How to increase your Instagram engagement in 2021
Every brand is wondering the same thing about Instagram: why has engagement dipped? You might assume it’s all down to the content you’re posting, but that’s only half the battle!
Much of the time, engagement rates aren’t high because it’s a metric that’s treated like a one-way street. Back when Instagram was younger, quieter, and mostly just a chronological feed, the most complex thing you had to consider was the time of day you posted! Now, the platform has many more moving parts.
Refamiliarising yourself with the ‘language’ of Instagram — how people are using the app in 2021, which new features have been introduced, what kinds of comments should you leave on other people’s posts — can increase engagements much more quickly and meaningfully than building your content strategy from the ground up.
Thankfully, it’s easier than you might expect! Here are our tips on how to increase Instagram engagement in 2021.
Get yourself feeling social!
Brew a coffee, put on your jams playlist, go for a walk, pull together a colour-coordinated fit — whatever you need to do to get into that friendly, chatty, social frame of mind.
Remember the brand TOV
Tone of voice is key. Generally, things are a little less formal on social media, unless an enquiry is a bit more on the serious side. Keep that brand voice consistent.
Change up your answers
If you’re basing your comments and messages on a bank of FAQ answers, there’s a risk that people will notice you’re copying and pasting the same responses to everyone. Edit each reply to be a tad different.
Don’t overthink timing
You’ll want to reply to some incoming comms as quickly as possible; enquiries in private messages typically beckon within-the-hour responses. But when it comes to commenting on other people’s posts or replying to the public comments on yours, there’s often no wrong answer. In fact, replying to comments on your posts a day later can be an hilariously simple way to bring a person’s attention back to your content a second time.
Show you’ve read the caption
Don’t be one of those people who comment the same two-word cookie-cutter response on every post. It’s excruciatingly obvious when those replies come from hashtag-driven bots — particularly when the post caption is lengthy and emotional and the comment just says “wow, great!” If a caption is quite dense, at least read the last few lines, and reference them in your comment. Double points if you drop a question, not just a statement.
Drop the ‘I’
Unless you’re repping an individual, e.g. an influencer, you’ll want to avoid the singular first-person ‘I’. Roll with ‘we’ and ‘us’, or eschew pronouns altogether — “love this, never seen such a cute dog” instead of “I love this, we’ve never seen such a cute dog,” for example.
Ask open questions
In order of awesomeness (from most awesome to least awesome): open questions, then jokes, then closed/rhetorical questions, then compliments, then exclamations, then statements, then strings of emoji.
Always use emoji!
Emoji have a ‘neutralising’ effect. No matter how serious your comment might seem without an emoji, add in a cheeky 👀 or an encouraging 🔥 and everyone will immediately know how chill you really are. Try to only use them at the end of comments, though, as dropping them into the middle of sentences can trip up screen readers used by blind and visually-impaired people.
Show love to smaller accounts
Some social media marketers and community managers follow the strange belief that you should always be punching up. Engaging with accounts that have larger followings doesn’t increase the likelihood that you’ll grow your own following! In fact, smaller accounts are often the ones who’ll reply to your comments instead of just dropping a ‘like’ on them.
Strike up conversations with Story Stickers
Instagram Stories now has a whole raft of Stickers that are ideal for upping engagement. The ‘Question’ sticker beckons written answers from viewers, and you’ll be able to share replies and encourage others to add their voice to the conversation.
The ‘Quiz’, ‘Poll’, and ‘Slider’ stickers are also great for engaging people. The interaction is just a button push, so it won’t spark a full conversation, but that also works in your favour: more viewers will respond because it’s so easy to do so.
There’s also the Countdown sticker, which holds the unique power of sending notifications to people when the timer hits zero. It’s a brilliant way to announce a sale or event in advance, get some countdown opt-ins, then bring people back when they get notified that your promotion has begun.
Hijack the threads
A simple “came here to say this” or “underrated comment” on other people’s post replies can quickly build camaraderie between you, the commenters, and the OP (original poster).
Take a break
If you’ve hit a wall and are struggling to find content to engage with or just don’t know what to say, step away for a bit. Flip over to a different platform like Twitter, or pick some lower-hanging fruit. Or just hit pause on engagement for a few hours. Everyone has their small talk limitations.
Keep the conversation relevant
Another way to show you’re a genuinely-interested human and not just an engagement bot is to ask questions that are relevant to other brands’ products. How long did this Jigsaw puzzle take to assemble? What was the hardest part of this food kit to cook? Where are you gonna place this piece of furniture in your home? You could even drop a classic bit of “how’s the weather where you’re at?” on sunrise snaps.
Share user-generated content
A social media manager’s life is built on UGC. Nothing hits quite like seeing a ‘tagged in’ notification, tapping through, and seeing a glorious photo from a customer ripe for the resharing. Tag the OP if you share to Stories. Drop a GIF on top to make it your own. And send ‘em a private message thanking them for their shot(s), too. UGC isn’t just great content — it’s also a cool opportunity to open a loyalty-building conversation.
Unfollow wisely
Keep on top of who you're following. Regularly prune out accounts you're not vibing or interacting with, or that post things that seem irrelevant or inappropriate for your feed. Instagram’s algorithm pays close attention to who you’re following. Restaurants that follow lots of foodie accounts, for example, have a higher chance of appearing on Instagram Explore for other people who primarily engage with culinary content.
Check the health of hashtags
You could argue back and forth forever about the optimum number of hashtags per post, but one thing is irrefutable: you should regularly check the quality of the content appearing under each one. The typical life of a hashtag goes something like: it gets picked up and popularized by a niche community, then gets so popular that millions use it without really checking its relevance, and it ultimately becomes meaningless. Those latter stages is where using the hashtag will attract spammy bot commenters to your content. Yuck.
Don’t be too unpredictable
Dig back through your stats and gauge what content has consistently been the most engaging in the long run, and then decide whether your feed is doing a good enough job of perpetuating those pillars. Archive or delete some off-piste low-engagement outlier posts if you have to.
But also don’t be too predictable
The other extreme is: you’re posting too much of the same. Thankfully, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel — strike a fine balance between predictable and unpredictable by keeping the frame and switching out the picture. That’s a fancy metaphorical way of saying: deliver the same content from a different angle. Switch out photography for typography. Swap illustrations for videos. Same messaging, different format.
Run a giveaway
Competitions are an easy surefire way to grow your following very quickly. But don’t take it for granted. With some forethought and strategy, you can convert many of those “I just want free stuff” types into authentically engaged brand loyalists.
Host an Instagram takeover
Inviting another brand to take over your Instagram account for a day, whether it’s in the feed or in Stories, brings their followers and fans to you. Having your brand take over someone else’s account has a similar effect. Reach out to businesses with similar target audiences to yours to spark a natural influx of followers.
Handling negative comments
If a negative comment is based on a direct experience with a service or product, continue the conversation in messages. Leave a public reply letting the person know you’ve contacted them privately, just so other people don’t think you’re simply ignoring the commenter.
If a negative comment is speculative, on the other hand, the first thing you should know is: you have the option to delete it, and you should use that power without guilt or stress! Engaging with retorts like “this looks rubbish” or “I can find this cheaper somewhere else” doesn’t often lead anywhere positive for either party.
But if you have the energy and a firm enough knowledge of the product or service, there are ways of trying to find neutral ground. Ask the commenter for a more elaborate opinion or explanation. If you can, admit a certain level of fault with humour and grace, if it’s not a risk for the company you’re representing.
Remember that this is the Internet, and some people just enjoy shouting at clouds. If it’s getting difficult and poisoning the comments section, don’t be afraid to delete the vitriol. And if they return with more retaliative comments and show no signs of replying respectfully to your DMs, the ‘block’ button is your best friend.
Engaging audiences with Reels
(AKA: Reeling them in)
Reels will likely have higher views and surprisingly low interactions, possibly because of lurkers, perceptions about the sorts of accounts that use reels (i.e. professional influencers), and because of how people interact with TIkTok videos.
Instagram want people to use Reels, and they’ll continue to push the format and prioritise them until they’re a key part of the Instagram experience in the minds of users. They took a similar approach when they first rolled out Stories in 2016.
But Reels can be time-consuming to create — not necessarily to shoot, but to plan and strategise. Many brands take on whole new hires just to manage the Reels and TikTok side of social media marketing.
It’s arguably an ‘all or nothing’ situation. If you try to make a few Reels, the engagement might not feel worth the effort. If you make Reels a core part of every campaign, the impact will snowball.