How To Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate
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For the past few weeks, there's been a trend of people seeing their number of likes decrease. Is it related to Instagram hiding likes in some countries as part of their anti-bullying program? Maybe.
One thing for sure is that Instagram has updated their algorithm.
Is that a push to encourage Instagram business accounts to use paid advertising to promote content to their entire audience like on Facebook pages. It could be.
Let's not forget that the way Facebook earns its money is from advertising.
Alvin from Ordinaryreviews.com highlighted 3 valid reasons why you can see a decrease of your engagement rate.
The increase in advertisement
The growing number of Instagram users
Instagram stories
What is the engagement rate you may wonder?
It is the amount of “total engagement” received by an Instagram account over a specific period of time, expressed as a percentage of followers.
The equation is written as Engagement = Engagement / Followers.
Engagement is defined as anytime a user likes or comments on one of your posts
So, if you have noticed these changes lately and it is affecting your online business, how can you make sure that no matter what happens you still get in touch with your audience?
This is what I will break down in this article. A simple guide to keeping your followers close.
1. Focus on content and providing value
The number one thing you should focus on is providing content to your audience related to your niche. People go on Instagram for 3 main reasons:
- Watch entertaining content
- Find inspiration
- Look for educational content
Your content should fall into at least 2 of these categories. By sharing your own experience and making it relatable to the people following you.
Your goal is to get people to resonate with your content and want to hear more from you.
2. Write engaging captions
Writing captions is something many people have difficulty with on Instagram. There are even online tools and apps that will generate a caption for you depending on the photo you upload using AI technology.
But writing captions do not have to be so complicated.
All you have to do is follow the SBA framework well explained by :
- Story: why are you sharing this content
- Bridge: what can the audience benefit from your content
- Action: add a call to action to encourage the user to engage with your content
i.e. Today I'd like to share with you why Instagram hiding likes should not impact you as an online business. In this post I will share with you the 5 workarounds to keep people engage with your content. If you found this post helpful, make sure to like it and share it with people you believe could benefit from it.
3. Ask your followers to activate the notification for every post you publish
Something many Instagramers forget is that Instagram is a communication channel. This is a medium helping you to communicate with an audience interested in your content. And the best way to get loyal fans is by having them return on your profile every time you make a new post.
The good news is that the notification feature allows you to do just that. All you have to do is encourage your new followers to activate the notification for your account if they do not want to miss any of your posts.
4. Use stories
Instagram stories is where you should focus most of your efforts nowadays. The way I like to explain my students about how to use Instagram for business is that the Instagram feed is your portfolio. This is what people will see to know more about you and engage with your content. But Stories is the engagement tool to use.
There are more than 400 millions accounts using Stories every day on Instagram and brands are posting as many stories as posts in their feed.
And today thanks to all the stickers and features available with Instagram stories, there is no reason you would not be able to get your followers engaged with your content.
5. Use a CTA
Finally, Call To Action. This is something many Instagram accounts are lacking. Instagram is not only about posting pretty photos.
As mentioned earlier, it is a communication channel. And as a brand what you want is to achieve a specific goal. Whether it is raising brand awareness, bringing more visitors to your website, encouraging people to buy a product, etc..
If you do not include a call to action, people won't know what to do and you might miss an opportunity to convert a user into a follower or customer.
My advice would be to define firstly your goal with Instagram.
What are you trying to achieve. And once you know it, include call to actions to your content to achieve that goal.
Note: One thing to remember is to not be too pushy. Use the Gary Vee approach Jab, jab, jab right hook to help your followers engage with your content and build trust.
Overall, your goal as a brand or business is to build an engaged community and redirect them off the platform to lead them to do an action.
The most common and safest approach is to build an email list. There are many benefits of having an email list:
You get only people interested in what you do and what you offer
The list of contacts you collect are yours. The day a social media is not as trendy as it used to be and die, or cease to work like it happened a couple times this year with Instagram, you will still have your list of loyal fans to redirect to the next trendy app.
You can contact them whenever you want with a specific message
So if you do not have an email list yet, now is the time to build one.
I hope you found this article helpful and that it gave you some ideas of marketing strategies to implement to keep your followers close and engaged.
As always, make sure to like it if you did enjoy reading it, it actually makes a difference. And if you know anyone who will find it helpful, do not hesitate to share this article with them.
If you would like to learn all the techniques I have used on Instagram to not only grow my following but also managed to transform my followers into paying client and monetise my Instagram account, I invite you to join my 7-day Insta4success bootcamp where I break down step by step this exact process. You can click on the button below to learn more about the bootcamp.
And if you need help with your Instagram marketing strategy, do not hesitate to book a call with me. The first call is for free! Click here to book your call.
