Unfortunately, there is no quick fix, magic trick when it comes to increasing your Instagram engagement. It takes time, effort and dedication to win the hearts of your followers, but in the end, it’s so worth it!
Instagram is still considered one of the top social platforms to market your brand online, build a loyal following, and attract a community that shows support towards your business, so producing quality content is in your brand’s best interest.
Keeping this in mind, brands can’t expect to gain immediate Instagram success as it takes a lot of time and careful planning to create good quality content that will attract a valuable audience.
In order for brands to produce content optimised for engagement, they need to pay attention to their Instagram account’s performance metrics, considering comments, saves, Instagram Stories views, shares, and DMs in an effort to understand what their audience prefers.
The aim of Instagram engagement is to get the public to successfully engage with the content that your brand publishes, so it involves a lot more than just getting likes. In fact, there are a number of factors that make up engagement such as, impressions (the total number of times your brand’s posts and Stories are seen), reach (the number of unique views your brand’s posts and Stories have), website clicks (the number of times someone clicked on the link to your website), profile visits (the number of times a user visited your business Instagram profile) and lastly, followers (the number of people who follow your business Instagram page).
As of 2020, brands need to change the way they measure Instagram engagement. This is due to the recent Instagram update which included likes being hidden on posts. This change was implemented because Instagram picked up on a trend which involved posts being liked simply because they were popular and not necessarily because they were good.
The idea of removing likes is meant to address this problem and has been carefully considered in order to improve viewers experiences by choosing a less biased approach. So instead of likes playing an important role, the focus has shifted rather to comments and saves with these proving more important than ever in the world of Instagram metrics.
That being said, the focus should be on creating more content this year that encourages your audience to save your brand’s post or story to improve your engagement going forward. Content can include anything from an infographic to funny memes or quotes that you know will resonate with your audience, something that they will want to review again at a later time. An example of a helpful call to action to include in your post could be, prompting your audience to save your post for later. This kind of wording can certainly serve as a suggestion or a helpful reminder for the future.
Currently, 500 million Instagram accounts actively use Instagram Stories, so use this form of social media to promote your brand and take advantage of this already huge audience.
Instagram Stories are a great way to encourage conversation among your followers. Create content that asks questions, prompting them to share their opinions and personal experiences with your brand, this will assist in forming a bond and serve as a connection between you and your audience. Quizzes are also a fun way to engage with your audience and work effectively to encourage interaction and engagement.
Play around and have some fun! Some of the best social content plans on Instagram stem from experimentation! Test new forms of content every so often to find out what works best for your brand and your audience and make sure to keep a record of the results so you can refer back to them.
Remember that social content experiments conducted through trial and error are a part of what will allow your brand to stay ahead of the curve while ensuring that you maintain a strong social media strategy going forward.
Find out how we can effectively increase your brand’s reach and Instagram engagement by contacting us today!
