Everything flies, everything changes and Instagram is no exception. If previously, to promote a page, you could limit yourself to mass following, but now everything is much more complicated. Instagram algorithms do not sleep and only allow content that “enters” into the feed. How do they determine this? According to the audience's reaction. In this article we will look at mechanics that will help increase engagement.
Why is this useful?
- Coverage increases. If the user liked, commented and was otherwise active on your page, then your posts will be shown to him more often.
- The probability of getting to the top increases, which also leads to an increase in coverage.
How to increase engagement?
It's probably your content. Ask yourself: “Is our content interesting for the audience?”, “Are the photos and text beautiful enough?” If everything is ok with the filling, then we move on.An Instagram user is a lazy user. He doesn’t want to strain, doesn’t want to think, he just wants to consume. Let's consider specific techniques that will push our user to be active on our page.
2. Questions and surveys. The easiest way to get a response in the comments is to ask a question or get an opinion in a post. It shouldn't be too complicated. To make your subscriber's life easier, you can offer response options. And in order to show your interest, express your opinion first.
Example for a cinema page:
“Friends, which of the September new products did you like best and why?”
“The following premieres await you in October (list of films), which one would you like to attend most?”
3. Offer to ask. People sometimes have questions, but they are embarrassed to ask because they think that they will be ignored. Give them the opportunity to ask.
4. Call to action. So ask your subscribers: “Like it, write a comment.”
5. Live consultation. Live broadcasting is a very useful format, thanks to which you can introduce your audience to yourself and your product, communicate and receive feedback. This makes your subscribers more loyal to you.
6. Ask for advice
Example:
"Suggest a good hairdresser in the center" or “Where is the best place to go with the kids on the weekend?”
7. Dating post. Invite your subscribers to tell about themselves, their hobbies, activities, and services provided.
8. Post condition
Example:
“If this post gets 200 likes, I will make a video about instant messaging on Instagram.”
Audience opinion. Find out what people would like to know about in your next post.
Competitions and sweepstakes. There are various competition mechanics. For example, you can give away a prize for the most comments. You can come up with a task: “complete the sentence...”, “the funniest comment”, etc.
The introduction of the algorithmic feed seriously hit the reach and engagement of many users on Instagram. Even major bloggers are complaining that posts are getting far fewer likes and comments than before.
Instagram has complex feed generation algorithms, and Facebook does not share the principles of their operation. Yet marketers figure out algorithms from their own experience or from the few tips Facebook has given them.
Post content regularly
If you start posting significantly less often, your reach may drop: this is how the social network algorithm works. Post new content regularly and don't disappear for a few days.
Communicate actively
At a minimum, politeness will work: if you regularly comment on your friends' posts, they will respond in kind. Ask questions, leave compliments, respond to Stories and send funny photos to your friends via direct message.
Tell stories
Yes, everyone is primarily interested in the image. However, you can keep the audience's interest with the help of stories, an original style of presentation and humor.
Posts with long texts show good results. The audience responds to such recordings. Focus not on describing the problem, but on solving it, then you will receive positive comments.
Use Call to action
Ask questions from the audience, try to raise interesting but easy-to-discuss topics: childhood memories, favorite food, plans for the summer.
Publish Stories
The exact ranking factors for content on Instagram are unknown, but some speculation based on what developers have said is that regularly posting Stories has a positive effect on your account.
...and use them to promote your content
Unlike posts in your account, subscribers will probably see your Story. Bloggers are already using this: they announce a new post with an intriguing signature and an offer to go to the account.
Avoid the gallery format
Users have noticed that posts consisting of several photos fall through the feed and receive 30-50% fewer reactions.
Determine the right time to post
Instagram algorithms track how many reactions a post receives immediately after publication, and based on this, determine whether it is considered interesting and whether to show it higher in the feed.
If you post a photo late at night, it will likely fall through the feed. To get the most out of it, rely not on your own impressions, but on statistics.
You can track activity by time of day using the service’s internal statistics. And if you need to get data for a large time period or for a competitor’s account, use . This way you can analyze any Instagram account.
What should be the level of engagement on Instagram?
A couple of years ago, an account where the number of likes was 10% of the number of subscribers was considered conditionally successful. Now the situation has changed: small accounts have higher ER on average than large ones (read more about).
You also have the opportunity to analyze any accounts and view detailed data on
We've released a new book, Social Media Content Marketing: How to Get Inside Your Followers' Heads and Make Them Fall in Love with Your Brand.
For a commercial Instagram account to be useful, you need to constantly engage with it and create vibrancy in it. Promotion on this social network using pictures and hashtags is outdated. Even just to find your audience, you need to think through and implement a whole strategy. It includes the external design of the profile and live communication with readers, interactive activities, paid and free advertising.
To maintain popularity, you also need to perform routine and creative tasks regularly. In this article we will tell you what to do if sales have decreased and there is no return on promotion.
How to view page activity on Instagram
Such serious work certainly requires adjustments to the process. To do this, it is important to check the statistics on time. There is no way to see indicators on a regular blog, so it’s better to connect a business account right away.
How to do it:
- Go to settings (gear or three dots in the upper right corner).
- Click on "Switch to Business Account".
- Next, follow the instructions of the application. You will need to register on Facebook and provide contacts or location.
Information can be viewed by selecting the icon in the top row. She looks like this.
There you will find the number of impressions of a particular publication, reach (the number of unique profiles that saw any post) and views - how many people visited your page. There is also a section with statistics on Stories and data on readers (available for an audience of more than 100 people). It can be accessed from any entry. You will find the icon between the photo and the text.
This was the answer to the question of how to find out user activity on Instagram. There are services where you can see more detailed indicators of other blogs. Depending on the functionality of each specific program, it is possible to collect information on the time of day, days of the week, coverage by type of content, number of likes, comments, popularity growth graph, etc. Some applications evaluate the effectiveness of not only your own, but also someone else’s Instagram. This is necessary in order to analyze the actions of competitors. It also helps to carefully select advertising platforms: with a target audience that is suitable for you.
List of services:
How to increase activity on Instagram
So, you find that sales have dropped, engagement growth has stopped, and your profile looks empty and lifeless. Note that we are talking about the case when the account is registered correctly. This means that you regularly post beautiful, bright photos, write interesting texts that are easy to read. And under your avatar you have a short, catchy description of the company. Look at Instagram through the eyes of your target audience. Do you want to subscribe to it, is it enough? If yes, you can start working with statistics.
Let's figure out which posts are currently ranking well.
- Those posted by the user’s followers, those with whom he corresponds, and is friends with other social networks.
- Publications of pages on which a person left likes or comments.
- Notes from people the reader searched for in the general search.
- Posts promoted using targeted advertising.
How to increase account activity on Instagram without mass following and mass liking
The main thing that is important to remember is that illegal methods and services will not only not bring any benefit, but will also contribute to blocking your profile. Use only approved methods. They take longer when it comes to free ones, but are more reliable.
- Remove high-frequency hashtags. Even if you appear in the search for them, you will very quickly fall down the stream of spam. The maximum catch is a dozen or two likes.
- Block inactive subscribers. This includes spam and advertising pages. This will increase your engagement (the ratio of the total number of users to their responses) and Instagram will give the green light to your blog.
- Turn off comments if they contain a lot of spam or clean them up. In the settings, you can enable an automatic or manual filter to hide inappropriate and offensive phrases.
- Reply to questions and other messages from people. There should be lively dialogues underneath the note.
- If you write useful instructions, offer to save them. This also improves stats.
- Let's give you as many reasons as possible to write to you personally and under the photo.
These three points are the easiest and fastest to implement. But there are also more labor-intensive methods of increasing visitor activity.
Interactives
Conduct surveys, add appeals at the end of the text. For example, ask readers what topic they are interested in or what they think about your project. Do it appropriately and unobtrusively. And also launch competitions. People get bored with the same formats, so show your imagination and diversify your competition programs. Remember that the simpler the conditions, the more users will participate.
- Quizzes. Ask a moderately complex question about a product or service. The answer shouldn't be easy to Google.
- Description of the dream. Announce a good prize and ask subscribers to write a reason why they will be the winner.
- Poetic. Have a competition to come up with a rhyme for a word.
- Reviews. Come up with an interesting gift for the person who talks about you the most creatively.
- Last comment. The competition is suitable for those who already have a large audience. The winner is the one who left the last message by the time you specified.
Stories
This is a very convenient tool for developing any account. It has the ability to create polls with stickers. They look unusual and, if used correctly, will resonate with readers. This will increase your reach and you will be able to gather opinions from potential customers. After receiving the answers, you can see the statistics - which one received more votes. You can also see who exactly answered. In what form will all this be accomplished?
- Voting-rating. The simplest method. You ask questions and check the “yes” and “no” buttons. Example. “Do you like our new design?”
- Research of target audience. Find out what your subscribers choose. For example, what do they prefer for breakfast and give two options. You can do several surveys in a row. The topic depends on the focus of your business.
- Create a fun quiz on several slides based on your audience's interests.
- Pre-sale. Place 2 products side by side and ask them to vote for the one you would like to buy more. In the next picture, leave one of these products and offer a discount for it.
- Organize quizzes with or without prizes.
Targeted advertising
This is a good way to attract people interested in your products or services. They will see the ad that you will promote even if they are not subscribed to your account. Setting up an ad is done either through your personal account on Facebook or through Instagram. In the second case, a business profile must be connected.
Use all of the above methods comprehensively to achieve an ideal result.
User activity time on Instagram: what hours are best to post?
Now you know what and why you need to post on your blog to increase your reach. All that remains is to figure out what time to create records. For promotion, it is very important to know when your target audience is on social networks. Each person can have a wealth of information in their feed. If you post a note at 8 a.m. and your follower doesn’t start scrolling until 11 a.m., you’re guaranteed to fail.
If you already have an audience, the time period of their involvement can be found in special services, the list of which we provided above. In the case of a new profile, conduct an experiment by preparing several materials and posting them at different times. Then, in the same programs or Instagram statistics, look at the result.
There are general recommendations that mainly relate to days of the week and types of content. So, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, marketers do not recommend publishing serious posts. Something entertaining, light and unobtrusive will do. Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday are the time for the best and most meaningful notes. On Monday, people are usually busy and you can post small tips and motivational photos.
We told you what to do if activity on Instagram has dropped and how to track user engagement indicators. Apply the tips we gave in this article, track the results using statistics and do not stop working on your blog. Remember, the main thing is high-quality, engaging content that prevents subscribers from getting bored and you from losing positions.
“Is it true that posts in the feed are now shown differently?” - I get another question at a webinar on SMM. The new principle of ranking news has made life more difficult not only for specialists, but also for entrepreneurs promoting their projects. How to deal with the fact that records are now shuffled like cards in a deck, and how to increase coverage - in this material.
After Instagram officially announced a new “smart” feed, some KPIs and principles of working with the social network changed: now the race for the number of subscribers, but systematic work to increase reach, came to the fore. They are now fighting to increase engagement in all ways: not only officially permitted, but also “gray”. Bloggers unite in closed chats to which they add their posts. They share publications and then mutually comment on each other’s posts.
In addition to such attempts to increase your involvement, there are services with paid account boosts: Google returns more than a million results for the query “Instagram boost.”
So which posts are winning in the new search rankings?
- Posts from people with whom you are corresponding, you know in real life or you are friends on Facebook.
- Posts from people whose content you react to with views, likes, saves and comments.
- Posts from people you searched for in general social network searches.
- Posts from real users (they are given priority for display compared to commercial pages and business profiles).
- Posts that are promoted using targeted advertising.
- All other posts.
Comment by Ivan Danilchenko (head of the social dating agency GetFame Agency):
Recently there has been a fashion for a new feature: a sanitary day in the account. This is when you block accounts that have at least 1000 subscriptions to other accounts that have Arabic and Turkish letters. I was subscribed to 150 accounts, but per day I viewed a maximum of 20-30 profiles in my feed. Guys who have 1000 or more subscriptions obviously won’t see your profile, but they greatly spoil the statistics.
As we found out, the algorithm randomly shows your photo to some of your subscribers and if they like it, it moves the photo up in everyone’s feed, which gives a strong increase in likes. If the algorithm randomly selected accounts that have a lot of subscriptions, and you did not receive any reactions, then your photo or video will remain in the footer of the feed.
Allowed ways to boost your post in the feed without resorting to dubious methods:
Repeat and remember
The new principle of ranking posts is not clear to all specialists. The algorithm is designed to make the feed more interesting, useful and of higher quality, but on the contrary, it has made the work of many more difficult. What to do in the new conditions?
- Forget about illegal methods of cheating, mass following and mass liking, remove hashtashes: they will not help.
- Remember the golden rule: high-quality, engaging content is shown first.
- Use advertising, actively implement new features, block all inactive subscribers.
No one creates an Instagram account just to exist. Everyone who registers there wants to show others how he lives, with whom he spends time. Everyone who registers there wants likes, comments and subscribers. We will talk about how to increase activity on Instagram in this article.
Activity on Instagram is...
The activity of subscribers in your account is their interest in you and your products. The greater the organic influx of subscribers, the number of likes and comments, the greater the chance of increasing sales in the near future.
The activity of subscribers is the key to your success and well-being.
Subscriber activity is your god, who you need to pray to before eating, after eating and before going to bed. Especially now, with the introduction of Instagram smart feed.
How to check activity on Instagram? Of course, in order to understand whether you should start sounding the alarm or not, you need to understand the current level of user activity on your page. And the easiest way to do this is to look at the number of subscribers, likes and, most importantly, comments. Have you looked? Now we subtract from there what has been twisted, if there is one. And we get a rough idea of whether your subscribers are active or not. Here it is worth considering the “age” of publications and their content. Of course, there will be more likes and comments under a post with a competition, but this does not mean that your page has reached a new level.
You can make it easier to view your activity. An indicator such as “coverage” will help with this very well. We compare it with the total number of subscribers. If the coverage is many times less, it's time to do something.
Methods to increase the activity of subscribers on your Instagram account
Before turning to famous SMM specialists for help, he tries to stir up the audience on his own. So, to get activity on the page we do the following:
Reasons for the decline in activity on Instagram
Have you noticed that for several days your likes and comments have not increased at all or in very small quantities. First of all, analyze what you have changed in your activities. Most likely, the problem lies in the following:
Conclusion
How to increase activity on Instagram? No, this is not a rhetorical question, because now you can read a whole lecture on this topic. You know all the nuances and can use this information. And finally, advice to those who have read: do not abuse giveaways and set stricter requirements. You need to avoid fakes created only for competitions. And before carrying out this promotion, prepare an account: if users see good content, they will not want to unsubscribe after the competition.
