Instagram audience insights- Check the insights for your Instagram page. Here you will find the complete demographic information about your audience. In addition, you will find information about people interacting with your posts, including their location, age, gender, and age.
  • Analyze the competition- Analyze competitors with a similar brand. What kind of content do they share, who comments on their posts, what is their social media posting frequency, and how do they communicate with followers?
  • Use social listening tools- You can track down any brand mentions on Instagram. See what people are saying and what they expect from you.

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2. Use strong captions with CTAs

Strong captions are necessary for Instagram. They add personality and a personal touch to your brand. You can also use captions to compel your audience to act after writing a catchy caption about the post and adding a relevant hashtag.

You should add a call to action in the caption to inform the audience what they can do. For example, “click the link on our bio to learn more.”

3. Engage with your audience through interactive stickers

You have to use all aspects of Instagram to keep the users engaged. Your stories are one of them, and Instagram has a lot of fun stickers that you can add to your stories. You can use the different stickers in different ways:

  • Keep your audience engaged with the fun multiple-choice question sticker. You can ask questions related to the genre in which you have the page. If your page is related to music, you can ask music-related questions. This is an easy way to provide your customers with a fun challenge.
  • You do not need to be silent anymore. Add music suiting the mood of your story. If you have a cheerful story, you can add motivating music to the story.
  • Instagram provides you with an exciting opportunity to get to know the opinions of your followers. As a business, you can use this to know your audience more. You can ask for opinions on stuff like which product design they prefer. Option A or Option B. This will make your customers feel more included.
  • A good business is accountable to its customers. You can ask your followers to ask you a question. Once many of your followers pose their questions, you can answer them one by one.

4. Create interesting Instagram reels & stories

Instagram reels are an exciting way for marketers to communicate their message. You should brainstorm reel ideas for your Instagram page and finalize ideas that can drive higher engagement.

People have a shorter attention span these days, so instead of watching an entire video, they are more attracted to 30-second long videos.

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5. Use carousel posts to encourage more engagement

Regular carousel posts are still the most popular option on Instagram, so if you want to increase engagement on Instagram, you should focus on carousel posts. Your brand can publish much content with around ten carousel slides allowed in one post.

Do not post anything and expect to grow. Get creative and provide informative content to potential customers. You can also include videos in the carousel to explain more deeply.

Every carousel slide has a chance to speak to the end user and increase engagement. The old format of Instagram still rules the space because one post has ten opportunities to impact the end user.

6. Post memes

Memes have always ruled social media. They are authentic and can get your customers to connect with you. You should post that your audience can relate to and then see the magic.

Don’t just post ads on your business account because that will never work. You have to get balance helpful content, memes, and promotions. The chances of a meme being shared in someone’s story are always higher.

7. Post helpful content

While posting memes is great, don’t forget that you are providing products or services at the end of the day. Your main aim has always been to provide value to the customer.

To ensure your aim is completed, you should regularly post valuable content. You can use mind-blowing graphics, infographics, graphs, and other tools to create helpful content.

Related Post: How to Get More Instagram Followers for Free to Your Business?

8. Partner with industry-leading influencers

Instagram is for social media networking, so it is wasted if you do not network with other influencers in your industry. If you communicate with similar accounts, you can reach potential followers.

If the other account has more followers than your account, then it is even more beneficial. To promote your brand, you can collaborate with influencers.

You have to ensure that the influencer is right for you. Does your target audience match with their followers? Do they create relevant content related to your product? If yes, then they are a good choice.

9. Go live!

The Instagram followers want to know the person behind the brand and social media account. That’s why it is beneficial to go live once in a while. You can go live to make an important announcement, have a Q&A session, or just get to know your followers.

With the help of an Instagram live, your followers get to interact with you in a more intimate way. As human beings, people prefer this way of online connection more.

Related Post: Instagram for eCommerce: How to Generate Sales

10. Use polls and questions to get the needed feedback

Do you want to know what your followers think about your brand and recent products? Create polls and questions regarding them on your Instagram stories.

This is an effective way to create engagement around a product before it is even released. With the help of polls, you can get to know the preference of customers. Instagram has a lot of tools that you can use, how successfully you use them depends on your creativity.

11. Unleash the power of hashtags

Hashtags help you get your posts into your audience’s feed. They help you get discovered, so use up to 20 relevant hashtags. Hashtags help you categorize a post and describe what it is all about.

When someone if looking for a specific topic, they will find your post because you used the hashtag related to the topic. This is one of the main ways to grow your account on Instagram. Only use relevant hashtags to your post because that will increase its engagement.

12. Post when most of your followers are active

To find out the best time for posting content, you should analyze user insights on Instagram. Where is the majority of your audience located? What time are they most active? Which day are they more active on Instagram?

You can find the answers to these questions by analyzing user insights on Instagram. If you want an easy way, you can get answers online. Once you know the hour during which your audience is most active, then all you have to do is consistently post content.

Posting content while your target audience is sleeping wastes your energy and content. When you post high-quality content at the right time, you will see increased engagement soon.

While these tips do the job for you, don’t forget the basics! Keep your Instagram bio optimized to align it with your brand. Your bio should define what you do in the least amount of possible words.

You should create a content calendar so that you never run out of good content to post. Always monitor analytics to see what is working and what is not. If you think you can apply another technique to increase engagement, go ahead!