Engagement is when your audience likes and comments on your posts. Your engagement on Instagram is important for several reasons. The first reason is, engagement is a way that Instagram rewards your posts. So, if Instagram sees that you have a high number of people engaging with your posts, that signals to Instagram to push your post out to more people. The second reason why engagement is important is because brands pay close attention to engagement when selecting influencers, bloggers, and content creators to work with. If a brand sees that you have a good amount of engagement on your posts, then that will increase your chances of the brand potentially wanting to work with you. So now that you understand why engagement is so important, let’s get into 5 tips to increase your engagement on Instagram.
1. Be a Resource
As an influencer, blogger, and/or content creator, your job is to be a resource to your audience and provide value. Every time I post, I ask myself, how is this post benefiting my audience? I want to provide my audience with tips, expertise, encouragement, links, etc. within the captions of my posts. Being a resource and providing value within your posts will have your audience coming back to your page and engaging.
2. Guide your Audience
As an influencer, blogger, and/or content creator, it’s important to tell your audience how they can help you within your business. Sometimes your audience might not know that sharing your post or adding a comment is a way they can support you. I saw a big increase in my engagement when I started telling my audience exactly how they can support me as an influencer and blogger.
Pro Tip: Create a video on your IG stories to explain how comments, likes, shares, and saves helps your business as an influencer, blogger, and/or content creator. Or share a creative image that shows your audience how they can engage with your content (likes, comments, saves, shares). This is something you can do often, not just one time.
3. Focus on Smaller Hashtags
Focusing on smaller hashtags increases your likelihood of being seen by new followers. For example, the hashtag #momblogger has almost 8 million posts, but the hashtag #momblogs has a little over 100k posts. So I would definitely add the smaller hashtag to my posts. The smaller hashtags increase your likelihood of being seen within that hashtag. Remember, the goal is to find strategic ways for your posts to be seen so more people will engage with your posts. Be very intentional about the hashtags you choose for every post. Here are a couple examples of hashtags you can use to increase your exposure and engagement.
Location hashtag: Example: #Virginiablogger
Industry hashtag: Example: #travelfamilyblog
Niche Hashtags: #momblogs
Community hashtags: #homeschoolfamily
Brand hashtags: #oldnavystyle
Skill Hashtag: #homeschoolactivities
4. Ask Questions in Captions
I love asking my audience questions within almost all my posts. It might be the educator in me but the flow of my captions usually starts with telling a story, adding in tips/advice, then ending my caption with a question for my audience. I have seen my engagement go up so much by using this method for my captions. As we know, Instagram is like a twitter for images. In other words people come to Instagram to look at aesthetically pleasing photos and videos. Therefore, it’s important to find a way for our audience to engage with our content with words other than “that’s a beautiful photo” or “Your kids are cute.” When you ask questions within your posts, it helps guide your audience with what to say within your comments. Instagram rewards photos and videos when they see that your audience is engaging with more than 4 words.
Pro Tip: Create a method for your captions. As I stated above, my method for most of my captions is a short story, add in a tip/advice, then ask a question at the end of the caption. If you’re someone that struggles with caption writing I suggest you come up with a method and repeat that on most of your photo captions.
5. Engage with Others
Consistently engaging with your audience daily will help YOUR engagement. One of my engagement strategies is to like and comment on my audiences’ posts at least 30 minutes per day. Also, I do heavy engagement at least 30 minutes before I post on my page.
Pro Tip: Engagement Power 30 suggestion
- Pick a time in the day where you have a full uninterrupted 30 minutes to engage with your audience.
- Break the 30 minutes into 10 minute increments
- The first 10 minutes like + comment on everyone on your timeline
- The next 10 minutes like + comment on everyone under a particular hashtag Ex: #blackmomsblog
- The last 10 minutes engage with your audiences’ IG stories
So, what tips will you be implementing to increase your engagement? Remember, stay consistent within your business as an influencer, blogger, and/or content creator. You will see great results when you start being consistent. Also, be sure to check out my blog post on 8 Influencer Marketing Platforms for Beginners.
XO,
Ashley
