If you’re an online brand or business then you’re well aware of how important it is to garner engagement on your posts. Not only does engagement help build your overall brand identity, but it also provides vital feedback to your and your team as well as keeps you in front of the Instagram algorithm (we’ll get further into this later on). Huge followings aren’t as important as they once were, engagement is key and we’re here to provide you easy to follow hacks to help boost engagement on your Instagram profile.
Ask Questions within Your Captions
This may seem like a no brainer, but it’s crazy to see how many brands neglect the everyday opportunity of connecting with their followers and potential customers. Use your photo captions as a way to start the conversation, you will be surprised at how many people are willing to give you feedback for free.
Instagram is centered around communication and it’s important to remember this when crafting posts on both your feed and Instagram Stories. The platform offers a plethora of tools that will allow you to better connect with your followings. The Instagram Stories POLLS feature will allow you to ask direct YES/NO questions on your Stories and should be utilized as often as possible! People love to interact, so make your posts engaging!
When it comes to engagement it’s also important to remember that you yourself need to be engaging with the people you follow. Take a couple minutes each day to go through your feed and like/comment on at least 10-15 different images. In order to garner engagement, you have to BE engagement. And this lead perfectly into our next IG boosting tip.
Like, Like, Like, Follow
There have been several adaptations to this rule since the birth of Instagram, but if you’re looking to lead NEW eyeballs to your page and then business, listen up! First things first, you need to know WHO your target audience is, what do they look like, what kinds of brands do they wear, where do they hang out online, essentially you’re building a human being in your brain that would be the perfect candidate for your business (for a more indepth look at this process, check out this piece on brand building).
Once you figure out who your target demo is, it’s a lot easier to position your company in front of them. For example, if you want to specifically target popular Mommy Bloggers, then a good place to start would be finding out what types of hashtags Mommy Bloggers are using in their uploads. From there you can peruse the specific hashtags and directly engage with those using them.
Once you find a potential batch of new followers/consumers, it’s time to “like, like, like, follow”. This is pretty self-explanatory, find someone new, like their three most recent images, and then give them a follow. This increases the chances of someone seeing your engagement and wanting to check out your page in return. You can go back later and unfollow them if you’d like, but following and engaging with their content will boost your chances of having them do the same on yours.
#HashtagsAreYourBestfriend
Hashtags, they aren’t as scary as they may seem! In fact, utilizing the power of the hashtag can do so much good for your brand/business, especially on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Instagram has taken tremendous strides to help better organize the crazy amount of content that is uploaded to the platform on a daily basis. As we mentioned above, hashtags are a great way to find people within a targeted niche, but they are also super helpful when trying to attract new eyeballs to your content without you having to do much! Instagram also allows you to use hashtags in your stories and Instagram BIO, they both serve completely different purposes though, and here’s why.
– Hashtags in your story – using hashtags here or geo locations is super important! Using a specific ge-tag or hashtag in your story will group your story with the other stories recorded + tagged in that specific area. For example, let’s say you’re releasing limited edition “Disney” themed merchandise, you could easily tag #DISNEYLAND and then geo-tag your video at Disneyland. If anyone is looking through videos tagged at Disneyland, or perhaps they’re going through the Disney hashtag, then they’ll see your content!
If someone is already searching for Disney material, then chances are they’ll love whatever it is you’re trying to push. It’s all about getting in front of the right eyeballs when it comes to content marketing.
– Hashtags in your bio – these are super helpful if you’re a brand trying to garner more UGC (user generated content) or trying to better establish a brand presence. Having a custom brand hashtag that your customers can tag when uploading pictures is a great way to get your brand name out there!
Once you establish a hashtag, make sure you include it within your bio. This will allow anyone viewing your profile to click on the hashtag in your bio and be redirected to all the content that has been uploaded with that hashtag. Think of hashtags as a way to organize content and have some fun with them! Doing some research on what hashtags are currently trending within your niche is also heavily recommended.
Consistency is Key
We’re sure you’ve heard this a few times when it comes to maintaining engagement on your Instagram, but it’s something we cannot stress enough. Think of someone visiting your Instagram profile for the first time as your first impression with this person. You’re going to want to come off as put together, professional, fun, whatever adjectives you’d like to use, point is it needs to look inviting.
Having a consistent theme or look to your photos will help achieve this. We highly recommend using the help of a photo editing app to maintain a level of consistency when it comes to editing your images, videos, etc. One of our favorite apps is Instasize, it’s free to download for both IOS and Android and it allows you to edit photos, videos, add text to your content, and much more.