Instagram is a powerful tool for brands to build their community, improve customer sentiment, and generate leads. However, growing an Instagram account can be challenging, and getting your audience interested in your content is not always easy. Luckily, we have some tricks to help you maximise your engagement rate!
Tip 1. Leverage User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) can be a great way to build engagement and create a sense of community around your brand. To encourage people to create content with your product and mention your account, use these ideas:
- Make posts with every piece of content you’re mentioned in, and tag the author. This will help you start using UGC organically, surprising authors with such attention from your brand, and showing new visitors to your page that they have a chance to become a part of it. The more followers you have, the more attractive it is for customers to be mentioned in your account.
To keep your grid attractive and interesting for the rest of the audience, mix UGC with your branded content. Here is a great example of how one popular food place is doing this.
- Offer a special incentive, such as a discount or gift, to those who create content with your product. Keeping this offer permanent will help you maintain the engagement rate, customers’ interest and loyalty, and help you convert followers into the proper community. They will come back to you to buy more with the offer and will never stop generating content if they really like your product and find this offer attractive.
- Create short-term campaigns. Although strategically they are less effective in terms of permanent generation of UGC, they are more intensive and bring in more content in a certain period of time. Create them when a new product is launching or as a sales promotion, enhancing them with other advanced tools. Potentially, you can run such campaigns regularly to keep an audience interested and refresh your page with UGC on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Tip 2. Use Instagram Stories (Hyperactively!)
Instagram Stories are more interactive than posts and offer better results in terms of engagement and impressions, in recent years. While posts require more time to create, stories require consistency and activity, which can be challenging for your team. Nevertheless, strive to create as many stories as you can, never missing a day. Set a minimum of 5 stories per day, try keeping this frequency for a month, and you’ll be impressed with the results in your engagement rate!
Use interactive features, such as polls, quizzes, questions, and stickers – not only do users find them engaging, but Instagram itself rewards accounts that actively use all possible features and prioritizes them over others. By using these features, you can encourage followers to engage with your content and create a more personalized experience.
Stories are a great way to showcase behind-the-scenes content, daily routine, humour, and other honest content that can help humanize the brand and build a stronger connection with followers. Save them all into Highlights to provide new visitors to your page with a deeper understanding of what is typically going on here.
Tip 3. Collaborate with other brands or influencers
Collaborating with other brands or influencers is a powerful way to increase engagement and reach new audiences for a brand account. Although it takes more effort and resources to find and start such collaborations, they bring significantly greater results in the brand’s success on Instagram.
- Create sponsored content with influencers from your niche or industry, who have an audience you’re interested in. You can easily find dozens of such influencers using Companion.
- Cross-promote with other brands to reach new audiences. For example, a fitness apparel brand could collaborate with a healthy food brand to create content that appeals to their common audience.
- Host giveaways in collaboration with other brands or influencers by offering a valuable prize and requiring followers to engage with both brands’ Instagram accounts.
- Co-create content with other brands or influencers that appeals to your shared audience.
- Sponsor events and create a buzz around them on Instagram, encouraging followers to engage with both brands’ Instagram accounts.
If you need any help with this part of your strategy, try using Companion – influencer marketing tool that will make you a pro in influencer marketing, by doing all the heavy lifting automatically and leaving the most pleasant and creative part for you.
Tip 4. Use case studies and testimonials
Choose relevant case studies and highlight interesting and unique stories. This will encourage followers to engage with your brand and learn more about your products or services. You can share customer testimonials by telling real stories from satisfied customers and building trust with your followers.
High-quality visuals are crucial and make case studies more engaging, which increases the performance of such content. It is something you should invest in! Besides, pay attention to the captions, as they can be used to provide context, tell a story, and – most importantly – ask followers to engage with the content.
Tip 5. Focus on metrics
Instagram Analytics provides valuable insights into your audience and how they interact with your content.
- Analyse content performance and identify which posts generate the most engagement (monitor engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares). By understanding what types of content your audience responds well to, you can tailor future content to increase engagement rates.
- Identify the best posting times by analysing when your audience is most active on Instagram. Scheduling your posts for these times will bring you optimal engagement.
- Take into account the audience demographics, such as age, gender, and location, and adjust your content strategy to their preferences.
Growing engagement on Instagram is a long-term process that requires consistency, creativity, and a deep understanding of your audience’s preferences. By following these tips, using professional tools and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and changes on the platform, you can create a strong presence for your brand on Instagram and achieve its marketing goals.
So, start implementing these tips and watch your engagement rate soar!