Why is it important to communicate with your audience?
It is crucial to make sure that people talk to you and react to your posts, save them, like them. Even if you are in a good relationship with your audience and the users like your content, people often give zero reactions. You need to motivate them to act.
Why? It’s great when your audience communicates with you and shows loyalty. Besides, it looks trustworthy when new users come in and see that you have high activity. Social proof and the hype rule trigger people to start following you and also join the discussions.
Apart from that, there is another key factor: the smart Instagram feed algorithm. If a user interacted with you, if they liked your post or left a comment, it becomes obvious to Instagram that this person is interested in interacting with you. So, your next posts will appear in their feed much more often.
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12 tips to increase engagement with your audience
1. Use different types of activities on Instagram
There are different types of activities on Instagram, each of them with its impact. So, if a person likes your post or texts you in Direct, this represents a radically different level of loyalty for Instagram, with a different influence ratio.
You need to understand that you have to stimulate the users to apply each of these formats. Here is a list of them:
- Direct: the highest priority for Instagram is when the users text you in Direct. If a person texted you, Instagram understands that this person is extremely interested in your account;
- Saves: if a person saves your post, it becomes obvious for Instagram that the user is interested and that they want to interact with you further;
- A detailed comment (three or more words). Such a comment has a higher priority on Instagram;
- A short comment (at least one heart);
- Likes: their importance has slightly decreased. Nevertheless, it is still an important interaction format on Instagram;
- A person shares your post, sends your post to someone;
- Activity in Stories. When a person in your Stories responds to stickers, participates in polls, does similar activities;
- Activity in Live treams. In Lives, people can send likes and comments;
- Visiting the profile should also be highlighted. When the users read the post and like it, they may also visit your profile. Or a user watches your Stories and then visits your profile.
These are the main activity formats that you should stimulate people to do. Usually, everything is about likes, comments, or saves. There are more of these opportunities, and each of them can be stimulated.
2. Ask your audience questions
Instagram is one of the most emotional social networks. Try to ask your audience questions in every post. You don’t have to put the question at the end of the post. Not everyone reads the posts till the end. It is ideal if the question matches the context. Most importantly, ask different questions.
3. Offer a bonus for activity
Forget about bots and purchased activity - it’s all uninteresting, unimportant, ineffective. The point is to set certain conditions for activity and attach a continuation to it.
For example, write at the end of the post: ‘If you want to continue, leave comments below.’ Another option: ‘If this post gets a thousand likes, I will publish the second part’. It works. People feel the motivation to act.
4. Request reposts
Invite people to share the post with their friends. It is quite normal to write right in the post: ‘If you think that some of your friends will be interested in this post, tag them in the comments.’ As a result, the users tag their friends, and they come to check it out. Besides, this method also gives new followers, a new audience. This is also a priority for Instagram: a person shares content, invites someone, attracts someone.
5. Write a welcoming message
One of the key formats is Direct. And the important point is answering the messages. In this case, Instagram fixes the fact that people communicate with each other. Therefore, a welcoming message via dedicated services is a good approach. This way, every new follower will receive a message from you.
Set up a welcoming message representing your page, provide some information about your account. Another important point to keep in mind: it should include a simple question.
You offer a person to solve their issue or meet their need. In return, you get the opportunity to communicate with them. Your posts will be shown to this person more often.
6. Ask questions in Stories
Why Stories? Because in Stories, the answer goes to Direct. The person does not write any comment, he texts in Direct, but only if there are no question stickers. Why don’t you need stickers? Because stickers are not considered a personal message. In all other cases, the person texts you directly. And again, Instagram remembers this. Keep the questions simple.
One of the most important things is to ask sincere questions. You should be interested in this. Don’t ask a question just for the sake of asking a question.
7. Add stickers with questions to Stories
Add question stickers. This is a different activity, a different format, but it strongly affects the ranking. There are special stickers with questions and answer options. There are also open questions. Invite your audience to ask you questions; there is also a special sticker for this.
8. Run contests
Run contests to boost activity. There is a format where you monthly choose one person with the highest activity on your social network. This method is suitable for different social media platforms. With the help of special services, you choose the winner who receives a monthly prize. Then, you repeat this contest. Over a month, people start to connect with you more and more actively.
A prerequisite is: the comment must be informative and consist of more than three words. The communication must be meaningful, related to the topic you are writing about.
9. Make Lives
During Live streaming, you have a great opportunity for a call-to-action. Asking questions increases your rankings.
10. Arrange comment contests
There are many options here. For example: “Write something in the comments, we will give away a prize among the participants.” Another approach is when a competition is held for the most interesting, most unusual comment. Besides, the comment competition is often related to the last comment, namely – whose comment will last for 5 hours.
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11. Announce LikeTimes
LikeTime is a format when all your followers, each participant must like several of your posts and several posts of other users.
12. Run marathons
In this case, you can run a marathon on a topic of your choice. A week of weight loss, a week of pumping the Internet, a week of healthy skin, etc.
Here are the steps. Every day you give people a task. The users must daily post a report on the completed task in their account with a link to you. And they must give a short review in the comments to the post.
This helps you reach several goals at once: it attracts a new audience (people follow the links and start following you) and increases activity.
Even if you apply at least 5 of the principles listed above, it will increase the activity and effectiveness of your Instagram account several times. If you apply all of them, it can increase the activity on your account by 10 times.
