In January 2019, TechCrunch reported that 500 million daily Instagram users used Instagram Stories every day. This was another increase following the 400 million daily users reported in June 2018, the 300 million daily users reported in November 2017, the 200 million daily users reported in April 2017, and the first 100 million daily users reported in October 2016.
Instagram fosters a number of important connections for many different brands and content creators. Many people are able to use Instagram to significantly increase profits by placing ads creatively and using other creative means.
When it comes to Instagram, one of the metrics that will be most meaningful to users who are attempting to use their profiles in stronger ways is their engagement rate. An engagement rate is the phrase used to describe the measurement of how many other users are interacting with elements of an Instagram profile.
An Instagram engagement rate will typically take into account such factors as the number of followers, likes, comments, and shares for a user. Some calculations simply involve dividing likes and comments by follower count, but there are many different methods used for calculating an engagement rate.
Engagement rates matter because they measure things like the interest of an audience, brand relevance, and social authority. An engagement rate is seen as being a much more important figure to study because many other counters may only be using pageviews when interaction is accounted for with an engagement rate.
A strong engagement rate is often dictated by strong engagement from the Instagram user, and it is important to remember that interesting and unique interactions with others on your Instagram page will have very meaningful long-term effects for your page. According to the HubSpot Instagram Engagement Report, posts on Instagram generate 23 percent more engagement than Facebook despite Facebook having twice as many monthly users.
A 2020 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report from RivalIQ found that the average engagement rate across all industries was 1.22 percent, specific sectors had higher rates, such as higher education at 3.57 percent, sports teams at 2.33 percent, and influencers at 1.67 percent. Multiple websites offer Instagram engagement calculations, although the terms of their searches are not known.
When it comes to calculating your own Instagram engagement rate, there is a different calculation for brands and for influencers. With brands, the engagement rate will equal the number of likes and comments divided by the number of impressions multiplied by 100, while influencers will divide their number of likes and comments by followers times 100.
Here are nine tips to help you increase your Instagram engagement rate:
1. Be consistent in your branding.
A WebDam social media report found that 60 percent of the top brands on Instagram always use the exact same filter for every one of their posts. While this tip largely applies to photos, keep in mind the importance of maintaining consistent typography for watermarks as well as the same backgrounds and fonts.
Also be aware of consistency across usernames, so your Instagram handle will match all of your other social media website handles.
You have to take the time to get to know the people who are interacting with your page. When you know who your followers are, you can better gear content toward their interests and make it that much more likely to be shared and get an even wider audience.
People with Instagram business accounts should navigate to the audience tab from the Insights menu. You can use this tool to see the locations your users are in, their age ranges, and their genders.
You need to keep in mind that people will revisit the Instagram pages they enjoy the most, so this makes it important to post regularly so it appears that you are always active. That said, you do want to avoid overdoing posts, as excess posts can lead to unfollows when you are clogging the feed.
You should again study your audience to determine the best times of day to post and try to stick to a regular schedule.
4. Do not ignore the importance of captions.
Captions can be extremely beneficial in using the hashtags that have become commonplace on Instagram. You cannot overload a caption with hashtags, however, as placing too many hashtags in a caption will be viewed as spamming and will lead to negative search results.
Try to target your hashtags to the specific industries applicable to your post to most greatly increase your chances of success. Try to alternate between shorter and longer captions.
5. Practice engagement yourself.
When you have comments turned on for your posts, reply to any comments you receive, even if it is only to say thanks. If you ask a question and get responses, additional replies could help really sort out finer details.
When you take the time to interact with the people following you, it will only give them more reason to share your content.
You should try to interact on the Instagram pages of other parties too. Look for pages that may be in the same industry or area of interest.
You may also want to seek possible sponsorship deals by promoting the products of certain brands. You could also attempt to forge partnerships with people who share your goals.
Whereas Instagram was once just photos, the app now allows for content that is not just photos, but also videos, Instagram TV (IGTV), Instagram Reels, and Instagram Stories. The Instagram sites with the highest engagement rates make use of all five of these kinds of posts.
8. Think about the call-to-action (CTA).
The CTA can take many forms, but it is largely intended to get users to take some sort of step in addition to having visited your page. You may be seeking a phone call or a click on a link that is provided.
Be cautious with your use of CTAs because certain kinds of requests may rub some users the wrong way and could lead to your being unfollowed. More innocent requests such as asking people to tag others could garner big results.
Once you’ve determined the rate by which you will calculate your engagement, then stick with that method and revisit it frequently. You will need to study your rate and determine if certain actions need to be taken to bolster the rate.
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