Insert these 7 Hacks to Supercharge Your Instagram Engagement Immediately! Gain followers, save and shares on Instagram: Look out for bonus tips on how to ENGAGE with your target audience. Let’s get right to it…
American Entrepreneur, Author and Speaker and internet personality, Gary Vee suggests:
The way to win on social media is to actually be social.
Go for engagement by being obsessively focused on the interests of your followers rather than focusing your efforts on increasing likes (besides many profiles buy these or join engagement pods that are inauthentic). Those that are actively liking your posts, saving and commenting are your audience! Here is what you can do, to improve your engagement and hit your Instagram reach and engagement goals.
It’s all about the way you use
1. STORIES on Instagram.
Posting consistently builds a narrative of your brand, educates viewers about your mission and in turn, will push you to the front of the queue on your followers’ story tab. Also, it’s here, that you can be as creative as you want without bombarding your followers’ feed, it’s their choice to view your stories and they can make the decision to watch all or none of your posts.
Tip: Really informative and highly relatable stories which show strong insights, results can be saved to your highlights.
Take for example the above screenshot from Nike’s Instagram profile page, the arrow points at the story highlight’s in which we are referring to, yes, these are stories that you choose to remain until you decide to remove them, rather than the 24 hours limit. Make sure these are worthwhile highlights, it should give a good representation of what your page is about or even trying to sell.
Make sure to…
2. Add Value through your posts – not every post needs to be a direct pitch for your product or services, don’t stagnate your growth by becoming, repetitive and boring.
If a clean visual is important, zoom out hashtags and place them behind an image out until they disappear and they won’t affect the presentation.
Another little handy hack your followers love in stories is…
3. The poll sticker! It’s crazy how many people love to answer a question!! Great for engagement and once they’ve answered, use this as a conversation starter!
Bonus: Don’t forget testimonials, these are valuable, feature these on your stories. Why not have some customers sharing a 15 to 60 secs, testimonial – the allocated amount of storytime on how a product has impacted their life. Testimonials give you instant increases and new leads!
Trustpilot testimonial from one of our customers.
4. Video marketing is everything! #IGTV is getting so many more views than YouTube these days so make sure you’re getting content out with Instagram TV. Just bear in mind, many viewers are sneakily watching on silent during work, (you know we’ve all done it!) so the best way to capitalise on this is to give your video’s subtitles. (Save time and get us to do this for you!)
Let’s go live !!
5. InstaLives are an engaging and interesting way to get those online in real-time, hooked through a brand talk. InstaLives can be saved as an InstaTv series and you can collaborate with an influencer during an IG Live to attract their followers as well! You can create series and categorise them.
Instagram TV series with Waggle Dance Co
Instagram’s NEWEST FEATURE is…
6. Reels, a ‘Tik Tok’ style integrated feature allowing you to introduce new followers to your brand. If your reel is highly engaging, THE ALGORITHM will reward you by increasing its reach.
Have a go at Reels.
Hashtags are also an incredible tool and can be used in #Reels or #IGTV descriptions. Think strategically about how you use it though. It has become highly saturated and is starting to feel a little bit pointless as time goes on however it is still useful for visibility. It makes you easier to find, particularly for those who specifically search for your topics. We recommend up to 20 hashtags on a feed post and clean visuals to attract your target audience. There is no evidence to suggest that posting up to 30 #hashtags in the comment section of your post increases engagement, in actual fact it slows down your reach for that hashtag due to the time-lapse between posting the image and then returning to the comment section to paste the hashtags. Omnicore agency reports that 995 Instagram photos are posted every second.
Don’t forget to customise your own 7.#Hashtag is so your audience can use them to find your product/service. We all love user-generated content, don’t we! Customised Hashtags also help potential buyers find out more about your brand. When creating a custom hashtag make sure it is relevant to your product and audience.
If you have the cash to burn Sponsored ads are a secret weapon!
Let’s say, for example, your target audience is young Hispanic mums between the age of 25 – 30 with a full-time job, an interest in fitness, and follow Kim Kardashian… You can arrange for your sponsored ads to show particularly to those that fit this criterion. Be as specific as possible with this, target the people most likely to buy your product. If you could have your dream customer seeing your product – why wouldn’t you do this? So many businesses are not making sales or profit because they are not targeting the right people.
The Instagram algorithm is in favour of paid promotional content.
To recap, the 7 hacks include:
- Stories
- Add Value
- Poll stickers
- Video
- Instalive
- Reels
- Hashtags
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s so easy to double click on a picture and give it a like, it’s kind of the lazy way out, but what takes time and shows that you care is a comment, that engages on your followers’ posts. Make your audience feel valued by engaging with their content.
A little tip for a daily method of operation is to comment on 5 of your audience’s content posts with a minimum of 5 words. Comments are better than likes!
Increase your Insta engagement NOW by implementing these 7 hacks, into your Instagram strategy and test the results.
Feel free to reach out to Ebonyher for all your social media marketing and web development services for optimum results.
Editor Ebony Douglas
7 Hacks to increase Instagram engagement Melanie Aristidou
