Instagram Engagement: Everything You Need to Know [Exclusive Stats]

Instagram Engagement: Instagram has a whopping 1 billion users every month. The most sought-after social media platform has proved to be a goldmine for entrepreneurs, businesses, and marketers.

As per the latest statistics, approximately 93% of human beings on Earth use Instagram, out of which a staggering 80% follow at least one business! If you are still skeptical about using the platform for your business, consider this – about 72% of users rely on Instagram for creating a first impression of your product. 

Know Everything About Instagram Engagements

If you already have an account on Instagram and are wondering why your engagement is not at par, read along to understand everything you need to know about Instagram engagement.

Are You Actually ‘Engaging’?

There is a reason why social media promotions are more effective and economical compared to television advertisements. Unlike the latter, social media offers a way to engage in two-way communication. You may have thousands or even millions of followers on Instagram, but this isn’t a sure shot of achieving great engagement.

How often do you respond to comments on your Instagram post? Interaction with your followers is a prerequisite of upping your game on Instagram. Especially, as a business owner, you should acknowledge the time and efforts taken by your followers to share their thoughts. Moreover, it’s a great way to spark a conversation in the comments section. 

Add Call-to-Actions in Instagram Stories

Call-to-Actions (CTAs) are imperative for bringing visitors to your website. One way to boost Instagram engagement is to add CTAs in your stories. Even though you need to get a verified Instagram account to include links in your stories, you can always use a different CTA. Another great alternative for non-verified Instagram accounts is to add the link to your website in the bio.

Remember to use active language in your CTAs. Strong command verbs include words like shop, discover, signup, build, get, click, register, buy, and learn. In addition, your Instagram CTAs should be able to prompt a sense of urgency in potential customers. For instance, words such as today, get, and now add weight to your CTAs. 

Create Compelling Captions

Captions have a great impact on Instagram engagement rates. They not only offer context behind pictures but also urge users to take a moment from scrolling further. In fact, short and witty captions are useful for encouraging website clicks, comments, and likes. On the other hand, you can leverage the 2,200-character limit to champion storytelling on Instagram. 

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Use lengthy captions to build authenticity and recognition of your brand. Such tactics are important for forging meaningful relationships with your followers. Further, in order to enhance brand loyalty, use this micro-blogging trend to your advantage. Best, incorporate CTAs in your Instagram captions to drive engagement. 

Time It Right

Recency is a crucial factor in Instagram’s algorithm. It means that your followers are more likely to see your recent post in their feeds rather than older ones. This is why timing is everything for enhancing Instagram engagement. To attain that, your posts should be timed around hours when your followers are online on Instagram. 

When and How Often

According to a report by Hootsuite, “on average, business accounts post content to their Instagram feeds 1.7 times per day”. Remember, you do not want to overwhelm your audience with tons of content. You have to be consistent but you must time it right. The key is to avoid over-posting or under-posting on Instagram. 

Regardless of how interesting your content is, visibility during peak hours is necessary for audience engagement. As per an analysis, the best time to post on Instagram is before 9am and after 5pm as for most people it’s a leisure activity. This way your posts will reach maximum followers active during those hours on Instagram. 

Use Popular Hashtags

In order to make your content more accessible on Instagram, the best way is to use popular hashtags in your posts and stories. This will increase the chance of your profile being discovered by people who follow similar business profiles as yours. Besides, you will find other competitors who cater to the same niche and audience.

It’s advisable to follow hashtags on Instagram for staying updated in your areas of interest. In fact, as a business owner, you can create your own unique branded hashtag and invite users to follow it. This way your pictures and videos will appear both on the branded hashtag and the profile. Be careful not to use disabled and flagged hashtags, banned for violating community guidelines. 

You can even run hashtag-based fun promotions and campaigns to drive engagement on Instagram!

Try the Authentic Way

Does your brand promote authenticity and normalcy? If yes, then the better route for you to boost Instagram engagement is to create filter-free, genuine content for your audience. One of the best examples of a brand going the authentic way is Dove. Their posts are all about promoting diversity and uniqueness. 

It’s not mandatory to create picture-perfect posts for Instagram. There is a sea of brands, bloggers, and influencers on Instagram who are vying perfection but have lost their originality in the process. Promoting your real self on Instagram may just do the trick for you! If more people relate to you and your brand, the engagement will skyrocket. 

That’s how you can set yourself apart from the over-saturated platform that Instagram is!

Hold Giveaways and Contests

It’s no secret that everyone loves free stuff! Whether you have a small business or a household-name brand, contests and giveaways are effective for growing your Instagram followings, reaching new fans, and for marketing your new product lines. The greater the number of people that participate in Instagram giveaways and contests, the greater will be the social sharing of your content.

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This strategy may seem counterintuitive, but you have to invest money to earn more. This goes with every business trying to promote their products and services on Instagram. The trick is to set entry criteria, such as tagging two people and following your brand on Instagram. Therefore, giveaways and contests will certainly help you reach a greater pool of untapped audience. 

Duplicating Successful Posts: Don’t Push It

While it makes sense to repost a photo or a video that performed exceptionally well in the past, you don’t want to be too repetitive with your content. Failing which, even your loyal followers on Instagram would be pushed to click “unfollow”. Your content should be engaging and unique in order to boost your sales.

However, if you make it a habit of reposting, your audience will soon get bored. It’s true that celebrities may get away with such tactics, but if you are promoting your business, creating something new is a viable solution. The purpose is to entertain your Instagram followers, and duplicating your previous posts over and over again won’t cut it. 

What Is the Right Approach?

What you want is to duplicate the strategy and not the content itself. Try to figure out what made that particular photo or video so successful as compared to others. Is there a pattern? How can you use that while creating a new Instagram post? What stood out in the top-performing post which the others lacked?

Such questions will help you analyze how to replicate the success on Instagram. It may be a different camera angle or a different theme. Remember that what worked for others may not work for you. Was it the caption or the CTA? That analysis is distinctive for every Instagram profile. Hence, duplicating the strategy instead of the content is the correct approach when it comes to driving engagement on Instagram.

Have You Tried Cross Promotion?

As a business owner, you probably have other social media accounts besides Instagram. Many of your followers on Facebook may not even know that your Instagram account exists. This is where cross-network promotional posts come into play.

You may as well save considerable budget incurred on sponsored content and Instagram ads with this strategy.

Cross-promotion gives you a chance to use multiple social media platforms at your disposal. However, if you are urging your Facebook audience to follow your Instagram account, you should give them something more enticing. For instance, create a live tour or behind the scenes video of your business exclusively for Instagram followers. 

Perform Omnichannel Marketing

It’s not just Facebook and Instagram that you can use for omnichannel marketing. You can connect your Instagram post to a blogpost on your website.

However, instead of posting the same content, create something that’s unique for Instagram and prompts your followers to click the link to read more on the website. Similarly, twitter is an incredible platform for strengthening your omnichannel marketing efforts. 

What are Instagram Engagement Metrics?

The level of interaction of your Instagram audience determines the engagement rate. It shows how strongly the audience is connected to your brand. Instagram engagement rate does not solely rely on the number of likes contrary to popular belief. There are a number of other metrics that you should consider to level-up your Instagram engagement. 

Some of them include:

• Profile visits: Number of clicks to view your Instagram profile
• Website clicks: How many times users clicked the link to your website through Instagram?
• Reach: It is determined by unique views of your Instagram stories and posts
• Follower Growth Rate: (number of followers acquired in particular time duration ÷ prior number of followers) × 100 
• Impressions: It is defined by how many times your Instagram stories and posts are seen.
• Comments: These are crucial engagement criteria, especially comments where people tag each other underneath your posts. 
• Views: This criterion is used for analyzing the engagement on Instagram stories and videos. 
• Saved Posts: Instagram users save posts that they want to view repeatedly or review later on. Hence, the number of times that your content made it to your followers’ private collection is a significant metric as well.  

Measuring Instagram Engagement Rate

To be honest, there is no universal way of measuring the engagement rate on your Instagram account. A lot of it relies on your business’s goals and objectives. Nevertheless, there are several analytics tools out there to help you calculate the engagement rate. 

Take a look at some of the tools:

• Hootsuite Analytics: It’s an all-round analytics tool built for delivering customizable reports (including KPI summaries, tables, and graphs) , monitoring improvements, and setting performance benchmarks. 
• Iconosquare: This Instagram audit tool evaluates stories, data, follower stats, and engagement rates through their ‘pro dashboard’. Through this tool, you can identify areas of improvement when it comes to Instagram engagement. 
• Keyhole: This analytics tool keeps track of your campaigns, influencer metrics, ROI, impressions, reach, hashtags, and other data points.  
• Union Metrics: Learn important metrics such as high-performing posts, ways to improve your content, reach and impressions, top advocates and fans, popular hashtags in your niche, and followers’ demographics. 
• Instagram Insights: Gather valuable insights about your followers such as location, age range, gender, organic activity, paid activity, impressions, and accounts reached through Instagram’s in-built analytics tool.

Incorporate Video Marketing

Owing to Instagram’s vast number of active users, many businesses are directing serious efforts into driving engagement. Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing application. Videos have become a critical part of the popular social media platform.  Everything from video ads and IGTV, to Instagram stories, require effective video marketing techniques. 

In order to bolster your Instagram engagement, do not limit your content to photos and infographics. There are a plethora of reasons why you should incorporate videos in your Instagram business account. Experts put it as “A picture is worth 1000 words, video can help convey even more!” 

Let’s explore why video marketing is necessary for Instagram engagement:

• Brand Awareness: Instagram is a platform where potential customers discover your brand. With the help of Instagram videos, you can showcase your brand story, team, products, and personality in a captivating manner.
• Love for Video Content: In an annual survey by animoto.com (2018), it was revealed that video content on Instagram led to an enormous surge in purchases than any other platform. According to their study, the most popular form of visual content on Instagram are videos, followed by photos, links, and text. 
• Videos Drive Engagement: When we talk about augmenting the Instagram engagement rate, video content takes the crown. Your brand can achieve 21% more engagement by using videos compared to photos on Instagram, according to research by Quinty.
• High Conversion Rate: Video ads on Instagram that are enthralling have high chances of landing clients and generating qualified leads for your business. These leads are more likely to convert, thanks to video marketing on Instagram. 

Collaborate with Influencers

Identify brands or influencers with great engagement rates on Instagram. Reach out to them if they are up for a collaboration with your brand. The biggest advantage of partnering with them is that they will help you promote your products or services to more people. You may have a great product and engaging content, but if your reach is limited, there’s not much you can do. 

• Generate Brand Awareness: The more people become aware of your brand, the better are your chances of improving your sales. While choosing an influencer to partner with, remember that their audience should have the need for your product or services. In other words, your content, whether it’s a product review or a tutorial should offer value to their followers. 
• Build Trust: As an entrepreneur, you need to inspire trust, confidence, and interest in your target audience for your brand. Collaborating with an authority figure on Instagram will allow you to do just that! All the more reason for you to create authentic and genuine content before moving forward with the collaboration. 
• Achieve Higher ROI: According to a study by Tomoson, “for every $1 spent, influencer marketing returns a revenue of $6.50”. These findings suggest how partnering with an Instagram influencer can result in high Return on Investment. In fact, influencer marketing outclasses paid search and display advertising strategies. 

Gauge Your Competitors

This is something businesses tend to overlook when it comes to Instagram engagement. You should analyze the most used hashtags, engagement, and audience growth of your competitors on Instagram. It will help you determine ways of improving your own Instagram engagement tactics. Other metrics to analyze your competitors’ profile include top influencers engagement, engagement ratio, likes, and comments. 

Conclusion

That’s everything you need to know about Instagram engagement. The key is to be unique amongst an ocean of influencers and brands on the social media platform. Do not just aim for the followers, but aim for the engagement. It’s important to understand the metrics and how to calculate the engagement before undertaking the efforts. 

Combine your Instagram marketing efforts with an appropriate analytics tool to get the desired results! You should not shy away from being creative and trying different things to determine what works best for you. Try the aforementioned 13 tips to boost your Instagram engagement and success will follow!