Tips for Increasing Instagram Engagement from an Experienced Social Media Manager

Increasing engagement on Instagram requires creativity, experimentation, and strategy

Most of the inquiries I receive on Instagram are requests to help increase engagement for small businesses accounts. Anyone who markets on Instagram will want to read this blog. Increasing engagement rates boosts a brand’s visibility, helps build authority, and hopefully, generates leads. Strong engagement rates are in the range of 1-5% according to Hootsuite. From my experience, organic engagement does not manifest overnight. It requires patience, consistency, and good old-fashioned work. Some accounts have thousands of followers and very low engagement on their posts. Why is that? The purpose of this blog is to explore the reasons people do not engage with content and identify ways to improve engagement rates. These recommendations come from my experience as a professional social media manager. I manage not only my accounts but accounts for many small businesses across the United States in different industries. My recommendations involve both organic and paid strategies. I would say that 80% of the growth on my accounts is organic, however, I do utilize “boosts” (which I will explain later) to jump-start dead accounts or I will boost really good content. The techniques I employ include blogging, good old-fashioned engagement, carousels, stories, reels, and creating “savable” content. Let us begin.

Why Don’t People Engage with Content?

There are many reasons people do not engage with content on social media. I am not a mind-reader, but I can hypothesize based on my experience. Firstly, some people do not engage with their audience! It cannot be expected that people will support a business and its content if the owner doesn’t support theirs as well. You get what you give in the world of social media. When I am looking to grow followers I pick a niche-specific hashtag, find a popular post, and look at the followers who liked that post. If they match my ideal client, I will follow them. Often, people will follow you back, and voila! You now have your ideal client’s attention! The same goes for engagement. I will find profiles that match my target audience and engage with them, like, comment, save, share their content and DM them a thank you for following me. That grabs their attention and starts the relationship. Engaging with your audience regularly is just AS important as posting quality content.

The second reason could be consistency or lack thereof. Posting more often generally increases engagement and visibility. However, I do not feel it’s necessary to post daily. Three times per week should suffice. Choose the cadence you want to post and stick to it. Decide what content pillars (topic buckets) and stay consistent with those pillars. I recommend creating your content ahead of time and scheduling it in Hootsuite or a similar platform, then you do not even have to get online daily. It will run itself.

Another possibility is, some people are not taking advantage of all of Instagram’s features. I preach about posting diverse content all the time. Utilize stories, reels, long videos, carousels, lives, and posts as a part of your strategy. There is such thing as micro and macro-content. Micro-content in general is easily consumed content that includes infographics, statistics, quotes, memes, posts, stories, and short-form videos (like reels). Macro-content includes blogs, podcasts, white papers, carousels, and IG videos (longer than 60-second videos). I recommend sharing a mix of macro and micro-content for the highest levels of engagement. Micro-content attracts new followers, and macro-content retains and engages existing followers. Use a mix of these two types of content and create a strategy that incorporates all these features.

Post for your audience, not yourself. Do not use social media to impress, use it to impact is one of my favorite sayings. If someone uses their account to brag about their new car, or posting videos of them at fancy dinners, drinking, and wearing fur coats, they probably are not appealing to their audience. Identify your ideal client and define them in black and white on paper. Then research their pain points on platforms like Reddit and Quora. Create content that specifically solves problems for your ideal client and if it has no value, do not post it!

There are many other reasons people may not engage with content, but these are the most common reasons. Now how to increase engagement? Below are some recommendations I offer. I have seen engagement rates increase by 36% using some of these techniques!

The Magic of Blogging:

It can be hard to express a brand on social media. There is a limited amount of copy included in a post. Blogging is an inexpensive (I charge $75 per blog and two blogs per month doubled my website traffic and saw huge boosts in my engagement) way to share a brand’s story with the community, give details about products, and share educational information. This helps boost creditability/authority. SEO best practices recommend blogs are around 1,500 words (which is approximately how long my blogs are). If you’re looking for a way to express the essence of your brand using a macro-content technique, add two blogs per month to your website. It is substantially less expensive than hiring a social media manager, if you have a tight budget and are looking for more web traffic and engagement. Use social media and other avenues to promote your blogs. You will see website traffic increase and more people engage thoughtfully with your brand.

Keep Social Media Social

Engagement is reciprocal. Small business owners must engage with their audience first. Get those thumbs ready to like, save, share, and comment genuinely with your audience. Many social media managers forget this step. The fastest way to increase engagement organically is to spend an hour per day engaging with stories, reels, posts, and send DM’s. I do not recommend “cold call” DMs, where you try to pitch your products and services before getting to know someone. Usually, people prefer if you have made some sort of an effort to build a real relationship with them before you try to sell. You can prepare a script for yourself, set up chatbots to respond to messages, and add “saved” replies or FAQs if you are getting an overwhelming number of messages daily. However, do not underestimate the power of personal interaction. Get to know your followers. Chat with them. Invite them out for coffee and meet in person! Spend some time and energy fostering real relationships. When I manage a social media account, I always engage for one hour each day I post. Furthermore, I target their ideal client, not random followers.

Post Carousels

Carousels are macro-content that allows up to 10 slides to be posted at once. People swipe left, and it takes them to the next slide. Carousels generally have much higher engagement than other types of content. Carousels have three times more engagement according to Hootsuite, and I have also found this to be true. Make sure the cover slide is visually appealing, the fonts are clear and legible, use strong imagery, use call-to-actions, and add value. Carousels retain followers and build authority as industry experts.

Take Advantage of Stories

Stories are micro-content that only show for 24 hours and then disappear unless you add them to your story highlights. 62% of users say they become more interested in a product or service after seeing a story about it. Stories are more engaging content because you can ask questions, post polls, make quizzes, use stickers, and there are many ways to get creative with them. You can also post a link now in stories. One thing I like to do to drive traffic to my posts is copying a link to my new post, and post the link in a story, directing my story's audience to my post for more information. It works! HubSpot offers some story ideas to get you started.

Short-Form Video is King

2022 is three months in and one thing is clear in the digital marketing world, short-form video dominates the stage. Reels are Instagram’s response to the popularity of TikTok. Reels are short-form videos (under 60 seconds), set to trending audio clips. They are meant to be educational, motivating, inspiring, and entertaining. Later is a platform you can use to schedule your social media posts, and more. If you would like to try it for FREE click here. The social media manager of Later said that “since introducing Reels to our Instagram channel last year, we’ve seen our engagement grow by 280%.” This is not an uncommon statistic. Reels are fantastic as they increase your brand’s visibility on social media to non-followers, without having to pay for a boost or paid advertising. Reels are free! Anyone can create them, so they are a wonderful tool.

Keep in mind, it is tough to get a reel to "go viral". But that isn't the point now is it? No, get your brand's name out there. Even if you get 10 likes on a reel, check your insights and I bet at least several hundred, if not thousands of people saw your reel if you're doing it correctly. It gets your brand name out into the community and that's a start.

A reel can get in front of thousands of people within hours. Entrepreneurs have a love/hate relationship with reels, however. Reels with human faces and people in them, tend to go viral more often than reels with stock images. However, many business owners do not want to get in front of the camera. I can sympathize. When you take time, put in the effort, and put your face/image out there for the world to see, and your reel bombs, it is a bit of a hit to the ego. Do not let that discourage you. There are many ways you can create reels without getting in front of a camera. Reels do require a level of experimentation. Watch other people’s reels to get ideas, save audio clips you like, save filters you like, and if a reel does not do very well, keep on trying. Try to find audio clips that have only been used previously by under 5K people if possible. That is one trick I have learned over time. I recommend posting at least one reel per week, but no more than three per week.

Let People Steal from You

One suggestion I have is to create “savable” content that people can steal from you. The Instagram algorithm ranks “saves” higher than likes with regards to engagement and the more saves you get, the more valuable your content is to Instagram. Therefore, the more visibility and reach you get. People save things they want to either copy or refer back to in the future. So, try to create content that people can easily “steal” or that contains information that people will want to refer back to like infographics, checklists, toolkits, etc. Add a call-to-action that says, “save this post”. Savable content boosts engagement.

Boost That Post!

Boosts are a paid option on Instagram where for $10 (you can increase the budget if you want) Instagram boosts your chosen post to an audience that you select. You can target specific audiences this way, get in front of non-followers, and it is an inexpensive way to jump-start an inactive account or feature really good content that you want to share. Boosts go out to thousands of people in days. While they do require a small investment, you can even choose if you want people to message you, visit your website, or engage with your post. It allows you to add a call-to-action button to your post. I recommend using a couple of boosts a week on your best content to increase engagement!

Conclusion

Social media marketing can be fickle and the algorithm somewhat mysterious. Learn from the experiences of others and industry experts. Boosting engagement requires diverse micro/macro-content, engaging with your audience first, adding a blog to your website, using all the platform’s features, creating “savable” content, and strategically utilizing boosts. Do not let low engagement get you down and do not take it personally. It is no reflection on the quality of the services or products you are offering. A few quick tweaks to your strategy and you will see your engagement rate increase. If you need assistance with your social media marketing, I offer social media management and 90-minute coaching sessions to go into more detail. You can book a free discovery call with me at https://www.strasserwriting.com. Have a blessed day, I hope you learned something new, and happy marketing to YOU!