How to increase your engagement rate on Instagram?
The engagement rate on Instagram is probably the most important indicator to monitor if you are a brand or an influencer. This rate defines the performance of your page and quickly highlights whether your community is active or not.
The smaller an account is, the higher its engagement rate must be, even more so when the account is monetized.
In this context, how can you keep your engagement rate high or even increase it? We give you food for thought in the rest of this article 😊
Looking for a free engagement calculator on Instagram, you will find a list of tools available on the previous link.
Publish regularly
The key to success on Instagram is content. If you offer enough and regularly, your followers will continue to follow you and the algorithm will even put you ahead. Otherwise, if you don't play the game anymore, your followers will turn to other accounts and the algorithm will penalize your posts by lowering their reach.
How to avoid running out of content ideas?
To achieve this, it is essential to develop a content strategy on Instagram beforehand. This strategy will make it possible to list the main themes that you wish to address in your publications. Once listed, you can, for example, assign a day to each theme and thus vary the content.
How many publications should I do per week?
There is no precise answer on this subject but if you manage to program one post per day it is already a great performance.
Creating beautiful visuals
The design aspect should not be neglected. There are dozens of tools on the internet to help us design publications for Instagram.
Personally, I use Canva, which is a no code software with infinite possibilities.
However, good taste is not for everyone, so don't hesitate to analyze the feedback from your users on your latest creations to see if they liked them.
Also bear in mind that your posts must stand out on a publication feed as they compete head-on with animals, celebrities, travel or fashion. You will have to use subterfuge to make room for them.
Play with bright colors, catchy or inspiring texts, or vary the formats.
Interacting with your audience
Having an engaged and active community does not happen overnight. It's your consistent and regular efforts that make the difference. Here are 4 ways to interact directly with your followers.
Surveys
This is probably the easiest way to interact with your followers. Polls allow you to gauge the temperature on brand-related topics as well as engage your followers on certain decisions: new product, new design, opinion on a feature, etc.
The most suitable format for surveys is the Story. However, it is possible to make a post of it and then ask for the community's opinion in the comments.
Events
I suspect that this lever is not available to all businesses, but creating events is a powerful lever for converting subscribers into super subscribers who will then go out and spread the word to their friends.
- The famous Brompton bicycle brand organises annual races in the mountains or in the city with up to 800 participants.
- The 'Chef Otaku' Youtuber participates in signing sessions at every manga-related fair.
- The candle brand Belaia opens a temporary shop for a few days each year
Competitions
Organizing a competition allows you to strongly engage your community, to gain new followers on Instagram, but also to get a maximum number of publications on a hashtag (we'll talk about this in the next paragraph).
This is an extremely powerful lever that'll help achieve goals at once: 1 stone, many, many birds.
For the reward, the prize(s) to be won must be sufficiently attractive to encourage people to play and appeal to your subscribers.
Example: Expedia asked users to submit a photo of their best trip using the contest hashtag #EyeWanderWin. The winner won an all-expense paid trip to a mystery destination. For 3 weeks, Expedia and its partners promoted the contest on all their networks (blog, social networks, newsletter, etc.) generating nearly 4,000 photos of authentic travellers that could be reused in other marketing materials.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
We take the problem of the lack of content and couple it with the problem of interacting with the community. We mix everything together to obtain the CU.
Taking content from your users on Instagram to showcase them is a practice that has only benefits.
- 70% of users trust this type of content more
- UGC generates 4 times more clicks and 29% more conversions
- Engagement rate increases by an average of 28% per post
- Finally, using UGC is free for the company, which greatly reduces the costs of creative.
Take advantage of contests or events to collect as much photo and video content as possible to share with your audience. People who are attending will be engaged, and those who are absent will want to participate in the next contest.
Create a brand hashtag and share content from customers, partners and staff who have tagged or mentioned you. This way you expand your audience, strengthen your branding, improve your influence and encourage subscribers to post content using this hashtag.
IF you are looking for a tool that automates the collection and sorting of the most engaging User-Generated Content, I highly recommend Kurato.
Manage your account and those of others
If you want your followers to be active on your account, you need to give them attention in return. To improve your visibility, brands should follow their followers on accounts related to the topics they are most interested in, and post relevant likes and comments. You can take advantage of this to create a relationship with other players in the sector and why not establish a fruitful collaboration (see the dedicated paragraph).
Reply to comments
As with the previous point, it is essential to respond to your followers' comments. It may seem difficult to respond to every single one of them, but you should do it as much as possible, even more so if your page is in its start-up phase.
If you have a lot of comments, focus on those that can help bring value to other members of the community.
Example: questions about your products/services or questions about your environmental and social commitments.
There is also another benefit to responding to your followers. Conversations mechanically improve the engagement rate of the post and increase its visibility.
Work on your lists of hashtags
Hashtags are the essence of Instagram. For your business, they are a powerful lever to reach a wider audience. However, they must be chosen carefully to be effective.
If you're at a loss to find the best hashtags on Instagram for your business, choose quality over quantity. Better 8 relevant hashtags than 30 irrelevant but popular ones.
Lukas Joseph
By using targeted hashtags, in line with your core business, you are more likely to reach users interested in your products or services.
Finally, forget hashtags that are too popular as they won't bring you any traffic like #love #instagram #like or #fashion.
Drawing inspiration from the competition
If your engagement rate is low while your competitors' is sky-high, they might want to dive into analyzing their accounts.
For this, a good old-fashioned competition is the best thing to do.
- What types of posts are published,
- At what time(s) are the posts published
- How often
- What are the messages passed on
As you will have understood, this analysis must concern both the content and the form.
Publish different formats
All formats on Instagram perform differently. For example, videos get higher average engagement than photos. Carousels also have a higher engagement rate than traditional photos.
To make matters worse, the algorithm favored stories for a while and then Real.
In the end, the easiest way is probably to publish a bit of everything by diversifying the formats: photos, videos, carousels, but also stories and real.
Publish at the right time
This is a parameter that has a very strong influence on your performance and, in turn, your engagement rate.
To know when to post on Instagram, there are several rules to follow to make sure you reach the maximum number of people.
- The first is to have a business account that gives access to more in-depth analysis of your results.
- Then identify the Statistics tab in the Instagram application menu.
- Find the chart that shows when your users are most active
- Test publications at several times within the given range.
You will be able to quickly narrow down the slots that get the best results.
Lukas Joseph
Write captions that trigger comments
We've already seen in another article how to create the perfect post on Instagram. If I were to sum up the gist of it, your post needs to have a catchy title that is short enough to engage as much as possible on Instagram users' feed. This title should encourage further reading.
If you succeed at this stage, the hardest part is done.
This should be followed by an interesting description followed by a call to action.
Encourage comments by ending your captions with an open-ended question, or a riddle.
Collaborate with other brands or influencers
Partnering with a brand or influencer related to your industry is a good way to improve engagement and recruit new followers.
A collaboration is beneficial to both brands, as they find a relay of users ready to discover something new.
In concrete terms, you can promote the other brand via different photo or video formats. Live videos are very popular in this type of collaboration.
In summary
Finally, an account that has a good engagement rate is most often an account that does not neglect its audience and followers. The brand publishes authentic content and interacts frequently with its followers.
And where do you stand on this diagram?
Good luck 👍