The whole point of your content is to be relatable for your audience. Sometimes you might want to post outside your niche, and your engagement can plummet. Although it’s good to experiment, you need more insight into what’s working and what’s not.
Build a Community
Get into a rhythm with your engagement. Spend around 30 minutes to 1 hour commenting and liking posts. Engage with your followers by replying to comments on your posts. This is how you create superfans who keep returning to support you, spiking your engagement rate.
Lois Banks: “Community posts are important to acknowledge followers. Hence why I have “Women Wednesday” on stories to give them a voice.”
Another example is when you hit milestones, like reaching 2,000 followers. Share a post thanking your community for their encouragement and a caption dedicated to them. Add a teaser for how you plan to keep growing – keep them on their toes.
Did you know: Posting consistently increases your engagement rate by 50%? What are the odds…
Use Stories
You don’t need to post every day, but showing up on stories is an easy way to keep active. In fact, 42% of people use Instagram stories daily. Have conversations with your followers, find out about them, their hobbies and whatnot. Above all, make sure stories have a purpose – even if they’re off-the-cuff.
If you’ve got a case of Creative Blockitis, ask your audience what they’d like to see. Put out a poll or a question box to get some ideas (and direction). Interaction results in long-term engagement.
Insta Live
Going live on Insta sends a notification to everyone following you. It’s a way of saying “Hey, remember me?”. This bumps you up to the start of the stories bar on people’s home pages.
Top tip: collaborate with another creator to be seen by their community and triple your reach.
You could run a Q&A for 30 minutes weekly (engaging your community). Or speak on a topic that your followers have voted on. Keep it fresh, make it fun.
Carousel Posts
Carousel posts (usually between 6-10 slides) offer better engagement rates – almost 20% more than a single-photo post. This feature encourages people to swipe through, increasing the time spent engaging with your account.
You can mix photos and videos, which increases engagement rate by 2.33% per post. Or create an educational info pack (being careful to avoid information overload.) Before and after shots or tutorials demonstrating correct vs. incorrect exercise form are great to embed here.
Top Tip: When you create carousel posts, use the same template, font, brand colours and add a watermark. This makes your content easily distinguishable. Opt for a 1080 x 1350 pixel template (width x height). Make your first slide super eye-catching!
Run a Monthly Content Audit
As mentioned, your page insights are integral to what and how you post. It’s a FREE way to understand what your A* content is, what your audience like and when your followers are most active. (Hint: this tells you when to post.)
Livi Pilkington: “Test your content. If you’ve spent hours creating something and it flops, create iterations. Different things to try changing include: textual hook, visual hook, editing, content and CTAs.”
Check the analytics of all posts monthly to see what performed best and what flopped. Deep dive into what you can repurpose and what performed poorly to avoid that in the future. Set aside 1 hour each month.
Key Takeaways
Despite what you may think, it’s easier now to grow on Instagram than 10 years ago. As long as you post at the right time, share the right content and follow the right trends, you’ll skyrocket.
As expert George says; “Move your view on quality. Quality no longer means Hollywood-style production. It’s the quality value you bring, does your post provide information or spark emotion? Create a list of questions to ask yourself when creating your posts.”
