Instagram is where over *500 million active daily users scroll through over 50 billion photos and videos. Every day over 500 million users look at Instagram stories – and in all this activity, they leave around 4.2 billions likes – per day. The audience is worldwide, the age is young (30% of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years and 35 % aged between 25 and 34 years), and businesses are on it, and probably you as well (63% of Americans use Instagram daily). So how do you get your posts to stand out to your audience? How can you get the MOST engagement from your content? Here are 5 ways to increase your engagement on Instagram:
1 – Use multiple images for more exposure
Instagram loves both photos and videos but multiple photos will give you a chance for more exposure. You can add up to 10 photos to a post. If someone sees your post on the first image and doesn’t react to it, Instagram will show your post to them again the next time they log in, most likely with the second image. But sometimes the algorithm will identify another image in the sequence to show them that it thinks that person is more likely to engage with. So you have double the chance to get exposure and engagement.
2 – Use color strategically
The color blue gets more engagement, so if you have something blue certainly use it to get more attention. When possible, use lighter more neutral backgrounds with a bold pop of color to stand out in the Instagram feed. That will get viewers to slow their scroll and pay more attention to your content.
3 – Show live subjects
People connect with people. Show somebody active in your photo. Realtors, if you are featuring a home, show someone sitting in a room or playing on the lawn. Get shots of clients receiving your services, or show someone holding or interacting with your product. You could shoot the image over someone’s shoulder. Or just show someone’s hand, or their feet propped on a chair.
The moment you add a human component to your creative, your engagement goes up.
Another favorite is animals. Everybody loves cute animals—puppies, kittens, rabbits, pigs, you name it. If you can incorporate an animal into your Instagram image, you’ll probably get more engagement.
4 – Don’t forget the captions
Captions are super-important for driving conversions so make sure you put some thought into them. First start with a strong sentence. Instagram captions are truncated in the feed with “… more” so people are really only reading the first two lines of your caption. If that doesn’t get their attention, they’ll simply scroll past your post. Think of your first sentence like a great blog post title or email subject header. Use capital letters. Add emojis. Do something to draw people’s attention to that caption so they tap on the “… more” and read the whole thing.
Additionally, consider adding hashtags to your caption. Hashtags are incredibly powerful for getting more exposure on your content.
5 – Branding Your Instagram Feed
You want to use consistently well-branded content that your audience will immediately recognize as yours when they’re scrolling through your feed. To do that, I suggest you use the same 2-3 similar filters in all of your Instagram images. You can also use consistent crops and angles that show your unique style. To capture the details of a home, a product or food, look at filters that have high saturation. Use saturated tones like in LARK or LO-FI to really bring out the contrast in the details of the home. If your brand is more vintage, filters like GINGHAM and SIERRA give a more antique look to your content that can also stay true to all of your branding. The important tip here is to keep a consistent look in your content and always use high quality images.
Pro Tip: Show Up Regularly on Instagram
If you’re actively engaged on the platform, Instagram will reward you with more reach. Make sure to log in at least once a day to like, comment, scroll, and watch a story or two because your positive time on the platform will result in more reach and exposure for your content. So don’t post and ghost; instead, show up regularly for your audience. It will help everyone in the long run.
If you’re working hard to create content on Instagram and feeling like your content isn’t going anywhere, try the tips above to optimize your images and captions for better results. These tips will help you improve the visual component of your posts, write more effective captions, and create a style your audience will recognize in the feed.
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*Data Source: Omnicore
