The best time to post on Instagram varies depending on your audience, location, and content type.
You can’t miss taking advantage of this to increase your engagement. There are many ways of using carousel posts—don’t just pick any images and expect your followers to camp on it. Get creative and mix in videos to attract even more interaction. Use them for:
Followers are more likely to share, comment, and even repost them on their stories because they don’t feel like they’re sharing an ad. And who doesn’t want a good laugh anyway? So put on that meme lord (or lady) hat and enchant your brand’s way into your followers’ hearts.
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Why does Instagram engagement matter?
Viewers can ask questions, share ideas, and leave comments in real time—a perfect way for your brand to engage with followers. If you’re wondering what types of content you can share on Instagram live, try;
- Comments
- Shares
- Likes
- Saves
- Stories views
- Interactions with stories stickers
- Brand mentions
- Link click-throughs
- Direct Messages (DMs)
Instagram engagement is not about how many users are following you, but about how your followers interact with your posts. Engagement metrics include:
Want to know how your audience perceives your brand and products? Create polls and questions on your Instagram stories.
An endless stream of perfect images and pristine products can become monotonous to your followers. Memes are more authentic and can attract your audience’s attention, especially if they’re relatable and resonate with your followers.
How to increase engagement on Instagram
Instagram Reels ideas are endless: to share customer experiences, before-and-after videos, interactive how-to videos, and behind-the-scenes peeks.
1. Know your audience
Sharing funny posts is great, but you shouldn’t forget to add value for your followers. Create unique content they can repeatedly reference or share with their circles. We have tons of Instagram post ideas here, but for starters:
- Define your buyer personas. This is a clear representation of who your ideal customer is. What are their pain points and desires? What are their hobbies? What do they do for work? What’s their schedule like?
- Look at Instagram audience insights. Here you will find demographic information about your audience. Under the “Insights” section, click “Audience.” You’ll find details about people interacting with your posts, including their location, age, and gender.
- Look at your competitors’ profiles. Who likes and comments on their posts? What content are they sharing? How do they interact with their followers?
- Use social listening tools. This can help you track any mentions of your brand or products. See what people are saying and what they want you to address.
2. Use strong captions with CTAs
The first step in keeping your followers engaged is identifying your audience. If you don’t know what intrigues and motivates them, you won’t know how to create content that engages them. Here’s how to do it:
- Add context to the pictures in your post
- Bring out your brand personality
- Drive your audience to take an action
Not only does high engagement indicate that your content resonates with your audience, but the Instagram algorithm also considers engagement when deciding what content to show users.
And don’t forget the basics! Ensure your Instagram bio is optimized to align with your brand’s value, plan your content in advance, and check your Instagram analytics regularly to see what’s working.
That last one is key. After writing a catchy caption on what the post is about and adding hashtags and emojis, it’s time to prompt them to take action. For example, “Let me know what you think in the comments” or “Click the link in our bio to learn more.”
Every carousel slide is a chance to drive engagement—10 opportunities in 1 post. Don’t miss out on yours.
3. Engage your audience through creative interactive stickers
Every carousel slide is a chance to drive engagement—10 opportunities in 1 post. Don’t miss out on yours.
According to Socialinsider, of all Instagram post types, carousels have the highest engagement rate of 1.92% (and 2.33% when you use all 10 carousel slides).
6. Create and post relatable memes
Here’s a video of Honest Beauty’s founder, Jessica Alba. In the caption, the CTA prompts their audience to click the link on their bio to purchase the products.
Like this one:
Inspiring quotes and repurposed tweets are perfect for driving engagement.
7. Post valuable content regularly
You can also use our Instagram Story templates so you’re not starting from scratch!
- Helpful tips in eye-catching infographics
- Graphs and charts to visualize data
- Step-by-step tutorials
- Creative ideas
Here are our top strategies for increasing Instagram engagement:
Find influencers in your industry, build a relationship with them, and then collaborate with them. Feature them in your posts, repost their content, and co-create content with them.
8. Host and collaborate with industry influencers
Browse through even more engaging Instagram Story ideas here.
Strong captions accomplish three things. They:
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9. Run Instagram lives
Your Instagram followers want to see the face behind the account once in a while. And considering that 82% of followers prefer watching a live stream to reading social posts, why not try out Instagram live?
To find the right time for you, check out the benchmarks from the post linked above, choose a baseline to start with, then use your analytics to find out what works for your audience.
- Q&A sessions on your brand, products, or relevant topics.
- Sneak peek sessions for a product you’re about to launch.
- Discussions on current trends or events in your industry.
- Customer support FAQs.
- Learning sessions with industry influencers.
Marketers and business owners are constantly looking for ways to interact with their audience. With more than 1.4 million monthly active users (Source: Statista), Instagram offers serious potential for building your brand. But you need more than just an account and an audience to experience the full potential of this platform.
10. Use polls and questions to get feedback
You need engagement. Comments, shares, likes, saves, and other actions that show your content resonates with your audience.
Instagram has plenty of interactive story stickers you can use to drive engagement with your posts. You can use the stickers in different ways:
Stories stickers make your audience feel recognized and that their opinion matters. Every question asked or poll taken is one more engagement.
11. Leverage the power of hashtags
Polls, unlike contests, are easy to create using stickers. Plus, you don’t need a good reason to create one. Just think of a quick question to which you’d also be happy to respond.
Your memes may be hilarious and your content helpful, but if you post when your audience is asleep, well…if only there were a way for them to view from dreamland. But there isn’t. So, post when your audience is most active.
If your posts have high engagement, they’ll be more likely to appear in the feeds of users you consistently engage with, helping to increase your reach and brand awareness.
12. Post when your audience is most active
Who doesn’t love Instagram Reels, especially when they’re interesting? These short, entertaining videos are an excellent way for marketers and business owners to drive visibility and engagement to their pages.
Canva hosts a weekly design challenge and uses carousel posts to display the highlights for the week’s theme.
In this post, we’re going to share 12 ways you can increase your Instagram engagement and build an emotional connection with your followers.
Follow these tips to increase engagement on Instagram
Instagram is an interactive platform. What’s the point if you’re not engaging and interacting with other accounts?
- Know your audience
- Use strong captions
- Use interactive stickers
- Create interesting Stories and Reels
- Use carousel posts
- Share relatable memes
- Post valuable content regularly
- Collaborate with industry influencers
- Host Instagram live videos
- Use polls and questions to get feedback
- Leverage the power of hashtags
- Post when your audience is most active
Tap into the power of selling during live sessions with Instagram Live Shopping (one of our digital marketing trends of this year). With this feature, you can interact with your viewers and sell directly to them. Save your live videos so potential customers can shop for the featured products after the live stream.
