7 Ways to Get More Engagement Out of Your Instagram Followers

More engagement. That’s what everyone needs on their Instagram platform, but it seems to be elusive to many brands striving for success. You’re doing everything you know how to get attention for your brand, but it doesn’t seem to be cutting it.

It’s time to revamp your marketing efforts to focus on engagement. If you’re not already, here are seven engagement boosters you should be using.

1. Get More Followers

Getting more followers seems to be the other big challenge on Instagram. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get more engagement without a decent number of followers, so this is a logical place to start.

If you’re in a hurry to boost engagement, go the quick route and buy followers for Instagram. This is a short-term solution that can help you achieve your engagement goals without spending too much time on building a solid following. Buying real Instagram followers will buy you some time as long as you’re actively engaging with your current audience and any new members.

Long-term strategies are far more effective. It’s better to invest the time an energy into creating advertisements, using hashtags, posting high-quality content, and building relationships in order to increase your following and encourage engagement.

2. Use Stickers to Start Conversations

Engagement can mean likes and comments, but in today’s Instagram landscape, it often means Story views, IGTV views, uses of your branded hashtag, and more. Instagram Stories is a great place to start in leveraging engagement.

When you’ve raised your following, even slightly, start a conversation using stickers in Stories. There are a variety of stickers designed to boost engagement including the question, poll, vote, and location sticker. Use these stickers to keep conversations going, find commonalities, and create a fun place for your followers to be.

3. Engage with Similar Accounts

There are thousands of people on Instagram in your niche, but you probably don’t have all of them in your follower count. Many are likely spending time on the account of a competitor, so you should be there too.

Find accounts that are like yours. Ideally, you’ll find an account with many more followers than you so that you’re not in direct competition with them. Hop onto their account to engage with your intended audience.

When your competitor posts a photo, comment something unique and insightful. If the occasion calls for it, you might direct them to your bio link—but be careful with this. Over promoting yourself on a competitor account looks spammy.

4. Set a Posting Schedule

This is an old Instagram engagement strategy, but it works just as well today. Instagrammers who post regularly get more attention and interaction than those who post intermittently. It also helps if you post at the right time when your audience is most active.

Posting regularly does not mean you have to post every day. You could post twice per week or once every other day. The point is to continue posting.

However, don’t post just for the sake of posting something. Only high-value and high-quality content should appear on your Instagram page, so if you have nothing of quality to say, skip a scheduled post while you prepare something better to share. Your followers will understand, and you’ll get greater engagement on your next post.

5. Improve Your Captions

Sometimes, a photo really does speak a thousand words, and no caption is necessary. More often, you should be posting a great caption that embodies your brand and all you’re trying to accomplish.

According to ViralRace, captions are designed to give a photo context, establish your brand’s personality, and encourage audience likes and comments. You could do a short and sweet caption that concisely tells the point or you could write a long-form story.

Recent research indicates that posting a longer caption can be very effective in boosting engagement rates. It pulls followers into the story, making them pause and consider the value of your brand. Just make sure you use spaces or lines to break up the paragraphs and make it easy to read.

6. Get Personal

Instagram is one of the most successful platforms for connecting consumers with brands simply because it lets the brand become more human. Consumers are given a deeper, behind-the-scenes look of a business and the owners behind it. They crave that deeper connection with individuals, not faceless businesses.

Use your Instagram presence to get a little more personal. Whether you’re a large or small company, have your managers and leaders share their thoughts and feelings. Get real. Talk about the hard things (in a conservative manner), tell funny stories, take goofy pictures, and don’t be afraid to be yourself. Followers will love you for it.

7. Post More Faces

One of the best ways to get personal is to publish more posts with faces, preferably yours. A Georgia Tech study indicates that photos with faces in them get 38 percent more likes and comments than those without.

Some of us feel a little uncomfortable in front of the camera, but it’s important to get out of your shell and post a few faces with photos. If you’re worried about it, confess your anxieties with your audience. Many will find this personal confession touching and relatable.

Final summary

Not all of your photos need to contain faces, and not all face-photos need to contain your face. You might include photos of team members, customers, or influential people. As long as you’re making an effort to improve your face-photo game, you’ll make a difference in your overall engagement.

Photos courtesy of gettyimages.com