As the most popular social media advertising platform, Instagram presents its users with an avenue to grow their brands and expand their clients’ base. There are more than one billion people today with Instagram accounts, out of which more than 500 million peoplelog in and carry out some activity every month.
The key to growing the number of your followers and keeping your account on top of the search feed is ensuring consistent engagement with your existing followers and other users. There are various strategies you can utilize by employing the most popular Instagram tools to enhance your engagement. Let’s highlight five of these strategies.
Post Content of a Regular Basis
Instagram is mostly about posting quality pictures and some videos once in a while. Keeping your account active requires that you post regularly to keep your audience engaged. It is vital that you identify your target audience and when they are most active to know when and what to post. If you do not post, then your existing followers and any potential followers will stop visiting your account. Considering the numerous accounts seeking recognition and popularity, you would lose your popularity and followers very quickly.
Along with photos, make sure you include nice captions that tell the stories behind the pictures you post. Use witty or inspirational captions or simply tell your audience what those posts are all about. Captions bring out the personality, creates context and compels your audience to engage with your posts.
Use Instagram Stories
It would interest you to know that a significant number of Instagram users rarely look at people’s profiles. A high percentage are on Instagram simply for entertainment. They simply skim through other users’ stories as they move. You can boost your engagement by taking advantage of this feature by posting a story at least once in a day. These stories fade after 24 hours. You can either post still images or an engaging video with links leading to your official site. The more often you post, the more your account remains popular and relevant as users click on your stories.
Hashtags are a very popular and important feature on Instagram. They help you draw an audience from different avenues increasing your engagement. You can tag your followers, popular individuals and popular campaigns to keep your engagement rate as high as possible. Check out other users in the same field as you and tag them along with your posts. If you choose the right accounts and campaigns to tag, your content will be viewed by a wider audience some of whom will participate directly in your campaigns and even follow you. try and have a mix of different hashtags to reach out to more users.
Hold Contests and Campaigns
Contests and campaigns are good ways to increase your engagement level. You can organize these contests after specified intervals to keep the interest and expectations of your followers high. Contests involve activities such as putting up a prize to be won for specified activities. If you are selling merchandise, you can promise potential clients discounts for every like they manage to get on your posts and so forth. The more people participate in your contests and campaigns, the more engagement you get in your account increasing your popularity.
Use Live Videos
Instagram allows users to engage with their followers using live videos. While all the other forms of engagement are passive to some extent, live videos present users with an opportunity to directly and actively interact with others. When you initiate a live video, it is usually pinned right on top of your followers’ feed. Your followers are also alerted of your video in their news feed and pop up messages.
Any user who joins you live is able to directly as questions, post suggestions or tag other users in their account to watch your video. Considering that it is a direct and active engagement, you have to be ready to present some worthwhile content and be ready to respond to the many questions, suggestions, and comments. This feature is perhaps the best of all Instagram tools of actively engaging your target audience, potential followers and clients.
