Instagram Engagement Tips & Tricks
Every blogger’s main concern right now: INSTAGRAM. I’m here to help! If you are not a blogger or are not trying to grow your audience on Instagram, this post probably is of no use to you, but you are more than welcome to read! You may learn something new or you may have no idea what I’m talking about! Ha! Little did I know that when I started blogging in December of 2017, that I had started right when Instagram got “bad.” Rumor has it that there was once a time where it was much easier to grow organically on this platform. With constant algorithm changes and updates, many of us have often felt defeated.
When I started blogging, I knew I wanted to go all in and give a 100% effort. I did some (okay, a lot) of research regarding how to grow on Instagram and many of those strategies I first researched are strategies I still use today! Growing on Instagram, especially as a fashion and lifestyle blogger, can be extremely competitive and it’s SO easy to feel lost in it all and want to give up. I have yet to feel completely defeated by this platform and I think a lot of that is due to the time I started. The “bad” Instagram is all I know, haha!
One of my most asked questions on Instagram is about my engagement. Engagement is the amount of interaction you receive via likes and comments based on your amount of followers. The last time I checked, I was performing at about 20% engagement give or take (according to PeopleMap). I was happy with this, especially after comparing myself to other accounts both bigger and smaller than me to see where I stacked up. I know, I know… you are NOT supposed to compare yourself, but this was just for numbers and research! I did not even realize that I had “good” engagement until I started receiving so many questions about it. I’ve also had some friends that have thought about starting a blog and growing via Instagram, which is another reason why I wanted to share this post! So here we go!
Instagram Engagement Tips & Tricks
- Consistency – First and most importantly is CONSISTENCY. Before you even start your blog or Instagram you need to ask yourself some questions. What is your style? (if you are doing fashion). Who do you want your audience to be? What do you want to focus on most to start off? In my opinion, there is nothing more important than being consistent. Consistency shows in SO many ways: timing, feed aesthetic, your personal brand, style, how often you post, the price point of styles you want to share, what filter or preset you are using on your feed, etc. I could go on and on about this but for now, I’ll just leave you with that!
- Business Account – If you haven’t done this already, you need to make your Instagram a business account. This will allow you to see SO many analytics and insights about your posts and your audience! I look at every single post to analyze the date on it and I learn something each time!
- Starting Out – There a couple things I want to mention for those that are just starting. I know you are going to be excited to share EVERYTHING when you start, but I highly recommend picking one topic and doing that one well and then slowly choosing more topics. For example, when I started I wanted to share about fashion, Cody, my house, beauty, my faith, traveling, food, fitness (that I didn’t even do), etc. After doing a lot of research, I learned that it is by far the best to pick something to practice with and be consistent with and slowly venture off from there. I started with fashion and now I would say I have ventured into lifestyle and faith. My next topic will probably be home decor because of our move and maybe a little bit of beauty. Once we have kids, I will enter into the mom blogger world as well! As a reminder, I am 9 months in to this process of blogging. I also would recommend using your name in your blog and in your Instagram handle. I have seen many big bloggers go from a “cute” name back to their real name. It’s who you are! You may not always be “midwestmissourigirl,” so do not brand yourself off of something you could get sick of or something that may not even be relevant to you forever.
- Timing – I briefly mentioned this when writing about consistency, but this one is so important. If you post at a bad time, you will not get as good engagement! This one can be tricky because everyone’s followers are different and every person is on Instagram at different times, but there is definitely certain times that can be more popular for the majority of your followers. You will have to do a little digging to figure this out. I think the easiest way is to take a poll on your stories and just leave it to a vote. Maybe start off by just asking “morning” or “evening.” Then later on you can ask more specific times. If most of your audience chose “evening,” you could then ask “6:00-8:00 pm CST” or 8:00-10:00pm CST.” I ALWAYS post some time between 7:30 and 8:00 pm CST. Obviously I may not be able to post at that exact time if I have something going on, but for the most part it’s some time around there. I also believe it’s important to post consistently in terms of what day. You can also see some information about when your audience is most active through your insights once you have switched to a business account. I gain followers every day I post, but I also lose many followers if I don’t post for a day. This is why you need to keep up with it. Otherwise you will just continue losing followers. I recently stopped posting on Friday’s and Saturday’s because they were not good engagement days, I wanted to spend more time with my husband, and I felt like I was wasting good content that wasn’t being seen by everyone. Everyone’s timing is different, so you have to decide what is best for you and for your audience.
- Active – You NEED to be VERY active on Instagram each time you post. THIS IS HUGE!!!! I usually am commenting on other accounts for 30 minutes before I post and 30 minutes after, give or take. Is this all sounding time consuming yet? Because guess what… IT IS! Blogging and growing your Instagram can become much more time consuming than you realize, so you have to be committed to that if you want to see results. When I am commenting during this hour, I usually make sure to comment on other bloggers’ posts I am already following and then I will search a popular hashtag, such as #ltkunder50, and comment on the recent posts from that hashtag. Instagram likes to see that you are genuinely active on Instagram. Speaking of being genuine…
- Be Genuine – This is so important. I make sure to make a GENUINE comment every time I comment something! I have seen some accounts that copy and paste the same comment on everyone’s post and it makes me so frustrated. I truly enjoy networking and meeting other bloggers in this community, so being genuine is really important to me. You also need to be genuine with your feed and on your stories. You ARE going to see so many accounts that seem like their lives are perfect and always have makeup on and are always dressed up, but that doesn’t have to be you! I see right through those accounts. I personally love to follow bloggers that are REAL and RELATABLE and that is what I strive to be with my followers. Speaking of being real and relatable, you will soon realize that this community starts to become a real part of your life that you end of sharing parts of your life with that you never expected to share and that’s okay!
- Safety– Speaking of sharing about your life on a public platform that anyone in the world can see… I block every male account that follows me (unless it’s a friend obviously). There are MANY creeps out there. I probably block 25 accounts a day give or take and trust me, it adds up. It also hurts your engagement to have followers that are not going to engage with you. It looks bad with brands to have a lot of followers but have low engagement, so do not be afraid to block accounts! There are a lot of strange “bot” accounts out there too. Basically, if it’s not a brand or a girl following me, I’m most likely going to block them so that I can feel safe posting about my life!
That should be enough to keep you busy! If you have any specific questions, feel free to leave a comment or message me on Instagram!