Instagram engagement is a growing indicator of popularity than just your follower count; it shows how your audience interacts with your content and how active they are. An engagement, such as comments or views, occur when your audience takes an action on your profile or reacts to one of your posts.
The usual engagement metric on Instagram most people consider are likes, comments, saves, and shares. But, Instagram engagement is not only limited to those metrics. It also includes the number of DMs you receive, link clicks, swipe-ups, story mentions, and sticker engagements on Stories!
But, why does Instagram engagement matter?
Well, keeping track of your Instagram engagement rate allows you to evaluate if your social media marketing efforts are paying off. For influencers especially, brands will take this into account when choosing to work with you.
The relationship you build with your audience can be seen on how they are responding to your content. The more your audience resonates with your content, likely, the higher engagement you get. This means that your Instagram content strategy is sustainably working.
Other than that, the more people engaging with your content, the more likely people are going to see it.
With all this talk about Instagram engagement, there remains one question: what can you do to increase your engagement?
Table of Contents
Engaging Stickers & Stories
Users on Instagram often love to interact with stickers on Stories. Again, your engagements are not limited to likes on your posts, sticker engagements are an additional metric used to measure your Instagram success. So, better maximize these in your Instagram Stories!
Instagram polls, questions, quizzes, and sliding scales are available to encourage your audience to interact with your content.
What’s nice about Instagram Stickers is that it only takes a second to vote in a poll, grade an adorable puppy photo with the most hearts, and so on — and all of those short, low effort actions stimulate connection between your audience and your content.
Saveable Graphics
Instagram users enjoy sharing informative and valuable graphics on their Stories. Graphic posts containing guides, quotes, or even repurposed tweets are great ways to share valuable content. These engaging visuals can help to get you shoutouts from your community!
Relatable Memes
Instagram is a hugely social platform. And, whether it’s a business, an influencer, or something else, Instagram users follow accounts that they can relate to. This is what makes it essential to make your Instagram account as relatable as possible and to showcase your brand and/or business’ core values!
Where appropriate, you can use memes in this way to display humor or personality. When users find relatable and topical memes, it’s possible they will share them.
Posting relatable memes is a fantastic way to increase your Instagram engagement. All you have to do is pick a photo, video, or GIF and create a message that embodies your brand’s identity and vision while also making it memorable (bonus points if it’s funny and on-brand!).
Personalized IG Stories
Instagram Stories are extremely effective at increasing engagement, aside from using interactive stickers. You can post informal updates alongside regular posts about your brand or businesses, shown as behind the scenes for your audience.
And, what users love the most is knowing what goes beyond the life of most influencers, brands, or businesses. Something exclusive they can’t find elsewhere! Consider how you may use Stories to take your audience along for the ride, from short videos to “a day in the life” content that essentially shows your routine. It’s that personalized touch!
Inspiring & Engaging ‘Add Yours’ Sticker
With this new Story sticker, the prompt you include in your Story is the recurring element to connect threads and potentially create viral content.
Underneath the prompt you input, it will invite your audience to respond back with their own Instagram Story. So, make sure you put something relevant and inspiring!
Trendy IG Reels
Instagram Reels are a straightforward approach to boost your reach, followers, and, most importantly, engagements.
Reels have increased visibility as Instagram pushes towards becoming a multimedia platform.
Invite a Collaborator
Instagram Collab allows you to collaborate on posts and Reels with another Instagram user, with both users being recognized as authors of the post and publishing on each profile! You can develop your community and trust when you align with your fellow collaborator’s audience.
This is a huge development on Instagram for reaching a new audience.
Finding out what your audience wants to talk about, share, and enjoy on Instagram is the first step towards increasing your engagement. Use these ideas to see what works and measure the response. Good luck!
