Instagram isn’t just a numbers game; this is where a lot of brands and businesses get it wrong. It is really easy to give in buy followers to make your feed look popular, but this will only serve to put customers off your business. The real key to Instagram is engagement, the more you engage, the more people will want to engage with you; this results in organic growth and real followers. Here are the best ways to boost Instagram engagement for your brand, which in turn will boost everything else!
Use a Bot To Engage Every Day
Instagram isn’t one of those things that you can pick up and put down when you feel like it. You need to make sure that you are consistent with your engagement; this means that you engage with users, niches, customers, similar brands, and businesses every day. You have next to no time on Instagram to make a good impression and even less so to be remembered, so make sure you are always commenting on and liking other people’s posts and stories to keep yourself relevant.
We understand that this takes time; the best way to free up your time is to automate this course of action. A bot can like, comment, and follow other users that match your configuration. Put in the time to work out what people you want it to engage with and make sure your comments seem genuine and interesting, don’t default to emojis!
Use the Ask A Question Sticker
In stories, you can put up ask a question sticker; this is an excellent way to get your audience to talk to you and engage with your feed. You can literally just write in there ‘ask me anything,’ and you are likely to garner a response. Having a dialogue with your followers increases the chance of them liking you, so as a result, they are more likely to engage with you more frequently and also buy what you are selling.
Longer Captions
When you post the image, the image is just 50% of the process; you want the caption on lock too. Make the most of the space you have, use the caption as the basis for the image, tell a story about it, how did it come about? Get your audience interested in why you have decided to post this particular picture, and what it means, you can also ask them questions about it at the end. This will elicit a response in the comments and open a dialogue that you can then engage with!
Use A Mixture Of Hashtags
Hashtags need to be relevant to the content that you are posting. Irrelevant hashtags can actually get you shadowbanned. But make sure you use a mixture between long-tailed and short-tailed. Long-tailed are very specific and detailed with the idea that you will hit upon a community or a niche, they are also a trigger point for a conversation if someone else is using a similar hashtag, thus increasing engagement. Short-tailed hashtags are excellent for all-round exposure and likes but won’t give you the same amount of dialogue engagement as the specific long-tailed route.
Reply
Even if you have outsourced large amounts of your commenting others content out to a bot, if someone replies, reply to it yourself as quickly as you can. This shows that you are interested in what this person has to say, and you are eager to start a dialogue with them.
People like it when people validate and reply, so make sure it is you and not the bot on this occasion. The same time frame should also be applied to when people comment on your content, make sure you reply as soon as you can and don’t be blunt or shoot people down, open up conversation and then like their posts, this will increase overall engagement on your feed as it shows you are a human being!
Final thoughts
Increasing engagement is less about numbers as it is about making people feel valued and validated. Social media is exactly that, social, so you want to make it as social as you can for your users. You don’t want to be a passive brand that doesn’t engage with other people or ignores questions and comments on their content. You want to be responding as quickly as you can in the tone your audience has come to expect from you.
Engage with users every day and if you can’t commit to that schedule, get an Instagram bot to do it for you, as you will soon be forgotten if you don’t engage with similar accounts. Always remember that people buy from people that they like and if you are trying to grow your brand to increase sales, get a dialogue going with your audience, ask them to ask you questions, and show that you are a person and not just an Instagram feed.
