Everybody wants to up their Instagram game in this digital age, and there are enough reasons why. Today, Instagram does not remain a social media platform where people just want to flaunt their vacation pictures, Instagram today means business, in every sense of it. And to run a business, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that the audience is aware of the same. How do you do that with Instagram, well, let’s discuss.
1. Proper Selection Of Hashtags
Selecting the right hashtags is something that has been talked about over time and the importance of the cannot be neglected. Now you might think that if this pointer has been discussed an awful lot of times and the audience is well aware of the importance of using hashtags, why would we bring it up again? The answer to this question is that because even though the audience realises that using hashtags is necessary for better engagement of the post or content, what we really need to focus on is the “type” of hashtags that we’re using. Yes, even the type of hashtags, namely long tail and short tail hashtags, can hugely affect the amount of engagement that your content garners.
Research has it that using long-tail hashtags makes your post more visible than using short tail hashtags. Why, we’ll know very soon, but first let us discuss what does long tail and short tail hashtag mean. Keywords that are a culmination of, say, three to four words that make the hashtag more specific are long-tail hashtags. On the other hand, a one=worded hashtag will be classified as a short-tail hashtag. For example, #tastyhomemaderecipes is a long -tail hashtag but #recipes is a short tail hashtag.
Now, if you look it up on Instagram, you will find that the number of posts associated with the hashtag recipes is way higher than those associated with #tastyhomemaderecipes. This means that the commoner your hashtag, the more chances of your post being pushed down and lost in the traffic soon. Hence, using specific long-tail hashtags that have fairly lesser number of associated posts can prove to be immensely helpful for increasing the engagement rate.
2. Engaging With Similar Accounts
If you own a business in the real world, as a businessman, you’re going to interact with other businessmen who you think can contribute something to your business. These businessmen are most likely to belong to your industry or an industry that is somehow related to yours. Similar is the case with the virtual world of Instagram. If you’re uploading content, then it surely belongs to some category. It can be food, it can be fashion, it can be entertainment and it can be something completely different. Whatever your account might get classified as, it is advisable for you to go and look out for related and similar accounts, follow them, like or comment on their posts, in order to drive that response back to your page. Just because you two are uploading the similar kind of content, or say, have similar interests, it is highly likely that you’ll end up with a follow back at least.
3. Figuring Out The Best Time To Post
As surprising as it is, but research has concluded that a certain genre of content receives a certain response if it is uploaded at a certain day of the week and at a certain time of the day. Now despite all the ‘certains’ that we have used here, the uncertainty of the kind of response or engagement that your post receives still remains. However, if you try and follow the combination of all the ‘certains’ that we discussed above (you can easily find it online, just google the best time to post for whichever category your content might belong to), pay close attention to the algorithm and see how is it working out for you, you might have just landed on a goldmine, if it’s working out well.
4. Making Use Of Stories
Instagram had come up with the feature of stories for a reason, and that reason is really important for you to know if higher engagement rate is what you are looking at. There are chances that once you upload, your post might not appear on the top of the Instagram feed of your followers, or appear too late – and for all you know, by that time, the person has already stopped scrolling and has closed the app. Too sad, there is nothing you can do about it. You may not have ‘upload worthy’ content ready with you every day, unless you have a brand management firm at your disposal that looks after your presence on social media (you can hire a Walnut Folks a brand management company in Mumbai to make things easier for you). However, you can always keep the audience posted with the little-little things that are happening in the day to day life of your brand and hence keep them informed and maintain a sense of proximity with the viewers.
5. Reply To Comments Asap
The best way to encourage the audience to interact with your posts is to interact with the audience. This is a golden rule and God it’s easy to remember! Whenever a viewer or a follower drops a comment on your post, be it a question, a feedback or a word of appreciation, make sure that you reply to the comment at the earliest. Same goes with your DMs too. Be polite, type correctly, pay special attention to your choice of words (and, uhm, grammar!) and try your best to respond quickly. This is not to say that you keep waiting looking out for someone to drop a message or a comment so you could hop on the chance and reply as quickly as possible. You need to strike a fine balance between quality and quickness.
6. Write Better/Longer Captions
Just like hashtags, this pointer is overdone, but we will still do it, because it is important. Writing quality content has always garnered a higher response or engagement rate for anyone who develops content, and the same applies to Instagram captions as well. However, here’s the thing with writing longer captions. One of the factors which decides how your post performs on Instagram is the ‘time spent on the post’. And longer captions mean more time spent on the post. More time spent on the post means higher engagement due to higher placement of the post by the Instagram algorithm. No rocket science, just better and longer captions!
Keeping the above pointers in mind, you’ll definitely be nailing it with the whole engagement rate game. So, go ahead and build some mind-blowing campaign, and if you incorporate everything that’s written above, then congratulations, you’ll soon become an Instagram sensation that people look up to for some awesome digital marketing techniques!
