Should you care about engagement on your Instagram posts? What's good engagement on Instagram? Find out why Instagram engagement is important and read my 5 tips on how to skyrocket your engagement.
Developing real and genuine engagement from followers on your Instagram posts can often feel like an impossible task. Let me tell you now, it's not easy! However, there are best practices you can follow to ensure you give your posts the best chance to grab the interest of your followers. But before we go into the tips, let me explain a little bit about what I mean by Instagram engagement.
Instagram engagement is made up of the likes and comments you receive on your content. You can measure your Instagram engagement by simply adding together the likes and comments you receive per post, divided by the number of followers that you have. This will provide you with your Instagram engagement rate. A super useful metric to monitor because it will show you how frequently your followers interacts with your content.
Here's the formula for calculating your Instagram engagement rate:
(Likes + comments per post)
––––––––––––––––––––––––– X 100
Total number of followers
WAIT! You don't actually have to calculate it yourself, that's way too much effort! If you're like me, you want answers and QUICK! So use an online tool such as 'Tanke' to measure your engagement.
Ok, But Why Is Engagement Important?
Measuring and tracking your Instagram engagement rate provides you with a number of benefits:
Shows you what content your followers are interested in.
Helps you find out your most effective posting times.
Provides insights on how to communicate with your followers.
Having a good engagement rate also provides benefits to everyone, whether you're a business, influencer or just looking to grow your social media following. Some of these benefits include:
Follower growth.
Increased purchase opportunity.
Algorithm reward (Instagram loves profiles with high engagement rates).
What's Considered A Good Engagement Rate?
What's considered a good Instagram engagement rate depends on a few factors such as, your follower size, industry and goal. However, as a guideline:
10% Plus = AMAZING
5 - 7% = Great
Less Than 5% = Adjust your content
Don't be disheartened if your engagement rate is below 5%! Like I said, this depends on a number of factors. There is also 5 things you can do to see this rate improvement considerably.
5 Tips To Improve Your Instagram Engagement Rate
Ok, I know you're fed up with my waffling now, but I hope you have at least gained some knowledge from what we've talked about just now. Here are my 5 simple tips to improve your engagement.
Remember, it's very important you track your engagement rate each week to see how your content is performing.
1. Make your content more interesting
To put it quite harshly, if your content isn't getting much engagement, it might be because it's boring or uninteresting. If you're talking about topics no-one cares about or have zero aesthetically pleasing elements (e.g. boring photo or video) you need to change things up!
BONUS TIP: Have a look on your Instagram feed and take note of what catches your eye, try to understand why people might be engaging in their posts and not yours. You can also search a hashtag on Instagram, it will show you the top posts that include the hashtag. Use this as inspiration for your next posts.
2. Make your content more relevant to your niche
Imagine trying to sell your homemade greasy burgers to a group of Vegans. How do you think that will go down? The concept is the same with Instagram and your followers. You need to talk about things they care about. People often worry too much about reaching as many people as possible, but in reality a highly engaged group of 200 people far outweigh a unengaged group of 10,000.
BONUS TIP: Use answerthepublic.com or alsoasked.com to find out what people are asking or wanting to know in your industry. Create content based on your findings and then further adapt it to your followers.
3. Trial different creative types
Just posting boring images? Why not try creating videos, gifs, carousels, graphics or memes. Fun fact, creatives with a human face and smile involved almost always have a higher engagement rate compared to those that don't. So don't be scared to jump in front of the camera and show your followers who's behind the post. Engage with your followers as a real human being and they will do the same in return. Talk about your personal life more often, this helps build a strong connection and trust with your followers.
BONUS TIP: Try not to overthink your content too much and just start posting. Consistency is also a very important element to increasing engagement rate.
4. Experiment with colour
We as humans are drawn by colours. Especially designs that have a high contrast element. Use colour wheels to create more engaging graphic designs. I recommend Canva's Colour Wheel or Coolors when designing a colour scheme for your post. My favourite thing to do is to choose a colour and then use the colour wheel to identify it's complementary colour to create high contrast posts. Did you know, this blog cover photo was created this way ;).
5. Change your copywriting
This last tip combines pieces of what we have already talked about. For example, without understanding your niche and intriguing them with a highly interesting creative, what you say doesn't matter. But let's say you have all those other elements nailed and your engagement is still low, you need to change up your copywriting. The language and the tone of voice you use to communicate to your followers is so important. You need to make sure it fits their persona. For example if you're selling a new advanced AI tool to large corporations, you may need to present your messaging in a formal / factual style. However if you're selling gym plans to new mums, you may need to pitch your communication with a supportive and friendly style. The important point to take away here is that you must know your followers and what will make them want to know more.
Start Mastering Your Instagram Engagement
Ok, that's me finished for today on this topic. But if you would like to know more or have any questions, head over to my contacts page and drop me an email.
All that's left to do is to thank you for reading and don't forget to tap the like button and share this with your friends and colleagues.
Jack
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