Here are the best practices to adopt to improve your engagement rate:
1. Authenticity is the key.
Be real. Express your passions, goals and feelings within your content and captions. Be honest, open and true to your audience. Allow yourself to appear vulnerable sometimes, by sharing your struggles, fears and frustrations.
2. Be consistent, know the «right» times to post.
Quality outreaches quantity, but by consistently posting 1 to 2 posts a day and by analyzing when your followers are the most active with the Insights feature, you can strongly improve your engagement.
3. Be highly active 15min before and after posting.
Remember that Instagram loves engagement! 15min before and after posting, scroll through posts using your relevant hashtags, like them, leave a comment here and there. Your profile will spark interest and get checked out!
4. Don’t preach, tell a story instead.
Instagram is a “visual inspiration platform”. Try to captivate people by creating unique content, not preaching missives. Become an inspiring storyteller : share “micro-stories” in your captions and videos!
5. Edit your Bio to increase your visibility.
To be found by new followers when they type keywords in the search bar, you need to add a target keyword to your name and Bio. Remember however that Instagram can identify the content of your posts : it has to fit with your handle!
6. Use live stories and Boomerangs.
To make behind-the-scenes stories and promote new launches, use the live video option or Boomerangs! Add subtitles to your videos to increase view times : somes users don’t enable sound when viewing it!
7. Choose the right hashtags.
Don’t use too generic and competitive hashtags. Instead, use a mix of trending and industry-specific hashtags. Also, 91% of posts by top brands use seven or fewer hashtags. Identify how many hashtags your competitors typically use and vary hashtag volumes on your posts until you find the perfect balance.
