How to Boost Your Instagram Engagement Rate Acting on the Basis of Statistics and Using Platform Benefits

Posted: 11:00 am, January 8, 2021 by Guest Contributor

Social media right now keeps growing rapidly, as businesses, individuals, and even organizations use it to reach out to millions of people worldwide. One of the most popular social media platforms is Instagram. Did you know that over a billion people use the platform each month? Imagine they have content or an advertisement and do not know how to captivate their audience on this powerful platform; well, keep reading as this article would do justice to that effect.

What Is an Instagram Engagement Rate?

This basically entails the number of likes and comments for each post divided by the number of people who follow the user on the platform. Often, our likes and comments might be so low, which isn’t encouraging, especially when they have quite a good number of followers. Growing your IG page sometimes takes time, but you can set a goal to increase content engagement and choose IG likes for marketing strategy.

Also, engagement rates are very healthy metrics which checkmates how frequently a user’s follower contribute or are involved with the content they have made public. It compels them to focus on important data rather than looking out for the number of followers they have. So, how best can they measure this?

Method of Measuring How Your Audience Involved with Your Content

Measuring a user’s content level of interaction is very straightforward. All that is required for them to do is to combine both the number of likes and comments per post and have that divided by the number of followers and multiply that number by 100.

For a better explanation, let’s proceed with a sample. For instance, John has 70k followers, and on each post, he gets about 1000 likes and 50 comments. Adding these numbers together would be 1050 engagements in total. So, in other to decide John’s post engagement rate, he then needs to divide the average number of engagements, which is 1050, by the number of followers John has, which is 70,000, and then he has to multiply that said sum by 100.

The math’s would be 1050 ÷ 70000 = 0.015

0.015 x 100 = 1.5

Therefore, John’s post engagement rate is just about 1.5 percent.

This calculation is quite straightforward and also very easy for him to understand.

So, having known how to calculate content engagement, the question that lies for them is what then is a good metric value, especially on Instagram?

Determining a Good Engagement Rate

The first thing to know about how to get your followers involved in your posts is that the idea of a good rate depends on some factors. This entails that there is nothing like this is the best or a good engagement rate, although there are so many Instagram statistics to enlighten the reader. However, for those who wish to determine a good one, it is best advised to look through various values and have those numbers guide them to look at their engagement metrics. It might also interest anyone in knowing that the 1 to 5 percent is just about the average engagement rate on IG.

Furthermore, a lot of research is going to be made, depending on the industry they find themselves in, to determine the average rate. Moreover, even as they aspire to do more, it should be made known that if the engagement rate is 0.90%, then that is pretty much ok. But, if it is within the range of 3 to 5%, then that content represents a high involvement. So, how then do they increase this value?

Ways to Increase the Amount of Interaction the Instagram Content Earns

This is what a lot of Instagram users look forward to. As stated earlier, they are well informed on calculating the content engagement rate; it then remains how that page can be increased.

This section has been made available to teach IG users to increase their engagement rate and provide them with some examples they can work with to better know how to improve their content.

In other for an Instagram account user to increase his or her followers’ involvement on the platform, here are a few things they should work with:

Have a timed post: This is one of the ways to increase post engagement for a user. It is important that they have their post timed to perfection. Having their post timed to perfection would likely increase the engagement rate on their page. Also, an IG user has to try to make their content get the recognition that it deserves without making their users fatigued due to excess content. Furthermore, it is important that they know when to post and how often they should post. The best time to post content is around midday during weekdays, and this is according to research. It doesn’t solely have to be midday as people get relaxed and are most like to check their phones in the evenings, hence this is another period to work with. Moreover, content posted shouldn’t exceed three times a day, as most brands tend to have their content posted on average 1.5 times daily.
Engage with your followers: It is called social media for a reason, hence there should be a communication level between the user and his audiences. It is always important to respond to comments underneath their post, even direct messages, which invariably keep the rise’s engagement rate. This act also helps the user be better informed with their audiences as they get to know about how the audience views their brand and what is expected.
Hashtags and captions should be used appropriately: To increase involvement with the content on a person’s page, it’s important they must use the right hashtags to boost the level of followers’ participation. Hashtags are very useful because they increase the possibility of the user gaining more likes, increasing the chances of having the followers increased on the page, and reaching out to many audiences. For instance, an Instagram user sells cars, and they want to increase awareness. The hashtag to use would likely be #fastcars. Also, captions don’t have to be long as they can make it a bit short. Besides, the right caption should match the content they post, which effectively increases the engagement rate.
Make use of the Instagram Stories: Stories are usually there for about 24 hours, after which the content disappears. There are over half a billion people who actively use IG Stories. In other, for them to have their engagement rate increased, they can use the Stories as this is made available on the platform, and it certainly helps, especially if the content is a lot. Most times, people are always looking for content that would benefit them one way or the other, and to this effect, they would likely feel compelled to view the Story by a simple tap.
Do a contest and offer giveaways: Generally speaking, people do enjoy where they can benefit from, and to this effect, it is important that they do either a contest or better still offer giveaways. This draws a lot of followers on their pages as more people would then be drawn to the contest or be actively hooked on the requirement to win the giveaways. A good example of an Instagram user would be to set out requirements for participants such as posting the video on their page, tagging the owner, and just commenting on the owner’s page.
Market your page: For an Instagram user to keep his/her followers active on their page, he or she needs to have to market their page. A well-known page would have a lot of likes and comments, while those which have relatively fewer followers would have low engagement. Also, it is important that the content should be what users can relate to. They should keep this energy going for a sustained period of time, and they would see how the engagement rate would increase.
Use videos: It is a known fact that IG users enjoy videos, and this is just another way to increase the engagement rate on an individual’s page. Since the start of 2018, the number of created Instagram videos has been rising, with an estimated 80 percent increase. For instance, funny content with a video posted stands a good chance of increasing its engagement rate. However, for an amateur or a rookie who intends to post videos, they need to be duly guided before letting the video out by carrying out some research on their own.
Get creative: A lot of times, people underestimate the importance of diversity. An Instagram account user doesn’t have to keep posting similar content, as they can get creative and post either something unique or something trending and different from their regular post. For instance, a company that engages their followers on the services they render, although they may be having some engagements going on there but imagine if such account decides to post a funny video or something that can be saved to be watched later. This kind of activity doesn’t only improve the engagement rate of such an account but also increase the number of followers. To this end, it is important to get creative as it would surely pay at the end of the day.

Furthermore, some of the key parameters often used are:

Profile visits: This basically has to do with the number of times a user’s page is visited.
Website click: This is another parameter used to track an engagement rate, as what this means is that a user’s Instagram’s website link is opened.
Reach: This means the number of unique views a user’s post or stories have.
Followers: This is a fact that needs to be monitored, as there is every possibility that the more a user gains more followers, the more likes and comments the user gets on his/her posts.
Likes: This is just another parameter that tracks a user’s engagement rate. A content that is received by the audience gets to have a good number of likes and vice versa.
Comments: This is also another way that Instagram users can monitor their page’s engagement rate. If the comments are quite encouraging, that would mean the conversation is either entertaining or engaging.

Moreover, it is always a good sign if the comments are a bit high compared to a post just being liked. Also, the quality of comments is important as people often leave a simple comment like “cool” or “lovely”. As such, these kinds of comments do not really mean much.

Some Key Instagram Statistics

Females represent 51% of the global usage, while 49% goes to the male.
As of June 2016, about 95 million pictures were posted, although that number might have increased.
An estimated 14% of users have one way or the other clicked on a sponsored post.
Every month, about 2 million advertisers use Instagram.
In 2018, Bloomberg valued Instagram at $100 million.

All these are just a few platform statistics that the reader should know.

In conclusion, since social media serves as a platform for different purposes, it is important to increase followers’ level of commitment to a page. It is also advisable to keep your content entertaining or better still follow the ways Instagram posts engagement can be increased, which was discussed in this article. To this end, it is encouraged that the reader follows the right process so as to keep his or her audience’s involvement level on his/her posts up.