Wondering how to increase Instagram engagement in 2022? You’re not alone!
A high engagement rate (ER) means your audience is genuinely interacting with your content and the quality of your posts are high. Whether you're a business, influencer, or just looking to grow online, you should be looking further into your performance metrics to understand what's resonating with your audience, and what's not.
And if you need a little help getting those numbers up, here's 7 ways you can level-up your Instagram strategy and increase Instagram engagement in 2022!
1. Collab on Your Instagram Reels
Instagram Collabs are a great new way to boost engagement on Instagram, and this is especially true for Reels! The feature lets you invite someone to collaborate on a Feed post or Reel, so they can share the content with their followers.
This way both of you are shown to each other's followers and have an opportunity to be exposed to new audiences.
The more people you reach with your Reels, the higher your chances that follower count and engagement rate will grow.
2. Add a link to Instagram Stories
It's only recently that everyone's gotten the option to add a link to their stories - previously, this was only available for accounts with a following larger than 10K followers.
But, one of Instagram’s latest updates has finally changed this and allowed the feature to be accessible to everyone. And now you can use it to increase your website’s traffic as well as increase your engagement as well.
Even better, Instagram lets you personalize your link with custom text, so you don't have a long ugly URL there but can utilize this to have your link fit the branding and composition of your story!
3. Add Call to Actions In Your Captions
Call to actions (CTAs) may not be new but they've become much more popular recently, and for good reason! Adding a CTA, or more specifically, a question, in your caption is a great way to get more Instagram engagement.
What's important though is that you ask a genuine question because otherwise it just comes off as a tacky engagement tactic. So think about what's relatable to both you and your audience and get creative!
Ask for advice, recommendations (restaurants, vacation spots, books), or what type of content your audience is interested in seeing from you.
You can also add a CTAs to encourage your audience to click the link in your Instagram bio, and send traffic to your website.
4. Make Memes
Relatable memes are a great way to form a connection with your audience as well as get your engagement up.
Memes can have your audience liking, commenting, and sharing it with their friends. Whether it's someone reposting the meme to their Instagram Story or sending it to a friend, the more people who share your post, the more engagement you'll get. Audiences want to feel seen and heard by the brands they follow, and memes can show them just that.
You can use branded text and a trending photo that works well with your industry or brand values. You can also source user-generated content (UGC) that on-brand, and credit the original creator of course.
5. Make Graphic-text Post worth Sharing
Quotes, graphics, and even tweets are everywhere on Instagram and they're perfect for driving engagement. Users love sharing quotes to their stories, sending them to friends by direct message, or by tagging them in comments on the post.
Just like with memes, this type of content works best if it's relatable. But with quotes or text posts for Instagram, creating content that's also aesthetic can further move people to engage with it (and it is, after all, for a visual platform).
Recently, screenshotting and reusing tweets as Instagram posts has also gotten popular. And even if you don’t have a Twitter account or don't want to search around for a tweet that works with your brand, there's templates and mockups online that you can use to create an image that looks just like a screenshot of a real tweet!
6. If your business has a face - show it!
It's important for a brand to have a face to show every once in a while. Your followers want to see that you’re more than a logo!
If you're comfortable being in front of a camera and it's acceptable for your type of business, showing up (literally) to social has the ability to really boost your engagement.
Stories and Live are perfect for this since their format is informal and relaxed, as they don't get published to your feed. People are generally more engaged when they see a face on a brand account’s stories. They're a great place for interactions too – share a personal stories, moments of your day, you completing your daily work tasks, etc. And ask questions!
7. Create an 'Add Yours' Sticker
The Add Yours sticker is a new feature that makes it easier than ever to create a viral challenge with your audience and probably beyond.
If you’re a fitness brand, you can ask your audience to share pictures of their gym outfits our workout routines. There's really no limit to this new feature – you could reach hundreds of new accounts from one single sticker. Now that's engagement!
Need more help increasing your engagement on Instagram?
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