Instagram remains one of the best places to market your brand online, gain a loyal following, and build an invaluable community that supports your business. Engagement slumps, however, are inevitable. Here are some essential steps to taking your Instagram engagement to the next level.
Refine your Instagram bio
When you consider that your Instagram profile is effectively your brand’s homepage, having a well-structured, well-written bio becomes all the more important. Your bio, after all, is all you have to convince users to hit that blue “follow” button.
A good Instagram bio explains what your brand is, and what your business does. A good first step is to speak directly to your target audience. In this way, you’re sure to attract high-quality followers who are aligned with your brand and more likely to become customers!
Note that you only have 150 characters to play with in your Instagram bio, so be clear and succinct in your messaging.
Have fun with your posts
Instagram stories and posts inevitably take time and effort to get right, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun creating them. This is your chance to give your brand an authentic voice and be playful with your audience. Make sure to include some fun moments into your online messaging, and expect real returns in your audience engagement.
Maintain a schedule
There are countless studies that claim to know the best posting time for social media networks. Even so, there is no rule that you must post photos at the same time every day, or on the same day every week. Instead, make sure you post with consistency and frequency in order to keep your followers engaged.
Moreover, what you need to ask yourself is: what is my brand’s account known for? After you answer this question for yourself, you will have a much better grip on what you have to post.
Add a location to your posts
If you’re looking to boost your exposure, you absolutely must start tagging locations in your posts. Studies show that posts tagged with a location consistently achieve higher engagement rates, as they put your content in the way of users searching for posts in their neighborhood or city.
Reply to your DMs
This is an essential rule of engagement. Maintaining a relationship with your followers is vital, especially those who have taken the time to send you a message.
No matter how big or small your account is, be sure to spend adequate time listening and responding to both positive and negative feedback on your posts and in your inbox. This simple act of showing your followers that you’re taking the time to listen to them is essential to building a community and sustaining an online conversation about your brand.
Moreover, there is an added benefit to this: the more comments, likes, shares and DMs your posts get, the more likely they are to be ranked as quality content and displayed to a wider audience on the explore page. If you want to reach new users, it helps to keep your existing followers highly engaged!