Engagement means to engage, attract, attract, or hook. In Marketing, it refers to the degree of commitment that users feel towards our brand, what makes our content interesting can determine that a post goes viral or converts a simple viewer into a customer.
In social networks and especially in Instagram, engagement is measured by the number and quality of user interactions with our publications, especially the comment.
Instagram has had such a meteoric growth that at least 85% of large companies and brands already have an Instagram account and use it as part of their marketing strategy.
Its more than one billion users and the activity they generate on the web, have made it a means to reach consumers and obtain information regarding their needs and interests in a straightforward way.
In the face of so much competition, it is necessary to stand out to “hook” the audience.
Strategies to improve engagement
It is possible to create and promote that “commitment” of the followers with your image, when your publications like your publications, share your interests, philosophy and values, feel identified with what you offer and want to share it with other users.
Therefore, they not only follow you, but they also recommend, mention and help you spread your message.
Next, I present you the strategies that work and will help you conquer your audience, that they stay with you and your brand, in addition to growing the number of your followers:
Time
You must dedicate time to your profile, make it attractive to the users you want to attract, large companies usually delegate this function to the Community manager.
As you grow old enough to have yours, you will need to make sure that:
Your profile, or that of your brand on Instagram, is accessible (public)
- The image of the same is related to the brand
- The writing of the bio describes what the company does and what services it provides
- Description of the products you offer
- How to contact or locate you
- If you have any page or website
The most successful profile of a company on Instagram is Natgeo, with 78.8 million followers, see how it looks:
“Life is an adventure – enjoy the journey and the world through the eyes of National Geographic photographers.”
Research
Creating a profile on Instagram is very simple; however, building it to achieve the interaction and engagement of your audience goes beyond publishing beautiful and quality images. It is necessary to define the content that you will post for your followers.
For this you must know who you are addressing:
- What motivates or worries them
- What they like or dislike
- What do you want to see or what do you want to know about
- How your product or service can help them meet their needs
- What is your lifestyle
With this in mind, you can design the theme of your profile and type of publications to captivate the indicated followers.
Frequency of publication
This aspect is essential to get your followers and the audience in general interested, if you take great photos and videos and publish them from time to time, you will not be able to maintain the interest of your audience.
You must set a frequency of publication to your followers besides quality also have variety and frequency; they know what to expect from your profile. Working with an editorial calendar where you establish content and deadlines will help you to maintain the attention you want.
The most successful accounts publish daily, are active and know the times of their followers, the hours of greatest connection, those that do not interfere with their daily study and work activities.
There are useful applications and websites to schedule your content and posts and save time that you can spend interacting with your followers, which brings us to the next point.
Interaction
It is the most effective strategy to increase engagement, interacting with your followers on Instagram can take you where you want.
In addition to responding to your comments or likes to give photos of your followers and other users, repost or rescheduling photos and videos, you find it interesting not only for yourself but also for your audience.
It would be best if you invited them to action in your posts. How?
Describe your posts to complement and include emojis (emojis “move”) and what you want your audience to do when viewing your photo or video.
Ask yourself questions, invite them to reflect, participate, give their opinion on a topic, and mention other users with content relevant to the topics you discuss in your profile. Interaction contributes to engagement.
Many companies and brands invite their followers to publish their photos using their products, with specific hashtags to encourage their participation; sometimes, they offer prizes, discounts, gifts to motivate their audience.
Another option that they often put into practice is to invite their followers to tag someone who enjoys the brand or want to recommend their products or services. This strategy, accompanied by a rather entertaining content, does not fail when it comes to getting diffusion and being remembered.
Feedback
In literal terms, feedback is part of the communication process in which an exchange of data, information, etc. is carried out.
Maintain communication with your followers is a key part of the strategy to enhance engagement with your Instagram profile.
You can select the best photos or videos taken by your followers, post them on your profile, mention them, and thank them for their participation to reward their commitment.
Hashtags and location
In addition to using text and emojis to accompany your photos and videos, hashtags or tags allow you to reach other users linked to the tags you added.
Research, which is the most popular hashtags in your city or region, what you can add to your posts to increase your area of influence on Instagram.
Although you could include up to 30 of these keywords preceded by the “pound” symbol, experts suggest that three to seven is a good number so as not to overwhelm your audience and lose their interest in an excessively long text.
Another good idea is to try to create, innovate, and boost your hashtags related to your products, services, or the emotions that you hope to awaken in your customers and followers.
On the other hand, the location can increase engagement by up to 50%. Adding your location will allow you to make yourself known among the potential and the geographically close public you want to capture.
Content Theme
Whether related to relevant ephemeris for your audience or seasonal or seasonal publications, (Valentine’s Day, Holidays, Christmas, Planet Day, Children’s Day, father and mother)
Establishing publications and thematic content within your editorial calendar will allow you to make your audience feel that you are aware of what is happening in the environment. You are also in tune with their interests.
You can also allocate specific days to share unique content such as images of your clients, the history of your venture, practical advice of a general nature to solve everyday issues, as long as they are related to your profile.
If you promote a food product, you can share a recipe using your product, if you are a lawyer, some general legal advice may be useful to many of your followers.
Photos or videos?
Some studies indicate that with videos, it is possible to increase the emotional bond with the followers. This is essential to improve the commitment of the followers with your account.
Other studies show that user interaction is higher with photos; perhaps because they consume less time and data.
With this in mind, you should consider both possibilities in your strategy to improve the engagement of your Instagram account, but with an emphasis on photos.
Over time and studying the statistics of your account, you could establish the amount of content in images and videos ideal for your followers, and the kind of publications that generate more interaction with other users.
Follow Influencers
Following prominent and successful accounts in your area of influence and your followers can contribute to a greater connection with the audience.
Using free or paid applications such as Sprout Social and Social Rank, you can analyze the statistics of your followers and determine which profiles are the most committed to your account on Instagram. You can also follow the comments related to your posts and determine the hashtags that work best.
Convey emotions
A common aspect of the posts with the most likes and comments on Instagram is that they convey emotions to the audience.
When we succeed in moving our audience, we make them feel identified with our content and want to see more. We will have generated the confidence that you will always find messages on our profile that you want to see.
If you know your followers, it will be easy for you to identify their characteristics, interests, needs and translate that into photos and videos that help you see how our products and services can help you improve their quality of life.
Motivational content is the one that generates the most interactions. It is important to include this type of content with which our audience identifies in our publications.
To boost user interaction, you can ask them to like the post if they feel identified, or mention a friend who might like the photo or video. Encourage your followers to share your post if they liked it.
The interactions are also well received by your followers.
Of course, you want your followers to leave comments, share your publications and get a lot of likes. You know what?
Your followers too, spend a little of your time reviewing the profiles of those who follow you and return the favor, leave likes, comments and share. “Today for you tomorrow for me”. Treat your followers how you want to be treated.
Monitor your profile regularly
Measuring your statistics will help you optimize what you share. There are applications such as iconosquare, with which you can analyze the times of your publications, the interaction they generate, the best days to publish, who you follow, and who does not follow you, who has stopped following you, the number of likes per publication, the comments.
Regularly monitoring your activity on Instagram will serve to make the design of your profile more effective and efficient, better understand your audience and thus be able to captivate them and provide the content they want to see, reinforcing the link and engagement.
Take care of the quality of your images.
There are many apps on the market for cutting, retouching, adding effects, texts, creating collages, and different and creative ways to present the content with which your followers will fall in love.
Following successful accounts will allow you to take ideas and be inspired when taking your photos and videos. See what’s trending and adapt it to your personal style.
It is not about literally copying the style of other pages. Commitment is also built from consistency, developing a style that characterizes you and that your audience associates with your brand.
Share
Share the content on your other social networks like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and your personal profile. It will help you gain followers as you will have greater visibility.
This way, your other networks, and friends will be working for the visibility of the profile and improving your engagement.
Those users already know you, and it is very likely that, as in the other networks, they will follow you with interest on Instagram.
Final recommendations
There are those who attribute the success of Instagram to its predominantly visual content and its accessibility through mobile or Smartphone.
Video has become an important part of a proposal that was originally exclusively photographic, and the big brands have found in this an essential marketing opportunity. It is clear that videos like, sell and “move” their viewers.
Finally, some tips to keep in mind when preparing our editorial calendar:
Whenever relevant, try to occasionally include pictures of food.
Sex moves, so include attractive people in your photos, without excesses.
Human faces attract attention, and favor the creation of links, keep this in mind when taking your photos.
Include some Gif or animations
If you liked it, share.
The latter is not exactly a tip, and it is my request that you show me your engagement if you have found the information useful, you could also notify it by leaving a comment.
Would you help me by sharing on your social networks to reach more friends?