6 ways to improve engagement on your Instagram page

If you manage an Instagram or Facebook page, you may know that both recently updated their algorithms. The motive for the change in the algorithm could be that both platforms want to make money from promotional content because the new algorithm forces SMEs to pay for ads. Or they want content creators/social media managers to become more creative.

You might have started noticing numbers of engagements on your post reduce compared to other times. This is because some of your posts aren’t being seen by as many people as they used to when the algorithm displayed feeds in chronological order. And the reason for this being is that Instagram and Facebook now show more content that they feel will get engagement, instead of just what’s new.

When you upload a new post, this post is only initially shown to a small percentage of your followers. The algorithm then measures how fast and how often that small percentage of your audience engages (looks at, likes, comments, and share) with your post.

If your new post is not getting much engagement from your audience, the algorithm basically restricts the post from being shown to ALL Your followers and it pushes the post further down their feed because it is deemed as less engaging.

If the post is doing well the algorithm shows it to more people and it has a higher likelihood of being higher in people’s feeds & on the explore page

Here are some of the tips that might help you get better engagements on Instagram

1. Don’t just post to post

Ever heard of think before you talk? Same principle applies to Instagram. Don’t just post for the sake of posting. All your posts should be carefully planned and visually pleasing. Many might think posting many posts would get some of their post on their follower’s feeds- I got bad news for you. Instagram has decided to pick Quality over Quantity

2. Review captions before posting

I heard that editing caption within 24hrs lowers reach of a particular post, hence you need to try as much as possible to avoid editing your captions after the post has been uploaded

3. Early engagement is key

You should be posting during times your audience is most active as strong early engagement will push your post to more feeds. YOUR post is basically going through a 5-10 minute audition to see if it can be shown to YOUR audience.

4. Utilize stories and live streams

I think Instagram want us to use the story feature often. The algorithm does not affect stories as it displays stories based on our recent they are. The stories that are shown first are accounts that you engage with the most, so give people a reason to see you first. Most times your followers get notified when you go live or share a story, so try to utilize this feature to your advantage.

5. Avoid excess use of Hashtags

If you must use many hashtags ensure you tag in the description because hashtags in comments no longer appear in search results. Be careful of hashtags to use as hashtags have been placed on shadow ban so research well before using hashtags.

6. Join an Instagram Pod

Instagram Pods have been around for a while now. Instagram pods are groups of people that have similar audiences and the desire to increase their Instagram engagement and get more followers. Every time someone in the pod publishes a new Instagram post, they share it in the group message thread. Instagram pod members will then click on the post, like it, and leave a genuine comment.

In case you are too lazy to try 1-5 Instagram pod is your best bet to gain early engagements. (I learnt Instagram pods can get you shadow banned, I do not know how true this is but I would research and provide update later.)

If there is anything to take from this article, it is that your audience’s participation grows your platform.