Intro
Social platforms are a great way to market and create exposure towards your business. Whether it be through thoughtful captions, colorful pictures or stimulating videos, platforms such as Instagram are the most interactive way to visibly market your brand, gain more attraction from potential fans, and build a network of connections with other brands as well as your target audience.
If you are just starting off on Instagram, it can often times feel like an uphill battle to gain your ideal amount of account engagement.
You start to wonder “how do these other accounts have hundreds or thousands of likes and comments on their posts?” while you’re stuck with 25-75 likes on a good day.
Just know you’re not the only one experiencing this, there’s thousands of accounts out there (even some with huge followings) that are all experiencing the same issue boosting their account engagement. So give yourself a break, even top accounts like Kim Kardashian only get a ~1.5% engagement rate.
You’re probably thinking “Tell me something I don’t know, how do I boost my Instagram engagement?”
Although it may be difficult in the beginning to see meaningful engagement, we’ve devised the 13 Top Tips to Boost Instagram Engagement in 2019 the right way.
1. Creating / Optimizing Your Account Bio
Instagram gives you the ability to write a bio that is 150 characters long, which describes what the account is going to be about or anything of your choosing.
Fully taking advantage of the bio space while speaking directly to your target audience is what you should be aiming for. This allows for the ideal engaged audience to be attracted to your account and content. Be considerate of how your page differentiates from other similar accounts and why it might be appealing to your ideal audience and let them know this with your bio.
2. Include A Link In Your Instagram Bio
More engagement also involves redirecting your audience to your own website. Sending them directly to your website is a simple click away by including a link in your Instagram profile description.
This allows for your audience to access your website, read about your business or brand, sign up for a newsletter, contact you, etc. More importantly, directing your audience to external communication sources that you’re in full control of ensures that you don’t have to rely on third-party platforms such as Instagram to share your content with fans. I.e. You can now get your fans attention via email newsletter or blog update about your latest Instagram post to boost post engagement.
I know what you’re thinking, do email newsletters really work to boost post engagement? Subscribe to our newsletter right now and we can show you ????
Remember that these social media platforms main incentive is to self-profit, so don’t be surprised if they make business choices and platform changes that might not be beneficial to you and your brand. If you don’t believe us, go watch The Great Hack on Netflix.
3. Be Creative With Your Posts
Through your posts and instagram stories, be creative with your content. Creative and authentic posts allow you to showcase the astonishing properties and information regarding your brand or business.
Not only does it showcase your brand, but these types of posts are more appealing to the audience and will organically garner higher engagement. Generate content that is unique, eye-catching and share-worthy! For example, studies show that brighter pictures get 592% more likes than darker ones, so brighten up those shots! We will recommend you some of our favorite photo editing apps later on in the article.
Let’s do a photo comparison! Which photo below would you be more likely to notice and engage with below?
A raw unedited photo of a burger, fries and Old Fashion taken with a professional DSLR camera.
A brighter version of the SAME photo from our content creation work with Magnolia House in Pasadena. See the difference?
4. Consistent Posting Schedule
There isn’t a rule on instagram where you have to post at the same time daily, however it is beneficial to be consistent. Studies show that there is a certain time each day where followers are more active, usually mid-day or nighttime.
Being consistent with when you post is beneficial for engagement because users are more active.
You’ll need to review your analytics page (we’ll explain this in more detail later) and observe what times your followers are most active on each given day of the week and plan your posting schedule as such.
Instagram has already made past public statements mentioning that recency is a factor that plays into your post viewership numbers, which means the more recent your post is published to a follower being active on Instagram, the more likely that they will see it. It’s simple, more active followers online at once means more people likely to see your post and engage.