What is engagement?
This is the number of people that engage with your content, including likes, follows, shares and comments.
What does engagement tell you?
It’s a great indication of how relevant your content is with your followers and the kind of posts they want to see on your feed. You can use it to measure the success of your posts and to create more targeted content in the future. It’s also a great way to get to know your followers, what they’re interested in and the content they want to see.
How do I measure engagement?
I look at my Instagram insights every week to see which posts have the most engagement and it’s really useful for creating new content ideas. To access this you’ll need to change to a business profile via your settings. I would recommend recording your insights every week in a spreadsheet so that you’ll be able to see spikes and trends over time. If your stats are going up then you know you’re doing a good job!
How to calculate your engagement rate
Your engagement rate will give you a percentage of engagement for a single post. The average engagement rate on Instagram is 4.7%, so if your post is performing better than that then you know its captured your audience.
There are a few different methods and calculations people use but I’m going to share with you the easiest and most common one. To calculate your engagement rate you need to add up the total engagements, likes, comments, shares and saves for that post. You can find this number on your Instagram insights to save you time! You then divide this number by your following and times it by 100 to get your engagement rate.
This is great for bloggers who have worked on sponsored content as you can show the brand how well your post performed. Just be aware that the more followers you have the lower your engagement rate will be. It’s worth figuring out your average by using the calculation on a group of posts to get a better idea of their performance.
How to get more engagement on your posts?
Build Your Community
This is the most important part of growing on Instagram, your community is everything and you need to connect with them. Start by finding accounts that are similar to yours, interact with their content, comment on their posts and get involved in your chosen community. You can also find accounts that are similar to yours and engage with the people that are engaging with those posts. This is a great way to find people in your niche.
Create Clever Content
By using the insights on Instagram you’ll know what type of content will get you the best reaction. You need to use this as the building block for new ideas while constantly looking at how your audience is responding. You can also look at your competitor’s posts to see what’s working for them.
Post Consistently
The algorithm will favour your account if you’re consistent and it’s important that you’re popping up in peoples feeds enough that they remember you. You also want to stay consistent in your message, your niche and your tone of voice. This will help your audience to get to know you and will help to establish you as an expert in your niche. The more regularly people see you in their feed the more likely they are to comment and engage with you.
Use The Right Hashtags
Using the right hashtags is so important as it will help to get your posts in front of the right people. Try to avoid huge hashtags like #fashion as you’ll get lost in the giant stream of posts. Instead, do your research and find niche hashtags with a more engaged audience. For example, there’s one called #sundaystyleedit that’s a really engaged group of fashion lovers, with bloggers who run the hashtag and share their favourite looks each week. You could even start your own hashtag and ask people to get involved. Start by looking for hashtags that are smaller than 500,000 in your niche.
Reply To Every Comment
If someone comments on your post it shows that they’re invested in your content and that it appeals to them. Make sure you reply, strike up a conversation and get to know them. The more you interact with your audience the more you’ll show up in their feed. You’ll also have a better understanding of who they are and what they want to see. Social media is about building relationships so you must get to know your audience.
Include A Call To Action
Sometimes giving people a nudge in the right direction is all you need to get some more engagement. For example, asking people questions, letting them know about your blog post, pointing them to a new piece of content or just asking them to tag a friend. You don’t want to be needy with this though so try and integrate it into your caption so that it’s genuine.
Utilise Stories To Stay On Peoples Feed
If your feed is very stylised then stories are a great way to show more personality. It’s also a great tool for hobby bloggers who are struggling to make enough content for their feeds! Instagram stories are built for engagement with features like gifs, polls and questions. Make sure you’re utilising these tools and keep the conversation going in your DMs when you get a reply.
Engage at the same time that you’re posting
This is something that I’ve started doing recently and that I think really works. I basically engage with all the new content on my feed before I post a picture and then once it’s live I make sure to reply to peoples comments and engage with them. When your post goes live the algorithm works to see how relevant it is to your audience and whether it should show the content to more of your followers. By commenting back and boosting the engagement on your post it will help to get it more reach and therefore more engagement!
Post ideas that will get you engagement?
Trending Posts
Getting involved in trending posts can help you to reach a new audience in a very engaged group. These posts are essentially relevant, in the moment content that relates to a trending topic. The most recent example of this is the pillow challenge, where people have been creating outfits out of pillows during quarantine. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you have to move quickly with these trends and post your content while people are still talking about it.
Shareable Content
The best way to grow your account is to create content that people will want to share. This could be tips and advice, a great outfit someone wants to copy or a quote. This will put your content in front of all your follower’s followers so that you can reach a wider audience that’s still in your niche.
Videos
Videos are a lot more engaging and tend to hold peoples attention for longer. It’s also good to switch up the type of content you’re posting so that your audience has something new to interact with. Posting videos of yourself is also a great way for your audience to get to know you.
Pictures Of You
Pictures of people get a lot more engagement so definitely post some selfies! It doesn’t just have to be of your face though, you can include holiday snaps, outfit pictures or mirror pics.
Behind The Scenes
Behind the scenes posts work really well as they give your audience a better understanding of who you are as a business. I posted a video of me taking my outfit pictures on my @stylerarebit page and it gots lots of engagement while providing my audience with more of an insight into how I create my content.
Giveaways
This is an obvious one but a really good tip is to ask your followers to comment on something specific. For example, if you ask them to tag a friend in your giveaway ask them to add something else too, like a piece of advice. This will create comments that you can reply to which will boost the engagement and the reach of your competition post.
Feedback
You can use Instagram as a focus group for your brand or blog by asking your followers for feedback. Not only will this help you to understand what they want to see but it’ll encourage them to start a conversation on your post.
Quick tips
- Always think about your tone of voice and brand image – you want to keep it consistent!
- Not every post will be a super post so don’t be hard on yourself. Just keep watching your insights and making a note of what worked.
- Try switching up your caption length, often longer captions help you to tell more of a story that will engage your followers.
