Establishing a meaningful connection with your followers is crucial to high engagement rate and growing your Instagram account in an authentic way. But how are you supposed to strengthen your relationship with your audience if they aren’t seeing your posts? Regardless of what your current engagement rate is, there are people seeing your posts. The goal is to get the people who are already seeing your posts to engage with them regularly. When this happens, Instagram begins to show your posts to a bigger fraction of people allowing your engagement rate to increase. Before we dive into how to increase Instagram engagement rate, here’s a little breakdown on how Instagram engagement works:
Each time you post a photo, Instagram shows it to a fraction of your followers. If that fraction of your followers engages with your post, it signals Instagram to show your post to even more people. However, if that fraction of your followers doesn’t engage with your post, it signals Instagram to show your post to less people.
So, how can you get the people who are seeing your posts to interact more often leading to overall engagement growth? If we want our followers to engage with our content, we must give them an opportunity to do so! See below for a list of actionable strategies that will welcome your followers to interact with you in a meaningful way.
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How to Increase Instagram Engagement
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1. Ask your followers a question in your Instagram story (this question should have to do with your audience’s interests).
2. Create a poll in your Instagram story.
3. Create an activity for your audience to participate in (e.g. a book club or seasonal bucket list).
4. Host a giveaway (be sure the giveaway prize is representative of your audience’s specific interests). Learn all about how to host an authentic & successful instagram giveaway here.
5. Ask a simple question in your post captions (be sure to ask the question before the caption line break so that as many people read the question as possible).
6. Ask your followers for their recommendations (e.g. books, movies, etc.) and encourage them to scroll through the comment section to discover each other’s recommendations.
7. Collaborate with other Instagrammers (e.g. host an IG live and do a DIY project together, create a carousel post in which you each share your current favorite style trend, etc.)
8. Create a trivia quiz in your Instagram story. To increase engagement further, allow your followers who responded to each quiz question correctly to be automatically entered into a giveaway.
9. Use the emoji slider in your Instagram stories as often as you can. This simple strategy gives your audience the opportunity to engage with your content.
10. Create a hashtag around a specific topic and encourage your audience to share posts under that hashtag. Share these posts to your story.
11. Encourage your followers to reply to your Instagram stories. If someone has sent you a direct message, it lets Instagram know that they want to see your content!
What is your biggest challenge when it comes to Instagram engagement? Share in the comments below – I would love to provide you with tips!
