What is Instagram Engagement and How Does it Work?

It is quite basic to make use of statistics to check whether your social media strategy is working properly or not. If you are looking to market your website or app on social media then you cannot ignore the power of Instagram which is one of the top social media platforms currently. It is important to understand the working of Instagram algorithms and techniques that can help your business and brand gain popularity on this platform. Based on this, let us learn a bit more about Instagram engagement and the working process of Instagram engagement.

What is Instagram Engagement?

Instagram engagement rate is a measurement of the loyalty level of your followers on this social media platform. It is not about the number of followers or fans that your page or profile has, but it is all about the level of involvement that they have with your brand. It is about the interaction and interest that your followers have towards your videos, photos, content, or Instagram stories that are added by you on this social network.

If you are managing your social media account on Instagram, you will be aware of the situation that some networks provide analysis tools for users to keep a check on the success of a marketing campaign. But quantifying Instagram engagement is not an easy job.

Measuring Instagram Engagement:

There are ways to check the success or failure of any campaign and you can measure Instagram engagement too based on these factors:

Interactions

Followers:

You must monitor the exponential follower’s growth on your social network profile and analyze the frequent gain of new fans. It is quite crucial according to most digital marketing specialists. If the number of followers and their engagement with your profile is not increasing with time then the presence of your brand on Instagram is not relevant.

Likes:

Many people overlook this basic factor. You should monitor the number of likes a publication gets and then compare it with other posts and the number of followers that you have. This will indicate the popularity and health of your profile.

Comments:

Comments are essential but a little complex factor to measure Instagram engagement. You should analyse comments to keep a check on your follower’s engagement. While understanding likes will give an idea about the success of the publications, comments will show you better certainty. Like takes a few seconds but comments are a sign of better involvement of the user.

Popular Hashtags:

Make use of Instagram popular hashtags on your publications and you can get better engagement and reach out to more followers. Posts that have hashtags show better engagement and are more accessible to the public. You should research for popular hashtags and make a list with you. This will make it easier to use in your posts. On Instagram, Hashtags are like keywords that help in search optimization.

Instagram promotes the use of Hashtags in combination and users can create a list of favourite hashtags too. The interest of your followers can also be determined by the popularity of a particular hashtag in your profile.

Timing:

Most users make this mistake of not paying proper attention to the timing when they upload some content. What is the benefit of adding interesting and quality content for your followers when you are posting it at a time when it will be almost invisible to them? It is of no use. So how to know the best time to post content?

According to analysis, it is worst to post between the business schedule timing from 9 am to 5 pm. Followers visit the profile on Instagram mostly in leisure time and not during business hours. So post your content out of office hours.

Image Sizes:

Image size also has a huge impact on the engagement rate, though not directly. Do not post a stock image or a pixelated photo else it will do a lot more harm rather than improve your brand image. Use the right branding and dimensions.

Formula to Determine Engagement Rate:

When you collect interaction data then you can apply the formula for engagement on your profile. Here are two basic formulas of engagement rate:

 1. Business Accounts Engagement Formula:

This formula is used with company accounts and takes into account the publication’s scope. Here the scope data has to be a private metric and works for business accounts only. It is used to measure the engagement of an Instagram publication or account engagement. If you are looking to measure the data of the publication for calculation then also it is very easy. 

 2. The Formula for Engaging the Personal Account Creators

When you want to calculate the engagement of any of the accounts then you need to use the formula which is mentioned above. You need to take into account only the Instagram comments and likes and then have to divide this by the number of followers of the same account and then you have to multiply by thousand.

Easy steps for Increasing the Engagement in Instagram

 

1. Every day Engaging with Similar Accounts or with the niche in your industry 

Before posting any of your photos first take a look at the Instagram content of other accounts that have been posted. Mostly to the niche accounts of your segment.  

The main rule of Instagram is that the feeds are bringing more engagements. When you are interacting with other users on the platform then you are increasing the chance of being seen. The more and more you are engaging, the more visibility your account would get. And this will bring more engagement from the visitors to your profile.

The quality of the engagement is also important as the quantity. Because of this, you must invest your time in selecting the specific accounts to which you are required to engage.

2. Directly Engaging with the Content

You will have to bring more and more engagement to your Instagram post within the first hour of posting. When a lot of the engagement is coming directly to Instagram then the algorithm will recognize that the post is more interested in the followers. This will cause the post to appear much higher up on the feeds of the followers.

The question is how to generate such engagement in a very short period.

You should start engaging the posts of other accounts before and after you post something on your feed.

This will increase a lot of the chance for the people who are visiting your profile. There are chances that your recent post will get more likes in the first hour when it is posted. This will then boost the visibility of your post on the Instagram platform. And, your like and comment will also keep on drawing continuous attention to the users for your account also when you left. So, this is a kind of win-win situation.

3.  Using Strategically selected Long-Tail Hashtags

Long-tail hashtags are detailed and specific. This also means that they will be more accurately reflecting the context of your post.

When you are posting a photo of the modern building which caught your eye on Instagram then you can use a hashtag like #architecture which is having around 86 thousand posts that are associated with it. Now you are also using the hashtag like modern architecture which is having only 8 thousand posts that are associated with it. So, by seeing the associated posts you can select them to bring more like and comments to your post.

4. Using Better Captions

Posts on Instagram which are having more captions would generate more and more engagements. This will also encourage the users to spend time looking at your post and this might be more advantageous with the latest algorithm. This will be prioritizing your content by bringing more engagements.

When you are providing the good caption to your photo context then it would help you in engaging your audience. There are several ways where you can approach the caption. It can be detailed, long which would be telling the story. It would also be a short or point caption that would enhance the photo and will provide the take on the image. It can be light-hearted or funny too.

5. Posting more photos of people 

It is correct that photos that are having faces would get 38% more like than the other without faces.

You should be sure that the next photo of your would-be having a person. Posting photos of yourself with faces would be a great option for boosting the engagements. It will not matter much what you are promoting or selling on Instagram. You can always weave the people on your Instagram post by considering various strategies.

Whenever you are sharing the post on social media, you can share the photos which are posted by your customers, the photos of the brands, or the people who are showing off your products. There are endless numbers of possibilities for this. So now it’s time to say cheese.

6. Replying to Comments Soon

For conversations to be going on and helping your post to reach the top then it is very important to reply to the comments. This will keep your post on the top in the feeds of your followers. When people would start responding to you more and more, then Instagram will consider your post as valuable content and will keep them up in the feed. So, although besides replying you are having millions of tasks to do in your hand then also just reply right away in a very quick comment. This will help the post to keep rolling on the top in the feeds.

Draw other people also in the conversation, tag them in the comments. This will have notified them and brought them to your post. For example, if some people would comment about the event which you have organized to tell you how good it was then you can introduce them with the partners who have to help you with this. The members of your team, the catering company, and the venue who have provided all the facilities. 

7. Best time for Post

If you don’t know what the best time for you is to post, then you will have to find it out. The best time for the post is considered as the time which will result in most engagement to your account. This can be done manually by making use of the combination for the insight from Instagram, testing various times for posting and also by creating a various spreadsheet which can monitor the data. You can also make use of social media analytics till which will help you in all the calculations.

When you are making use of the Instagram insights then you must be already having the business profile on Instagram. You need to for the analytics tab and then select the audience and then you will see where most of the audience is based.

8. Draw Attention by making use of the Stories

Stories are the best way on Instagram for engagement. Boosting engagement with the stories is all the new topic. Various things can be done for creating the Instagram stories which will keep the audience interested. However, there are ways by which you can make use of the Instagram stories and you can draw attention to the posts in your feed.

Make sure that people should be heading to your feeds for finding out more about the stories you created. Try some suspense and never give all the information in the photo of your story. Here you can start making use of the amazing captions.

When you are implementing all these tactics then it will drive up your engagement to the top, your audience would be interested, and this will also attract the new followers to your account.

Good luck to you for making your changes to your Instagram.