Growing Your Brand’s Instagram Engagement – A Marketer’s Guide

Harnessing the power of social media has never been more important for brands than it is today. With so many platforms out there, it’s imperative for companies to engage with followers across social media, and to raise awareness of their presence in the marketplace. However, you can’t just expand to grow your social media engagement without planning a strategy in advance. 

For a start, you need to decide which platforms to use. And Instagram is becoming one of the top choices for all kinds of businesses and brands thanks to its huge level of engagement. Yet it isn’t always as easy as it may at first appear to attract a huge following, so how can you boost your engagement? 

Here are a few top tips to point you in the right direction. 

Use The Power Of Influencers

There are around 1.4 million global active users of Instagram, so that means there’s no shortage of potential followers for your brand. More than 50% of the most popular Instagram users have 100,000,000 followers. If you can come up with a strategy to allow your brand to tap into that influence, you can easily expand its reach. 

There are plenty of influencers out there that you can target, but it’s important to not only pay attention to the number of followers an influencer has. You should also look for influencers who have the same values as your brand and who are relevant to your target market. Choosing the right influencers for your brand is vital if you want to be confident of engaging with the right people who are likely to want to take advantage of your services and products. 

Use Tags, Hashtags, @Mentions, And Captions To Boost Engagement And Reach 

A good way of getting content before a wider audience is to use captions, tags, @mentions, and hashtags. These actions can all gain attention from other Instagram users. 

If you @mention another user within your caption or comments, you can attract their attention. Clicking on your own image and typing @ followed by the target account name means that your followers are able to visit the profile that you’ve tagged. Tagged and @mentioned users get an alert to tell them that they’ve featured in your content. 

Tagging several accounts represents an excellent way of getting people to see your content and engage with it. However, it’s important to avoid being spammy. Your content must still be relevant and valuable. 

Using hashtags is also very useful, although it’s best to avoid using more than five in a single post. A trial-and-error approach may be necessary to find out what will work best with your target audience. 

Expand The Types Of Content You Offer 

Originally, Instagram was all about images. Essentially, it was perfect for budding photographers who could grab their smartphone, take an image, use Instagram’s filters, and post it with an amusing caption and some hashtags. Now, things have changed and Instagram has moved on considerably into the modern age. Now, it’s possible to not only upload images, but also to post videos in no less than four formats, with one of them being live streaming. 

When it comes to photos, Instagram has boosted its offering with regard to images too, allowing photographs to now be put into carousels which have been shown to get 1.4 times more reach as well as 3.1 times more engagement when compared with regular Instagram posts. 

Get Your Post Scheduling Right

It isn’t only important to post the right kind of content on Instagram to attract attention to your brand, you also need to choose the right time to post it. Scheduling correctly is key. Bear in mind that Instagram is most popular with users in the evening. 

People like to unwind after work by scrolling through their feeds, and as most people work in the daytime, it isn’t too easy to see why evening Instagram posts get the most engagement and interaction. 

Studies have revealed that the optimal time to post on Instagram is between 18:00 and 21:00. Meanwhile, the worst times to post are between 5 in the morning and 8 in the morning. Don’t forget that you should schedule some of your posts to be uploaded at the weekends too, particularly on Sundays since that has been proven to be the day that has the most engagement amongst users. 

It’s important to use the trial and error approach again with regard to choosing the right time to post. Your audience may have its own favourite times to scroll through their feeds. For example, if you provide business-related content, it’s possible your peak engagement hours may be during the day while your audience is in the workplace. 

Whatever is the best time for you to post to Instagram, make sure you stay consistent. Your audience will begin to wait for your posts to appear, and will find it irritating if their expected post never appears or is far later than they anticipated. 

Be Prepared To Adapt

One final thing to bear in mind when it comes to growing your brand’s Instagram engagement is the importance of adaptation. You cannot be truly successful in your efforts unless you stay on top of the progress you’ve made and make any necessary changes to suit what works and what doesn’t. Instagram has analytical tools of its own that can give you valuable insights into how your account is doing. 

You can see your reach, your followers, your engagement, and the performance of your Instagram ads quickly and easily. Staying on top of these metrics will enable you to monitor how well your Instagram marketing campaigns are going and which changes, if any, need to be put in place to see the results that you wish to observe. 

With all of the above tips in mind, you should be ready to maximise the potential of your brand’s Instagram campaign and truly harness everything that this social media platform has to offer.