28 Tips and Practices to Get More Engagement on Instagram

Social media is now an integral part of our daily lives. Thanks to the benefits of social media, our lives become closer together. However, nowadays, social media is not only a tool for us to share our daily thoughts and activities, but it is also a place for us to follow and update with the latest information about life, socialize, and about the people you care about. Nowadays, social media are even a useful tool for users to trade and make money through those platforms. So, taking care of your personal social networking site is just as important as taking care of yourself to attract the admiration of others.

One of the most popular social networks today that you need to mention is Instagram. This social media, with more than 1 billion users, has provided great means for brands and individuals to build distinctive images with unique identities. It has become a perfect launch pad for its reputation and advertising campaigns to reach farther and more popular.

However, if you want your Instagram page to be famous and appeal to many followers, you need to spend a lot of time and effort on it. Not everyone knows how to make their Instagram page interesting and engaging.

In today’s article, I will introduce 28 Tips and practices to get more engagement on Instagram.

What is engagement on Instagram?

To get started, we need to understand what engagement on Instagram is. Engagement on Instagram is how the public interact with the content you publish on your personal page. Your Instagram engagement rate will measure how well your brand connects to your audience. A higher engagement rate proves that your brand has a stronger foothold in the market.

Instagram will calculate your interaction rate through special algorithms. But Instagram’s algorithms are always changing. As a result, your brand’s Instagram engagement rate may also fluctuate.

Interaction rates are not calculated based on the likes in the photos you post. Am Mosseri - CEO of Instagram said hiding the number of likes seems to be the best thing to keep the platform safe. Since April 2019, Instagram has started to hide the likes that a post has received for Canadian users, and by November 2019, the hiding of likes has been applied to Instagram all around the world.

It means that the level of engagement on Instagram reels now depends not only on the number of likes but also on more factors, such as clicks, shares, and other forms of interaction.

If you use Instagram for business, keep track of various metrics with tools provided like Instagram Insights. Through these tools, you can find out some of the factors that influence engagement rates on Instagram:

• Impressions: Total number of times your posts and stories on your Instagram are seen

• Reach: The number of special views for your posts and stories

• Website clicks: The number of clicks on website links in your Instagram account links users to leave Instagram and visit your website.

• Profile visits: The number of times other users have viewed your profile

• Followers: Growth rate of your followers. This growth rate is calculated by dividing the number of followers you have achieved over a specific period of time by the number of previous followers, multiplying that number by 100 by the percentage.

You can also consider other factors, such as:

• Comments: Number of times users commented below your post, including when they tagged a friend. The total number of comments will calculate the total number of interactions on a post, the number of likes, and the number of saved posts.

• Saved posts: The number of times users have clicked on the flag icon to the right of your posts. This action helps them post your entry into their private collection of posts. They will likely come back to your post to review it later or see it again.

• Views: Total number of times your video or Instagram Stories was viewed.

• Likes: The number of times a user has clicked on the heart icon below your post. Likes are still important, even if they are hidden.

28 Best tips and practices for more engagement on Instagram

If you understand the importance of engagement on Instagram, now is the time to start working on it. Having an Instagram page that has gained so many followers has never been an easy thing to achieve. There are even people who take years to reach 1,000 followers. But don’t worry too much because the following, I will give you tips and practices to have more interaction on Instagram.

1. Keep up with what is trending

Remember the 10-year challenge that made Instagram crazy about last December. Users have competed to post photos showing their change after 10 years. So far, this challenge has earned more than 4 million posts.

And most recently, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, people had to perform strict social distancing. That makes fashion icons unable to wear gorgeous costumes; they had an extremely interesting challenge: to take the pillow in the house to form a splendid outfit.

These challenges have created new trends on Instagram and have received support from millions of people. One piece of advice for your brand is to keep up with the latest trends on social networking sites and apply it to your posts. It shows that you are always concerned about the current situation and the lovely side of your brand.

The number of people who respond and care about that trend will be remarkable numbers for your business.

2. Tag other Instagram users

One of the most critical factors affecting your engagement rate is views. The more views you have, the more likely your engagement rate will be. Tagging other accounts in your posts can help you get it. When you tag other Instagram users, it increases the chance that a person will follow your post. People who are interested in that person will also likely notice your post. From there, you will get more attention and followers for your posts.

Moreover, tagging other users shows that you value the person and want to share your story with them. They can also easily share it with their Stories on their Instagram. And that increases your Instagram engagement! Currently, famous brands such as Adidas, Nike, etc. always tag celebrities, athletes, and influencers representing their brands to promote their products and values.

3. Create genuine, authentic posts

Believe me, you don’t want your post to be extravagant and get many filters when it comes to Instagram. That can cause you to get momentary attention. However, the most natural things are the ones that have the most charisma. Genuine, authentic posts without filters can also appeal to your followers, depending on your brand goals.

You can see that the content of brands and influencers is connecting with their audience by honoring the ordinary. A picture when you’re sleepy and your hair is in disarray (intentionally) is much more attractive.

4. Be creative

You need to have a unique characteristic that represents your brand, but you don’t always need to stick to the sample model of content. Adding a little creativity to your post can have unexpected effects.

Specifically, you can create content that users can save and return to view later (such as recipes, how to make handmade items) will lead to increased interaction rates on Instagram. You can totally expand your post types in different ways like:

• Numbered lists and checklists

• Infographics or interesting data

• Excerpt from an article

• Photos and videos behind the scenes

• Training ideas and instructions

5. Engage with other users on the platform

Increasing engagement does not mean that you post one article after another, but instead you should spend time interacting with content from other accounts. Accounts similar to yours are part of your niche. By interacting with users on the platform, you will also increase your chances of being seen. The more you participate, the more visible your account becomes, and the more engagement you get from visitors to your profile.

However, the quality of interaction on Instagram is as important as quantity. Therefore, you should invest time to select specific accounts to follow and interact with. For example, if you target an Instagram account for a beverage business, join content from drinks accounts, fresh fruit ingredients, or celebrity accounts for great drinks, etc. This way, you can get the attention of the right audience who will be interested in your content.

To explore more similar accounts, you can follow these steps:

1. Check Instagram content recommendations or category suggestions when you select the search icon

2. Find accounts by searching for the keywords that appear in the account profile

3. Search for niche hashtags to discover related content and accounts

4. Refer to your special accounts from your opponent’s Instagram page

6. Write engaging captions

Research shows that Instagram posts with captions are more engaged and encourage users to spend more time viewing their posts. This is considered an advantage with the current algorithm because it prioritizes content that has much interaction.

A good caption will make your photo context more interesting, show your personality, and attract the audience. You can try placing your captions different ways. You may like this as a long note to explain or to tell a story. Or you might also like short captions and contextual captions or the equipment and people who helped you get this picture. It can be serious, and profound and it can also be mildly funny.

You can choose any angle you want to make your Instagram annotations more effective and attractive. Never underestimate the power of your annotations to get more likes and comments.

7. Post more photos of people

Did you know that photos with faces get more likes than photos without faces? This is the reason why you should make sure your next post will have someone or even your own picture! Posting photos including people is a great and easy way to increase your engagement. Even if you post items for sale, photos with models will get more interaction.

You can share a post of the group you play and photos of the local people you travel to. Sharing a face image will help you personalize your brand, connect with your audience, and increase engagement. So don’t hesitate to show off your smiles on Instagram.

Read more: How To Do Instagram Image Search

8. Create engaging Instagram Stories

Reality shows that Stories are extremely useful for engagement rates on Instagram. On average, brands post 2.5 Stories on Instagram each week. More than 30% of the most-viewed stories on Instagram come from businesses.

You can also use stickers or other interactive features that increase the interactive potential of the Story. Features like voting, question and answer boxes, quizzes and countdown markers can all be added to your Story. You can also create your own Instagram AR filter.

Read more:

• How to a Add Link to Instagram Story

9. Engage with other posts before and after you post

When you get a lot of interaction for your post within the first hour of the post, it will make the Instagram algorithm realize that the post may be interesting to many of your followers. Thereby the post will appear higher in many of your tracking feeds.

But how do you create enough interactions on Instagram in such a short time?

Engage with other posts right before and after you post something to your own feed! This will help you increase the possibility of people accessing your profile, liking your most recent post. Thus, you can increase the visibility of your post on the platform. Of course, your comments and likes will be there and should continue to attract users to your account.

Read more: How to Edit an Instagram Post?

10. Use hashtags effectively

The effect of hashtags is to help users find your content because posts with hashtags will appear in the “Tag” section of Instagram Search and Explore. If users can find your post through the hashtag, the engagement rate of that post will also be higher.

The trick is to choose hashtags carefully. Find out which hashtags are hot on Instagram, trending in your industry and find out which hashtags your competitors are using. Creating a unique hashtag just for your brand is also a great way to attract interaction. However, do it when your brand has a strong foothold in the market. If you’re new and your ultimate goal is to get your posts the most attention, then you should choose popular hashtags. That way, users can see your post in the search.

11. Reply straight away

The number of comments is also one of the factors to calculate the engagement rate. The more comments, Instagram will consider your post valuable in terms of content and interesting to others. So your post will be pushed to the top of the feed of your followers. And what is the simplest way for you to have lots of comments? Please respond immediately to the comments below your post.

Turn your answers in the comments into an open and friendly conversation. You can also take the opportunity to drag other people into the conversation by tagging their accounts so they also receive notifications. For example, you post a beautiful picture of yourself on Instagram and someone comments asking who made this photo for you. You can tag the photographer who took it for you to recommend to everyone.

12. Know which is the best time to post

You always want your posts to be seen by many people. So the timing of posting is also crucial. With Instagram Insights, you can draw when your followers are online. Data from this source will show you which day of the week when most of your followers are on Instagram and the time of day your followers are on the platform.

Once you’ve captured the time when there are the most online users, you need to schedule your content to be posted at those times. For example, if your data shows that your followers are usually online on Instagram in the evenings from 8 pm, schedule your content for one day and post at that time.

Read more: Best Times to Post on Instagram

13. Create savable content

As mentioned above, Instagram comments and saves are now more important than ever. The best way for you to increase engagement is to create content that makes readers want to save. The content that can be saved is the content that makes users want and will read it again and again so they will click the save icon on the left of the screen.

If you are thinking of how to create content that can be saved, here are some suggestions for you. You need to find out what is truly valuable to your followers. It can be anything from charts and schedules to recipes or funny memes. Such content will stimulate users to watch it over and over again for entertainment or to create something on their own.

14. Test and analyze content types

Practise makes perfect. Experimentation makes Instagram posts more attractive!

You might feel frustrated when you have to experiment with new forms of content on Instagram, but that’s really good for your content strategy.

Through testing, you will know how your followers like your content types, how they like your posts with short or long captions, and which photos will get a lot of likes. You can start these tests by:

• 1. Try out new content types like: Memes, quotes, ect
• 1. Try posting videos on Instagram Stories and IGTV
• 1. Check out different Instagram Stories filters and see if they improve your engagement

15. Add some more fun to Instagram stories

After the above tips, you can see Stories on Instagram take a lot of time and effort. But that doesn’t mean you can have a bit of fun with it! Brands are increasingly adding some elements of humor to their content by adding unique memes and icons.

You can use AR filters in stories as well as add memes and GIFs to the feed. In fact, the weirder and more interesting your posts are, the greater the participation rate. Of course, you need to honor the overall theme and tone of your brand. If those memes don’t fit your Instagram’s criteria, then it is better to remove them from your strategy. But if you can include some interesting moments in your posting plan, the good results will be reflected in the comments and likes.

Read more: 100+ Best Instagram Bio Ideas To Make Your Profile

16. Encourage Instagram stories shares

There is a handy feature from Instagram that allows your audience to share your content with their followers. That will help you reach more people without having to work too hard.

However, the main prerequisite is to make your content make your audience want to repost! Just like creating savable content, shareable content needs to be relevant to your audience’s likes and needs. Consider infographics or data that might shock or provoke curiosity, explanatory quotes, or extremely hilarious memes.

In addition, you can now track and measure the number of times your posts have been shared on other stories, so you can see what’s working best.

Read more: How To Get More Engagement On Instagram

17. Open up about your brand

As noted above, genuine and authentic content has become a major trend for this year. Thousands of brands and businesses have joined in and shown a more honest, realistic and vulnerable aspect of their brands and businesses and receive great profits. Great level of authenticity helps you go a long way in building stronger connections with your audience. Seeing both the good and bad sides of a brand helps users feel that the brand is friendly and closer.

Brands and businesses have been sharing more about the company’s mission, their struggles, their open positions and more basic information about why they do what they do on Instagram Stories. Their somewhat simple presence brought a more authentic and impressive post to their audience. Even the leaders of brands also create Q&A activities on their lives and work. This is more powerful than any marketing strategy.

18. Share personalized and data-driven content

Sharing personalized and data-driven content is predicted to really help drive engagement.

So where should we start? My advice is to start by researching your own data. For example, if you are in an online sales business, will your data include: the time people like to shop the most, the best selling products of the month, the satisfaction rate of customers goods when buying products, ect. From this data, you can build a story about it to share with your audience. Although creating content based on data takes a bit more time and preparation to perform, it is well worth seeing your engagement rate increase.

19. Use more video content

Along with the development of the popular short-video social networking platform - TikTok, Instagram has also developed a system that allows users to post their videos on Instagram. Videos can be three to sixty seconds long, which means you have to find a way for your brand to gain followers in just a minute.

Recently, Instagram statistics show that the community platform’s most popular video content includes how-to guides, followed by behind-the-scenes videos, interviews and news. In addition, you can also post your uploaded videos to other platforms like Youtube.

Read more:

• What is the max Instagram Video Length?
• How To Upload A Video To Instagram?

20. Geotag your post

Geotagging your post creates a sense of community among Instagram users. Very simple, before posting photos you just need to access your location and then press the Post button. This helps new users find you and engage with you. When you geotag your location, your photo will show up in the Places Scene tab in the Search and Discover section on Instagram, along with all other posts tagged in the same location.

21. Focus on user-generated content

Almost any industry can benefit from user-generated content. User-generated content on Instagram allows followers to link themselves to the brand deeply while reducing marketing costs as the content is being created and approved by your audiences.

A typical example of this method is Starbucks’ #RedCupContest. Every December, Starbucks invites people to take on the challenge of sending creative photos of Starbucks’ famous red Christmas cup. So far, the hashtag #RedCupContest has been used nearly 40,000 times. So clearly, this is a successful campaign.

22. Embrace Instagram AR filters

While still being used by mostly young users, AR filters today are proving their strength, and more brands are using AR filters on their posts. For example, NARS has even produced a range of filters that allow users to try almost all of their lipstick colors.

The Instagram AR filters have recently evolved far beyond the effects added to your face. Now, the most popular AR filters are all about color grading and video’s enhancement. So, like you would add filters to photos, you can now add AR filters to make your videos more beautiful.

As a brand, try creating an AR video effect that allows followers to experience your product or recreate your visual style.

23. Instagram’s SEO

SEO is increasingly playing an important role in marketing campaigns. Also, utilizing Instagram’s SEO to help increase the engagement rate is very important and necessary. The two main parts that affect SEO are your registered name and account name. The first is the registered name, which will clearly reflect the field in which you operate. So choose a short, catchy name that can relate directly to your work. After you have selected the registration name, you need to have yourself an account name. This name will appear under your profile picture, so find yourself a unique and impressive one. A tip for you is to insert your industry or keywords related to your business in the name to get the most out of try Instagram search.

The relationship between social networking and SEO is a two-way relationship. You always want to optimize your profile for searchers, and you also want to know which social signals ( likes, shares, and comments) can affect your SEO rankings at the same time.

24. Partner with micro-influencers

To navigate a genuine and close Instagram page, sometimes the handshakes with famous people with big influence are not as effective as you want. Because of the big influencers, they are famous, and they have their own image. So sometimes their words or stories are not considered reliable. At these times, people with a smaller influence sometimes do something.

Micro-influencers often have a more affordable collaboration price, have a more personal connection with their audience and are considered more authentic. Micro-influencers always have a 2-3% higher interaction rate, compared with an average of 1.7% of those with prominent influencers.

The important thing that businesses need to do is to choose the right people for the image that the brand is aiming for rather than a mere celebrity. Then, plan an influential strategy with a short test period to see how your network of followers affects your brand. Remember to make sure your influencers are provided with the appropriate tools, resources and guidance they need to effectively carry out their roles and join the campaign with you as a partner.

25. Host a contest

According to recent survey data, the contest is a powerful engagement tool on Instagram. Each contest attracts 3.5 times more likes and 64 times more comments than regular posts. Even so, they are often underestimated by brands. This means that there is a relatively untapped resource for marketers to take advantage of.

A particularly popular type of contest on Instagram is the giveaway. Giveaway is a type of game that users engage by following your guide to liking posts and tagging their friends in your posts. Then one or several lucky winners will receive a special gift prepared by you. If the gift giving is done well, this can be a powerful tactic to increase brand engagement and awareness.

Organizing a contest on Instagram requires planning, from partnering with another brand to increasing reach and defining the contest’s rules and objectives. Once it is ready to deploy, plan Once it is ready to deploy, plan a campaign to inform about the contest in every platform you use. After the contest starts, you need to closely monitor the implementation process. Use hashtags, Google Alerts, and social media management platforms to track your contest performance. When it’s over, remember to post the results on all your social networks.

26. Convert followers to email-subscribers

Email is still a practical channel to build close relationships with customers. That is the reason why brands try to convert Instagram followers into email subscribers. To make it work, you need to implement three established steps perfectly:

First, create a clickable offer in your Instagram posts, depending on your target audience. For example, consider offering a prize, free, or discounted content.

Second, once the audience clicks, make sure the landing page has a strong call to action associated with the emailing form.

Third, create a mailing list to effectively organize your new email subscribers so you can start developing more relationships with them.

27. Promote Instagram on other social media platforms

Spread the word about your Instagram channel as much as possible. For example, advertise your Instagram account on Facebook by giving an ad on Facebook with a link to your Instagram page.

You can also tap automated tools to post and cross-promote on Instagram. Cross-promotion tools allow you to instantly post from Instagram to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more, bringing followers from across your social networks.

However, remember not to cross-promote all of your Instagram posts on other social networks because you are at risk of content theft. You also can not evaluate the number of followers of your Instagram from the beginning.

28. Add more and more Call-to-action

Followers may love your Instagram ad, but it would be pointless if they just loved it and left it. We need real action. So make sure that all love really leads somewhere by using a strong Call-to-action on Instagram.

The most direct way to increase engagement and drive followers in a certain direction is to use the official Call-to-action buttons that Instagram provides. They appear below your posts and provide short, powerful Call-to-action, such as ‘Learn more” and “Call now” to get followers’ attention.

Read more: How To Get Verified on Instagram?

Conclusion

Using Instagram like a normal social network to communicate and share information does not require too much effort. But if you want to make your Instagram page truly stand out for your role model, you can’t help but invest your time and effort into it. Hopefully, the 28 tips and practices to have more engagement on Instagram above have helped you prepare your plan somehow. You may agree with this tip and disagree with others, but I hope you can find the most appropriate methods for developing your own Instagram page and brand.