CATEGORY PAGE (RESOURCES)9 Tips to Increase Instagram Engagement

Tips to Increase Instagram Engagement

The Instagram platform makes use of a constantly evolving algorithm to dictate the order of posts that users see in their feeds. Instagram’s algorithm aims to predict what posts you want to see and the content you care about. The algorithm takes into account several key factors when prioritising content in user feeds; engagement is perhaps the most important part of the algorithm. But what characterises engagement and how is it measured? An even better question is how do you increase engagement on your Instagram?

For engagement purposes, you should focus on several defining metrics:

Views and impressions

Views and impressions are the total number of times your post (whether photo or video) has been seen. They can come from a user seeing your post on their feed, directly on your profile, or the Explore page.

• Likes

Likes are Instagram’s simplest form of measuring engagement. They serve as a good quantitative measure of how ‘likeable’ your content is. Though likes are not the deepest form of engagement, they still represent the baseline popularity of your post.

• Comments

Similar to likes, comments are a quantitative measure of engagement but are a much more valuable form because they are much deeper than a simple double-tap. To comment on a post means users are highly engaged with your content because they took to respond or say something about it.

• Shares and reposts

Shares and reposts essentially act as organic advertisements of your brand or content. This form of engagement goes even deeper than a comment. A share or repost indicates that users are willing to be associated with you and your brand.

While these are the primary measure of engagement, it is also important to keep tabs on interactions, which are the total number of actions taken on your profile such as visits, clicks, and contact.

Now that you know the metrics that measure engagement, here are some tips to improve your profile’s engagement:

9 Powerful Tips to Boost Your Instagram Engagement

1. Create quality content. It is no secret that Instagram is a visual sharing social media platform. Creating visually appealing posts is essential to getting users to stop scrolling through their feed long enough to really engage with your post. Take the time to create visuals that stand out. Rather than focusing on posting products, try sharing experiences or telling stories that draw people in and gives them a reason to double-tap.
2. Be consistent. Now that you are creating quality content, it is important to establish and maintain a consistent posting schedule. Posting regularly is a good way to build a loyal following on Instagram allowing followers to build a relationship with your brand and get into a habit of engaging with your content.
3. Know the best times to post. Knowing when to post ensures your audience is actually seeing your content, which is key to getting high engagement on your posts. You can track previous post engagement and manually using a combination of Instagram Insights, data monitoring, and testing different posting times or there are a variety of different apps and tools available that do all the calculations for you. Either way you do it, it is important to know when your target audience is online so your posts are fresh in their feeds.
4. Establish a ‘look’ to your posts and overall profile. Give your posts a distinct filter and establish a colour scheme. Establishing a defining look and sticking to it gives followers the opportunity to recognise your posts on their feed and gives your profile an identity.
5. Regularly post stories and make use of sticker features. Stories may only last for 24 hours, but they are a great way of increasing engagement. Stories can be used to draw attention to new posts and encouraging viewers to check out your profile. Using Story stickers is also a great way to start conversations about your brand. Use the question sticker to let your followers get to you or get more information about your brand. Poll and vote stickers can be used to understand and gauge followers’ opinions regarding your products or services.
6. Use hashtags. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags per post and you should make use of this feature; 30 hashtags might be excessive but using a good number of hashtags can increase the reach of your post. Create a basic branded hashtag that should be applied to any post and can be used by followers to share user-generated content associated with your brand. Branded hashtags can also be used for product launches, promotions, and special events. Long-tail hashtags are detailed hashtags that can also be used to reflect the content of your post. Long-tailed hashtags are better to use than simple hashtags because there are fewer associated posts to compete with and you are more likely to be discovered.
7. Include locations. Adding a location to every post boosts exposure, which in turn leads to higher engagement. By using a location tag, your post appears in that locations’ recent associated posts. Users that search for posts in your area will likely come across your post.
8. Mention and tag other accounts . If your post features a person or another brand, tag them! Not only will they be notified of the post which will drive them to your page, but it also gives them the ability to repost or share your content. Mentioning other accounts increases exposure and builds relationships with other accounts and users.
9. Reply to direct messages (DMs) and comments. Remember that building a relationship and brand loyalty are important when it comes to engagement. Instagram is all about community so encourage conversation and then make sure you reply to it. Make sure you take the time to listen and respond to other accounts reaching out to you.

Creating consistent and quality content, analysing your insights and engaging with other social media accounts are some of the most important steps to increasing your Instagram engagement. Follow these steps to work in harmony with Instagram’s algorithm and watch your likes, followers, shares and engagement increase!

In March 2016, the powers that be at Instagram decided to implement an algorithm which they believed would help users with the exponential growth of photos and videos that were being shared, with the aim of helping organise content more effectively. They stated that users on average were missing 70% of their feeds.

“To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.

The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimising the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”

The algorithm was meet with mixed reviews – mostly negative and some undesirable effects. A chronological feed requires little-to-no guesswork (all you have to worry about is posting when your audience is most active), algorithm-based feeds can be influenced by a variety of different factors, for example, how long people spend viewing your posts or the “genre” or type of content people engage with.

And while Instagram has continued to justify this change as a way to show people more content that they’re interested in, some have speculated a more calculated motive — that it’s a way to force mores businesses to boost their Instagram posts or implement instagram ads.

However, in March 2019 Instagram announced a makeover to the algorithm:

“Based on your feedback, we’re also making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed. With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about. So if your best friend shares a selfie from her vacation in Australia, it will be waiting for you when you wake up.”

The first change is the addition of “New Posts” button that allows users to manually refresh their feeds. This addition came as a result of users complaining that their feeds would refresh unexpectedly when scrolling.

Although the chronological feed is not back, the new change means that the very old content doesn’t constantly get bumped up in people’s feeds. It prioritises newer content.

The second change is much more important. According to the announcement, the new Instagram algorithm is now going to give more weight to when something is posted, and will prevent old posts from showing high up in your feed.

There are a number of facts that influence the algorithm, including how much engagement a post gets and how long people spend viewing a post.

With the recent change, Instagram has essentially shifted the importance (or weight) of these factors so that the time that people post has more influence on what appears on your feed.

As a result, if you want to have a work-around the Instagram algorithm in 2019, you need to optimise your posting time for when the majority of your followers are online.

It also means that businesses may need to post more frequently. Since older posts aren’t going to appear anymore, businesses will need to create fresh content more often in order to be seen on their followers’ feeds.

Other ideas on how to improve your Instagram engagement levels.

Changing algorithms, new ad options, new functionalities – the constant changes in the social media landscape can be hard to stay on top of, and causes headaches for many organisations.

In a survey by Sensai,
of respondents shared that managing social media channels is harder than filling out income tax paperwork.

 

The top 6 social media marketing challenges we see for businesses

• Facebook algorithm changes
• Rising ad costs
• Getting noticed in overcrowded feeds
• Too many trends/changes to keep up with
• Not enough people and resources
• Not understanding how to measure results

Source: Sensai

Benefits of Social Media Training

• No more ad-hoc social media activity
• Clear, strategic and measurable social media marketing
• Confidence that you are maximising your social media efforts
• Control your share of the conversation without letting your competitors dominate
• Boost staff motivation and morale by developing their skills and knowledge in Social Media

Have you considered Bespoke in-house social media training tailored to meet the requirements of your organisation?

We want to help you become self-sufficient with social media. If you train with us, we’ll give you the confidence, knowledge and practical skills you need to grow. Investing in social media training now will ensure your business does not get left behind.

From building a strategy to what to post and how to analyse results, this training will help you to find new clients, provide support and interact positively with existing and potential customers.

We deliver in-depth courses which give you a blend of best practice, strategy, practical exercises, guides, planning, discussion and Q&A.

We offer in-house training and workshops and Philippa is often engaged as a keynote speaker. Here is some of our feedback.

 

 

 

Facebook’s Newsfeed has been declining in organic reach for number of years now but in January this year Mark Zuckerberg officially announced that “users will see less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.” This is a major update to Facebook’s algorithm and all organisations using Facebook as a marketing tool need to rethink their posting strategy. Here are some tactics to help mitigate this update.

• At the end of a post request an action such as liking, sharing, or commenting below with something.(use this tactic sparingly)
• Respond to every single comment, preferable with ANOTHER question for the commenter to make them comment again.
• When you respond to comment, tag the person in it for extra notification on their homepage.
• Click “like” on every comment, even your own.
• Try to include a catchy image on the post. Simple images work best.

Essentially you want to make it appear there’s a ton of “activity” happening on your post, and Facebook will reward this with preferential placement in people’s Notification Centre and Newsfeed.

When you post updates on your business’s Facebook Page, your followers will potentially see those updates in their News Feeds. Each user’s News Feed is like the front page of a personalised newspaper. It includes recent popular updates both from their personal Facebook friends and from the businesses they follow.

You may think that when you gain a new fan for your business Facebook Page that they will automatically see your posts in their timeline. In fact, they are highly unlikely to see any of your posts. Just because someone has “liked” your page doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to see your updates when they log onto Facebook. In fact, Facebook says that, on average, only a very small percentage of your fans will see any given update.

Back in 2013 Facebook began this process “Our goal is to show the right content to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them. As part of that we want to make sure that the best quality content is being produced, surfaced and shared. Our latest update to the News Feed ranking algorithm helps ensure that the organic content people see from Pages they are connected to is the most interesting to them.”

Facebook has become incredible complex, employing sophisticated algorithms to determine what is quality content. Updates that users have “liked,” shared with their friends, or commented on, will be displayed more often. In other words, the more popular the content is, the more likely your fans will see it.

That’s why your job is not only to post content regularly, but figure out what kinds of updates will get your fans to do something. The more you can inspire your fans to click “Like” on your updates, to leave comments, or to click “Share” to spread your words to their friends, the better your “reach” numbers will be. To show up in as many users’ newsfeeds as possible your content must be fresh, engaging, current and compelling. Then it becomes a cycle; the benefit of having a ‘popular’ post is that your subsequent posts will have an increased likelihood of being shown.

Not all interaction by users is considered equal. Facebook ranks each of the engagement measures with a different weighting.

On the other side, if you post low engaging content or worse content that attracts negative feedback such as the user hides the posts, hides all posts or unlikes your Page, this will have a negative impact on your future posts with a lower reach. You need to be regularly checking your engagement in Facebook’s analytics to see what is and what isn’t working.

Detail in Your Facebook Marketing Strategy How to Get Around Declining Organic Reach

Your Page strategy should detail how you are going to produce high quality content and your process for optimising for engagement and reach. Here are some tips to utilise when creating your posts:

• Make your posts timely and relevant (use Facebook Insights to see when your Fans are online)
• Build credibility and trust with your audience
• Ask yourself, “Would people share this with their friends or recommend it to others?”
• Think about, “Would my audience want to see this in their News Feeds?”
• Visual Content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media channels than non-visual content
• Ask questions with ‘true / false / yes / no’ answers
• Go LIVE – use Facebook’s Live tool as this will have more organic reach than just an image or video linked from Youtube
• Other ideas about how to generate Facebook engagement

Of course, for any important messages – you need to pay.

If you need more assistance with your Facebook strategy and understanding how to get the most out of it, you can join a group training session or have a private training scheduled with an expert in Facebook.

Want to add an extra touch to your social posts/tweets or bios? You can adorn these with special characters. The main reasons for doing so is that they stand out amid text on crowded social channels and secondly, they can say a lot without eating up your character limits.

Here are ways to use them in social posts:

• In a call to action, you can suggest your audience ☎ (call) or ✉ (email).
• Use a ✔ (checkmark) or ★ (star) to add visual prominence.
• Drive attention to a link with an arrow like this one:

Special characters can also be useful in other places. No need to include in title tags as they won’t show up in Google search results but you can add them to social media profile bios, like Cre8ive’s Instagram account:

Where can you find them? A fast way to find and add special characters is to use CopyPasteCharacter. This site has hundreds of characters to choose from.

As from 19 July 2017, Facebook removed the ability to edit previews on LINK posts which is when you link to other websites in your post. When you do this type of update, Facebook will fetch this page’s information to display a title, description and image. Previously you could change the image and copy that appeared however now Facebook has stopped this to help limit the spread of false news.

 

If you want a specific image to appear you will now have to create a photo carousel, see example. The size is now 1080×1080 pixels.

 

If you want to link a Facebook post to your website, try to keep your web images as close to 1.91:1 aspect ratio as possible to display the full image in News Feed without any cropping. Use images that are at least 1200 x 630 pixels for the best display on high resolution devices.

 

However, if you are a publisher, Facebook is rolling out a new feature, called “Link Ownership.” It’s a new tab under Publishing Tools and is mostly only available for media pages. If you have access to this feature you will need to act fast as you only have until 12 September to active this feature.

 

Facebook’s official announcement states:
“On September 12, 2017 we will complete the feature removal such that publishers’ Page(s) will only be allowed to edit links from website domains they have authorised with the link ownership tool.”

The ability to ‘claim’ Link Ownership requires placing a piece of code on your website and then they are able to edit their OWN links – not other’s.

1. Receive Notifications from Competitor Content

It’s vital that Brands measure their efforts against the competition to know what’s working and things that could improve. One way you can do this on Instagram is to track what content your competitors publish on a regular basis. This information can be used as inspiration for future posts.
To do this you will first make sure you have Push Notifications enabled for Instagram. Then go to your Instagram and find a post of the Brand you want to track and click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and you will see a list of options – select the last one ‘turn on post notifications’

 

2. ‘Hide’ Your Hashtags

Every Instagram post you create can be accompanied by a short message or caption and a few hashtags. The hashtags help organise and categorise photos and video content, which aids the process of content discovery and optimisation. It’s better to use the top Instagram hashtags that have an engaging community behind them and are specific to your audience.

Hashtags work well in Instagram – not only do hashtags help spread awareness but they can get your audience engaged. However, some of the general hashtags can be a little boring for users and many brands have simply hidden their unbranded hashtags to avoid taking up too much real estate. Easily hide your additional hashtags by adding a second comment with the tags or by following these steps:

1. Click the 123 button on your mobile keyboard (iOS).
2. Click return and add either a period, dash or bullet.
3. Hit return again and repeat the process a few times to hide your message (Instagram hides after three).

3. Use Hashtags to Drive Engagement

Instagram hashtags are one of the best ways to grow your Instagram account. Using the right hashtag (or combination of hashtags) can help you expose your brand to large and targeted audiences. In fact, your chances of attracting new followers, getting more likes and increasing engagement are increased by the use of hashtags.

Keep in Mind

·  Numbers are allowed in hashtags. However, spaces and special characters, like $ or %, won’t work.
·  You can only tag your own posts. You can’t tag other people’s photos/videos.
·  You can use up to 30 tags on a post. If you include more than 30 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.

4. Develop Branded Hashtags

A branded hashtag is a hashtag that’s unique to your business. It can be as simple as your company name, tagline or the name of one of your products or campaigns. Or it can be a hashtag that has nothing to do with your brand name, but has everything to do with your brand identity.
While community hashtags are meant to increase the reach of your message, branded hashtags are designed to connect themes for you and your audience.

A great example is Lululemon’s #thesweatlife

After you tag your post with a hashtag, you’ll be able to tap the hashtag to see a page that shows all photos and videos people have uploaded with that hashtag.

5. Make Your Bio Link Dynamic

You get one clickable link in your Instagram account, but you can change it as many times as you please. Instead of using your home page URL and never touching it again, use the link in your bio to promote your latest content or special promotions.

6. Geotag Content for Higher Engagement

To get your content in front of a larger audience, it’s smart to geotag your images and videos. Users commonly scope tagged locations to follow other people in the same area. By tagging multiple areas with your various content, you spread out your social casting net. But do tag locations where the content belongs.

7. Insert Line Breaks in Your Bio & Captions

Have you ever scrolled through your Instagram feed and noticed a post with an extremely long caption, without any line breaks? Chances are you kept scrolling without giving it a second look.
Hit and then 123 and return button appears!

8. Resize Photos for Instagram

Do you have a photo that you took a while back that would be perfect for Instagram? Don’t just rush to post it. First, make sure that it’s sized and correctly cropped. You can do this manually by cropping your pictures to fit Instagram’s dimensions, but a better solution is to use Landscape.
Landscape is a free tool that resizes your photos to fit perfectly on Instagram and other social networks.

The Facebook-owned photo and video sharing app announced late April 2017 that it reached a huge 700 million users.

It took six months for the app to reach 600 million monthly users in December 2016 and added the last 100 million new monthly active users in the past four months only. To put that in perspective, Instagram took 28 months to reach its first 100 million back in 2013.

Instagram has been aggressively rolling out new features in its battle to compete with rival Snapchat. Back in August 2016, Instagram debuted ‘Stories‘, a near carbon copy of Snapchat’s Stories, which had gained a huge following and threatened Instagram’s grip on users. This move has proved to be a success and has come at Snapchat’s expense. Snapchat saw its growth plummet 82% since Instagram launched Stories.

That feature now has 200 million Instagrammers on board, compared to Snapchat’s 161 million users.

With Instagram Stories, you can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools that will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid or in feed.

The Instagram base is now twice the size of Twitter and 200 million ahead of LinkedIn – if your business isn’t represented on Instagram it might be time to get on board.

On the 22 March 2017 Facebook announced that users can now broadcast live video from their desktop or laptop computers. Previously the Facebook Live tool was only available on your smart phone or through third party tools.

How to Broadcast on Facebook Live from your desktop without using Third Party Tools

To get started on your live broadcast from a computer, click “Live Video” from the top of your News Feed or Timeline, then follow the prompts to add a description and choose your audience.  You will need to download streaming software in order for this to work.

New Streaming Software

Facebook has stated with this new Facebook feature “People can seamlessly share their screens, insert graphics, switch cameras, or use professional equipment in Facebook Live videos. They also have the option to broadcast to Facebook Groups they belong to, Facebook Events they’re part of, or Facebook Pages they manage.”

Before you can live stream to Facebook, you’ll need to download streaming software.

Other Facebook Live Tools

There are various other new Facebook Live tools that you can use:

NEW eCamm Live. Only $29.95 one-time fee! Only for Macs, a desktop app that is easy to use, you can screen share, add media, add text, image overlays and can broadcast to your profile or your pages or groups. However, it doesn’t allow you to set up scenes in advance, can’t bring in guests, doesn’t allow you to stream to multiple platforms, no integration with Facebook Events pages, and you can’t schedule live broadcasts.

Third party apps:
BeLive.tv = currently in FREE public beta! Contains Q&A mode where you can display viewer questions and 2-person interview mode; talk-show mode coming.
BlueJeans Network = multi-person video conferencing (up to 100, unlimited on Facebook Live) with desktop and media sharing. $39.95/mo
Zoom Video Communications = multi-person video conferencing (up to 50, unlimited on Facebook Live) with desktop and media sharing. Starting at $54.99/mo
Open Broadcaster Software = Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Download and start streaming quickly and easily on Windows, Mac or Linux.