Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States. It can be an excellent place to market your small business and connect with your customers. Building an audience on Instagram relies heavily on the amount of engagement you get through your posts. Here are 10 tips to help you improve your Instagram engagement:
1. Create Valuable Content
Word-of-mouth can be a powerful tool in the marketing world. You want to create content that your customers will share with friends and family. Use your posts to give helpful tips, insightful information, or inspiring stories that grab your audience’s attention.
2. Master your Aesthetic
Because Instagram is an image-based platform, aesthetics go a long way. Share high quality photos and graphics through your page to both build and promote your small business’s brand.
3. Embrace Video Content
Instagram is currently prioritizing their Reels feature. Reels are a type of short-form video that you can edit in-app or upload from your preferred video editing software. Because Instagram is pushing this feature right now, you will get better engagement from using it than you will from posting photos alone.
4. Engage, Engage, Engage
As a viewer, commenting on a post with a question and getting no response can be frustrating. As a business, you should try to answer or interact with someone who is messaging you or commenting as quickly as possible. Instagram has notification settings you can set up to let you know as soon as someone messages or comments on your post. This will help you stay on top of customer feedback.
5. Use Hashtags and Location Tags
Hashtags and location tags are a great way to make your posts searchable. If someone follows a hashtag you use, you may end up on their feed. The more specific the hashtag, the closer you can get to your target audience. You can easily search the hashtags you want to use and see how many posts are already using it. A good rule of thumb is to pick a hashtag with 5,000 – 500,000 posts.
Location tags can help you get engagement and gain followers in your area. When using location tags, be mindful of how specific your tag is. Exact locations can help if you have a storefront or if you’re participating in an event, but if you are a business without a storefront, it may not serve the same purpose.
6. Be Creative with your Format
Over the years Instagram has evolved. There are now more ways to post on the platform than just sharing a single picture. There are carousel posts, Reels, Stories, and Lives (more on those here). Test out the different formats to see which ones best suit your business and your audience.
7. Produce Consistent Content
Consistency is key for building an audience on any social media platform. It also helps to keep you top-of-mind for your customers when they are looking for products or services like the ones you offer. By posting consistently, you will remind them about your business and they will be more likely to think of you when purchasing time comes.
8. Quality over Quantity
It is easier to lose an audience than it is to gain one. The content that you are producing is important. One way to test your content before posting is to show it to a few different people and see what their response to it is. If it doesn’t seem like the type of content they would interact with on Instagram, see if you can repurpose it for a different platform.
9. Post at the Right Time of Day
According to Adobe Express, the best times to post are Monday, Tuesday, and Friday at 11 am and Tuesday at 2 pm. The best day overall to post is on Tuesday, and the worst day to post is on Sunday. Take this into consideration, along with your target audience, and plan your posting accordingly.
10. Don’t Forget the Basics
It is important to put effort into making your account look legitimate rather than just focusing on your content. When people click on your account, they see the whole thing and not just the posts. Make sure that your profile picture and bio align with the values, vision, and tone of your business’s brand.
Bonus Tip: Call Bold River Marketing
Bold River Marketing offers social media management services to small businesses and non-profits. If you would like to grow an engaged audience on Instagram, we can help. Bold River Marketing can create quality content, manage posting schedules, and make sure your customers are responded to in a timely manner. Give us a call today!