Following on from my previous post on how to gain 10K followers in 6 months, here is everything you need to know about Instagram Engagement – something that we stressed as the most important thing you need to do to grow your following, in our last article!
Engagement is key because that is what instagram bases its Algorithms on. How much you engage with particular accounts AND how much particular accounts engage with you matters a great deal! If someone engages with you on a regular basis then Instagram will see them as “family” and will move them higher up on your feed and vice versa.
Engagement also works wonders when it comes to securing you a place in the “top posts” on the hashtags that you use giving you extra exposure to future/potential followers. The more engagement you have on that post, the higher the possibility of that post appearing in the Top Posts section!
So, I hear you asking, how do we increase our engagement??? Here is a list of ways below;
1. Comment on other accounts posts, regularly.
And none of this “I like your picture” – that won’t get you noticed! It needs to be a genuine comment if you want to be noticed amongst the spam comments that often get left on posts!
By consistently commenting on someone’s post shows you are obviously interested in their content and gives them more reason to return the favour and start engaging on your posts too.
Liking their posts and following them also helps. Seems a bit in-genuine to comment on a post but not like it or follow the account, so make sure you do!
You also need to do your research, you want to be targeting accounts that are similar to yours, as they are more than likely going to have similar interests to you and will more than likely enjoy engaging on your posts too.
2. Take advantage of the different Insta Story options.
By this I mean regularly engage with your followers by asking them to vote on something or ask you a question or even use the sliding scale. Not only does this help your engagement but it also means your followers are interacting with you, which can help make them feel involved with your journey.
Also replying to peoples stories encourages them to do the same for you too. So vote on that poll, ask them that question, find out about them!
3. When posting content, ask your followers to do something (call to action)
In your caption ask them to tag a friend or answer a question in the comments below. This encourages your followers to engage with you.
It also helps if you have a witty caption to capture those lovely scrollers attention. Or if not witty, at least something relatable. The longer someone spends looking at your post, the more “points” you get towards that almighty algorithm!
4. Join an engagement group.
If you’ve got the time to, join an Instagram Engagement group. These are groups of like-minded instagrammers all wanting to increase engagement and grow their accounts.
Rules tend to different from group to group, but the basics are;
– Follow everyone in the group
– Like, comment and save their post
And in return they will all do the same for you too.
However, there are risks involved in this… there are rumours that instagram does not like these groups and will ban people found to be using them (silly, I know). So if you do join a group, try and join one that is run outside of IG DMs, such as on Whats App or Telegram so that Instagram cannot track your conversations.
But only join these groups if you have the time to catch up with everyone else’s posts before posting yours to the group – it is not fair and people don’t like it when people post to these groups before catching up on the previous posts. And these groups can get quite intense, especially if there are 20+ accounts in the group!
It does take a lot of hard work and determination, but once you get into a routine it does get a lot easier!
We are keen to find out if anyone else has any other suggestions on how to up engagement? We are always willing to learn and try out new things!?
You guys still on IG? Looks like you cancelled your account mid-October, 2018.
We’ve temporarily disabled it as we were having some issues with it. Will be back up and running over the next few days fingers crossed!