How to Boost Your Instagram Engagement
Do your followers scroll past your posts without interacting? Discover proven strategies to boost your Instagram engagement in this article.
We’ll cover ways to optimize Instagram content for:
- More comments
- More DMs
- Increased likes
- More shares
Why Instagram Engagement Drives Your Marketing Success
If your primary social media goals are sales and lead generation, you might question whether Instagram engagement matters. However, engagement plays a crucial role in achieving your Instagram marketing goals.
Importance of Engagement for Visibility
To increase sales and conversions on Instagram, you must ensure your audience sees your content. If your Instagram engagement rate is low, your posts won’t be highly visible, reducing your reach and limiting your potential to convert followers into customers.
Instagram’s Engagement as a Ranking Signal
Your Instagram engagement rate directly influences how often your content appears in users’ feeds, increasing your visibility and potential to grow your brand. The popularity of an Instagram post is one of the most important ranking signals for Instagram content. In other words, the more likes a post has, the higher Instagram may rank it, which means the more results (i.e., DMs or product views) it can generate.
Algorithm and User-Specific Engagement
The Instagram algorithm doesn’t just look at general engagement but also how frequently users interact with your content. More frequent interactions mean higher visibility for your future posts.
In short, the algorithm ranks posts based on the following:
- General engagement
- User-specific interactions
- Content relevance and activity
In theory, all Instagram engagement can improve your brand’s visibility, ultimately supporting your Instagram marketing goals. But it’s also important to know which types of engagement are most valuable to your brand. For example, content with above-average shares or comments may directly result in tons of sales.
Measuring Engagement’s Value
The following tools can help you measure the impact of your Instagram content.
- Instagram Insights
- Website analytics
- UTM tracking
By tracking these metrics, you can see which types of engagement drive the highest return on investment (ROI) for your business.
9 Proven Tips to Boost Your Instagram Engagement Fast
Now that you know why Instagram engagement is important to your brand, let’s improve it. From creating better content to interacting with relevant accounts, here are nine ideas for boosting Instagram engagement.
1: Don’t Create Engagement Bait
You might be tempted to ask for engagement directly if you aren’t getting many responses to your posts, reels, or stories. In other words, you might ask your audience to like your post if they agree with its message.
Officially, Instagram doesn’t disallow engagement bait the way Facebook does. But even if these prompts aren’t strictly against Instagram’s rules, remember that engagement bait often comes across as empty and inauthentic. So, starting conversations with your audience more naturally is always a good idea.
For example, the co-branded reel by @bark and @barkshop below features a holiday carol for dogs. In the opening clip, the reel encourages viewers to “Get ready to film your dog’s reaction” before launching into a series of short clips of squeaky dog toys and festive pets. A few weeks later, @bark posted a compilation of the viewer-submitted reactions.
Below, the @ruffwear reel features a lucky dog enjoying a homemade “barkuterie” board, a spin on the charcuterie board trend. The reel’s caption doesn’t have a call to action, but it doesn’t need one. The reel generated high engagement metrics, nearly 5,000 likes, and more than 1,300 shares, indicating that it clearly resonated with the pet wear brand’s target audience—enough for them to share unprompted.
2: How Instagram Reels Boost Engagement and Reach
Short-form videos, like Instagram Reels, have quickly become one of the most effective ways to boost engagement. These videos help capture attention and improve interaction on your posts.
Instagram Reels can help you:
- Reach a wider audience
- Boost likes, comments, and shares.
- Increase engagement with short, fun videos.
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In short, they work because Instagram prioritizes reels in the feed, partly in response to user signals and partly to compete with social platforms like TikTok. However, Instagram doesn’t prioritize just any short-form video. Ranking signals like content popularity, past account engagement, and topic relevance all affect who sees your reels.
If you want to leverage this content type, creating reels that engage your followers and the users who see your reels recommended in the feed is important. High-performing reels can also appear on Explore or hashtag pages, which can help you reach an even wider audience. Here are a couple of ideas to inspire your reels.
The @benandjerrys reel below takes viewers through the ice cream brand’s flavor graveyard. The reel speeds up after a brief intro clip, flipping through still shots of retired ice cream flavors. The reel’s rapid speed makes it enjoyable to watch multiple times, and the throwback flavors are easy for viewers to identify. The reel has more than 900 comments, most of which mention viewers’ favorite flavors from the reel.
While throwback content can be incredibly engaging, new product announcements can generate just as many comments and shares. The @krispykreme reel below announces the donut brand’s Thanksgiving mini pies. The quick cuts between product footage and lifestyle content make the reel work particularly well, and the text overlays seamlessly share information about the donuts and their availability.
3: Maximize Engagement by Posting Instagram Stories Consistently
Instagram Stories primarily target your existing followers, as they aren’t shown on Explore pages. However, posting stories regularly keeps your brand at the top of your mind, which can increase engagement and visibility with your audience. However, like reels and posts, stories are ranked based on a few factors, starting with popularity.
Stories with high engagement typically get prioritized in users’ feeds. Likewise, stories from accounts users often engage with appear at the beginning of their story feeds. That means the more recurring engagement your brand generates, the more opportunities your content has to be the first thing users see when they open the app.
Because stories disappear after 24 hours, publishing them regularly and sticking to a consistent posting schedule is important. Instagram head Adam Mosseri officially recommends posting two stories per day to maximize engagement and stay at the top of the feed.
To get followers to interact with your stories, focus on creating content they want to engage with. Inspire them to respond to your questions, tap through to view linked resources, or reply directly in DMs.
In some cases, a series of related stories may work well. For example, the @avocadogreenbrands story below features a series of customer testimonials. The first story introduces the concept, and subsequent stories include a customer quote and a link to shop for the product.
In other cases, stories that play on feed content can capture your audience’s attention. For example, the @grammarly story below includes a feed post share and poses a related question that invites viewers to interact. The story also uses a link sticker that points viewers to an external resource where they can read more on the topic.
4: Use Interactive Instagram Story Stickers
Instagram Stories offers a range of interactive stickers that help increase engagement. In addition to likes, replies, and shares, stories support a variety of interactive stickers. You can use these stickers to:
- Ask questions
- Create polls
- Invite followers to share photos or videos
Since there are so many options, it’s a good idea to experiment with different stickers to see what your audience responds to. You can even consider making story stickers a regular part of your weekly routine—with polls one day, questions another day, and so on.
For example, the @hallmark stories below use a poll sticker on the brand’s spin on the “this or that” trend. Each story invites followers to choose a card for various recipients by tapping on one of the emoji options. The stories also include link stickers so followers can tap to shop the designs.
Below, the @petco stories use the question sticker to invite followers to request advice from the pet supply brand’s dog training manager. The brand follows the original prompt with several user-submitted questions and answers from the manager. The brand has preserved these stories in an Expert Q&A highlight to provide long-lasting value.
5: Go Live to Generate Real-Time Engagement
Some of Instagram’s most meaningful engagement happens in real-time. With Instagram Live, you can speak directly to your audience, answer their questions, or respond to their prompts in the moment.
For example, @thechrisdo regularly hosts livestreams for his audience, creating genuine conversations that often generate hundreds of comments. In this video, he partners with @theannelihansson to share an expert take on personal branding.
In addition to encouraging comments, @thechrisdo invites viewers to DM him with a specific keyword. In DMs, he can share exclusive information on a new program while having meaningful conversations with viewers.
If you’re an eCommerce brand, Instagram’s live shopping events are great sources for high-engagement content. With live shopping, you can give customers an in-depth look at your products with demos and styling suggestions. You can also answer questions in real-time, sell tagged products directly from the event, and share the replay to your feed.
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6: Post Content at the Optimal Times
Whether you’re going live, sharing stories, or posting reels and feed content, it’s important to publish at the optimal times for your audience. It’s true that the Instagram recommendation engine occasionally picks up older reels. However, in most cases, the most successful content accumulates views and engagement shortly after publishing.
Instagram’s in-app insights can help you find the ideal times for your audience. Open your account’s insights and tap to view the Followers panel. Then, scroll to the bottom of the report to see when your viewers are most active. Remember that these insights aren’t exact, as they show times in 3-hour blocks.
To get more precise timing ideas, check Meta Business Suite. Business Suite recommends optimal publishing times based on your audience’s recent activity in the scheduling workflow. The only downside to Business Suite insights is that the platform only provides recommendations for a few days in advance.
If you test a new time slot and find that you’ve chosen one that doesn’t seem to work for your audience, you can experiment with archiving content. Then try unarchiving (i.e., essentially republishing it) at a different time to see if it generates more engagement.
7: Analyze Your Instagram Insights
Although best practices can help you set up a solid framework for your content, experimenting with new timing, concepts, and creatives is always a good idea. Use your account’s insights to see what’s working for your audience and what’s driving results for your business.
Since Business Suite insights don’t support Instagram Reels, use Instagram’s in-app insights to analyze performance. From the account insights overview, tap to view the Accounts Engaged panel. Then, scroll down to view your content interactions. You can see whether you’re generating more or less engagement than the prior period.
Then, scroll down to see interactions for each content type. Instagram automatically sorts each content type by likes, but you can select a more meaningful metric for your business. For example, you can sort by comments, shares, website visits, or even phone calls. Then, you can identify the content that drives the results you want.
8: Boost Content Directly on Instagram
Is your content falling short of expectations, or are you curious how much further you can take it? With Instagram’s in-app boost option, you can easily promote content to a wider audience.
You can expect the best results from boosting content already proven to perform well organically. That’s a sign that it’s gotten your audience’s approval, and Instagram’s recommendation engine prioritizes it.
Designate a reach or engagement threshold to guide your decision-making. For example, you might decide to boost content once it exceeds the key performance indicators set.
When boosting, choose a goal that fits the content and the campaign. Instagram posts, reels, and stories generally allow you to target engagement-boosting goals like profile visits and messages.
9: Improve Your Instagram Engagement Strategy
Publishing or boosting content is often the best way to get engagement. But you shouldn’t limit your team to only engaging on your brand’s content. In addition to responding to comments and messages, it’s also important to proactively engage with other accounts. Mutual interactions are another ranking signal for Stories and the feed.
To leverage this ranking signal, make a list of Instagram influencers, industry figures, and VIP customers with whom you want to forge a relationship. Then, add them to your Favorites feed and engage with their content regularly. Make sure to leave thoughtful, genuine comments to start real conversations.
Instagram’s automated DMs can also help you improve your engagement approach. Open the in-app chat tools to set up a welcome message or frequently asked questions and dramatically reduce your response time.
Conclusion
Whether you have an advertising budget or are looking for free ways to get more likes, comments, and DMs, these strategies will show you how to boost your Instagram engagement effectively. Applying these tactics can improve your brand’s visibility and interaction on Instagram. Keep tracking what works best for your audience, and focus on the methods that drive the highest engagement and return on investment (ROI) for your busines