I remember when I had about 7k followers, my engagement was stagnant and it frustrated me to the point where I decided to stop posting for a while as I tried to figure out how I was going to encourage engagement with my audience. The tips I am sharing in this post are the ones I have implemented over the past few months and I have yielded results.
When it comes to increasing Instagram engagement there is no magic formula to it. You have to put in the work and get the ball rolling. Lucky for you, I take courses, read up and implement strategies so that you don’t have to. I shared some captions that can get you engagement in this post and in this post, I am expanding a little more.
Shareable Content
Engagement isn’t only likes and comments. Since Instagram now has a “save” and “share” option, these two are a part of your overall engagement and you need to pay attention to them just as much as you do likes and comments. When people share your post to their story, they are exposing you to a larger audience that will potentially follow you and share more of your work.
If you have a presence on more than one social network, if a post of yours resonates with your audience, chances are it will resonate with your audience on another platform. The post to your left is a tweet that went “viral” on twitter and upon sharing it with my Instagram audience I got 176 shares and 91 people saved it and a few hundred followers came out of it too.
Conversations
Your audience isn’t only there to like your photos. You should be building a relationship with your audience because the more people know you and converse with you, the more loyal they are to you, your work and your recommendations. Through the use of stories and the 2k plus characters on each post you put up take the opportunity to start up a conversation. In this specific post, I shared some tips on how to look put together while in quarantine and ended it off with a question and that struck up a conversation in the comments which resulted in a massive number of comments.
Authenticity
Being vulnerable and letting people into your world is a sure way to get people to engage with you. Your story doesn’t have to be a sad one, it just need to be authentically you. Instagram has become an “aspirational” platform but people love it when the people they talk to or look up to let them into their real life because they can relate to that. if you are constantly posting a curated lifestyle of high end fashion that your audience can’t afford, there will be a disconnect and they won’t feel the need to comment and even if they do they will leave emojis (those things are annoying lol).
Vanessa I love love your blog. Thanks for sharing the link during the #Shinenshare on Afrobloggers. I love it..
Especially this piece about Instagram and being more authentic and engaging. Can’t wait to read the rest. ❤️
Can’t believe, I’m only seeing this now. Thanks babe, glade you are enjoying the posts.