If you're interested in engagement from your posts then Instagram is an excellent options with over 4.2 billion posts liked daily by users on the platform. 50% of Instagram users follow at least one business, 60% say that they learn about a product or service on the platform and 75% of Instagram users take action, such as visiting a website, after looking at an Instagram post.
A study on social media that was conducted in 2016 reviewed how the top 50 global brands market on social networks. They evaluated 11.8 million user interactions on 2,489 posts made by 249 branded profiles and collected data on how top brands use each social network, how many followers they have collected, how often they post and how users interact with their posts. The findings show that the average number of Instagram followers for a top brand is now over 1 million which is almost five times higher than what it was in 2015. The top brands also now post 4.9 times per week on Instagram which in an increase of more than 50% from 2015.
1. Using The Right Hashtags
Instagram users can use hashtags to discover content and accounts to follow. The right hashtag or a combination of hashtags can expose your account to a large and also targeted audiences. By making yourself more discoverable on Instagram you have a better chance of attracting new followers, gaining more likes and increasing engagement. Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without.
To give you an idea of popular hashtags, this is the current top 20 hashtags on Instagram according to Websta:
1. #love (used 1,142,443,949 times)
2. #instagood (used 640,896,965 times)
3. #photooftheday (used 447,812,536 times)
4. #beautiful (used 141,762,866 times)
5. #fashion (used 413,048,166 times)
6. #happy (used 389,788,401 times)
7. #tbt (used 384,394,623 times)
8. #cute (used 382,816,002 times)
9. #likeforlike (used 356,773,573 times)
10. #followme (used 353,730,070 times)
11. #follow (used 338,775,550 times)
12. #picoftheday (used 335,551,447 times)
13. #me (used 330,976,962 times)
14. #summer (used 315,673,708 times)
15 #selfie (used 315,096,332 times)
16. #instadaily (used 290,298,946 times)
17. #friends (used 283,915,360 times)
18. #art (used 283,013,555 times)
19. #repost (used 270,685,116 times)
20. #girl (used 267,005,907 times)
Using popular tags like the ones listed above will likely attract additional engagement and likes, however, they will more than likely not lead to increased long-term engagement, new interested followers and if you're a business - new sales.
So what hashtags should you use? You can go on websites such as Tags For Likes which have the most popular hashtags for topics you can copy and paste into Instagram. Doing the appropriate research to ensure that you are using the most relevant hashtags that not only describe your brand but are also being searched for on Instagram will help people find your account that are interested in your content.
Keep in mind that Instagram only allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post and that popular words will change over time. Make sure that you revisit searching for hashtag keywords every few months so that you are maximising your potential of bringing new followers to your account.
If you have been posting to Instagram for a while and have missed out on using hashtags on your posts... Don't stress! You can still go back and post a comment with your newfound hashtags and watch the likes and followers roll in.
2. Use The Right Filters
The Instagram community respond to certain photo filters more favourably than others. If you use these preferred filters that can have an impact on your engagement.
There was a study recently undertaken by TrackMaven to see how filters affected engagement on Instagram accounts. This study found that Mayfair, no filter and Inkwell drove the most interaction.
You can use websites such as Iconosquare to review the performance of your own account to understand what is and is not currently working for you.
3. Post At The Right Time
You should always consider the timing of your posts. If you have a business Instagram account you can view the analytics to understand when is peak engagement for your posts.
If you have a personal account you can use Iconosquare to get a detailed analysis of your posting history vs engagement. This report will also highlight the best times of the day and days of the week to post content. The dark circles in the graph below indicate when you usually post on social media and the grey circle shows when your followers have been interacting. The biggest light gray circle shows the best times for you to post.
You may want to consider using a scheduling program to schedule posts during your peak periods. There are programs such as ScheduGram (which is paid) which do this for you.
4. Steal Your Competitors Followers
One of the best ways to find and attract new followers is to seek out accounts that are similar to yours in content and engage with their audience. These people already show some level of interest in your content as they follow similar accounts. The more work you put into this method, the more followers and return engagement you will get back.
The three types of engagement on Instagram are:
- Follow a user
- Like a photo
- Comment on a photo
5. Sponsored Posts and Product Reviews
Taking advantage of influencer marketing on Instagram exposes your account to a wider audience. Unlike the above tactics this one isn't free but if done correctly, it is worth the money.
To begin you will need to make a list of Instagram accounts with a large following in your niche. For instance if you are in the travel industry, you will want to find travel blogger accounts with a large following.
One of the best ways to locate the accounts is use some of the keywords for your hashtags you uncovered in the beginning of this post. You can use Webstagram to search for some of the keywords. Not only will it show you the related keywords but it will also show you the top Instagram accounts that feature those keywords.
Things to look for in the profiles:
- Large following (at least 20,000 followers)
- An email address in the profile
- A bonus if you look at their content and it looks like they already do sponsored posts.
If the profile has an email address then that usually indicates they are open to sponsored posts. You will need to email them to ask them their sponsored post pricing. The rate will increase with the more followers they have.
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