8. 5 Ways To Boost Your Instagram Engagement
Are you struggling with low Instagram engagement?
In this episode, I share five simple strategies to increase your Instagram engagement, so your amazing content can reach more people and resonate with your ideal clients. From understanding what engagement rate means to practical tips on boosting your engagement, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
If you're tired of struggling with Instagram engagement and want to learn proven strategies that work, this is for you.
In this episode, you’ll learn about:
03:24 - Defining Instagram Engagement
06:30 - How Instagram Algorithm Works
07:13 - Engagement as a Measure of Content Resonance
08:08 - Analyzing Your Content Performance
10:03 - How to Determine Your Engagement Rate
11:49 - Insights from your Professional Dashboard
27:16 - Importance of Instagram Reels for Maximum Impact
But that's not all!
I also have an exclusive offer for my podcast listeners. I've recently launched a 30-day private Instagram mentorship program called InstaGrowth. This program is designed to kickstart your Instagram account and set you up for long-term success.
During our time together, we'll work on creating an Instagram roadmap, doing an audience deep dive, refreshing your Instagram bio, developing a reel strategy, and more.
Plus, you'll receive unlimited Instagram audio coaching from me during the program to ensure you're on the right track.
As a special offer for being a valued podcast listener, you can save $200 off the program by using the code "podcast" at checkout.
If you're interested in learning more about InstaGrowth, DM me the word "growth" on Instagram, and I'll send you the link to get started.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your Instagram account to the next level and start seeing real results for your business!
Links mentioned in this episode…
Insta-Growth: The 30 Day Private Instagram Mentorship - https://www.elizabethmarberry.com/insta-growth
SAVE $200 WITH CODE "PODCAST"
7 Mistakes Businesses Are Making On Instagram -https://www.elizabethmarberry.com/podcast-episodes/005
Free guide to Monetize Your IG: Seven Simple and Proven Ways to Finally Make Money on Instagram
Apply for your FREE Instagram Breakthrough Call with Elizabeth
Quotes
[12:37] "Engagement is about telling the algorithm what your audience loves."
[17:42] "Clear and compelling Calls to Action (CTAs) guide your audience on how to interact with your content, you make it easier for them to take action, driving more meaningful engagement and expanding your reach!"
TRANSCRIPT
S3 Ep08 5 Ways To Boost Your Instagram Engagement
**Elizabeth Marberry 0:00**
Elizabeth Marberry: Today, we are gonna dish on Instagram engagement and why it is such an important metric for your business and brand. I'm also gonna be sharing with you five simple ways to increase your Instagram engagement, so that way your incredible content can get in front of more eyeballs and be seen by your ideal clients. I cannot wait to share this with you, so grab a notebook and let's get started. Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their soul-led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place. Let's dive in! As always, welcome back to the show.
Thank you for taking this time to invest in yourself and your knowledge in growing your business online. I'm so thrilled to bring this episode to you today because I don't know about you, but I hear all the time about engagement. You'll see lots of reels on Instagram teaching you ways that you can boost your engagement. I see blog posts about it, podcasts about it, and I want to really pull back the curtain on the foundational aspects of engagement rate. Like, what does Instagram engagement actually mean? And why is it important to your business and brand? I'm also gonna be teaching you how do you determine your engagement rate? Like, let's do a little math today. And you're gonna learn five simple ways that you can implement this week that will make a huge difference in your engagement rate and get your content seen. so you can make more money doing your soul-led work. I'm so excited. Now before I dive in, I wanna share with you something kind of vulnerable, which is that my engagement rate on both of my Instagram accounts recently in the last few weeks have gone down, they have been low. And I am in a lot of different creator groups, influencer groups, and this is happening across the board. So if this has been happening to you, especially recently, I'm recording this the second week of April, if this has been happening to you, know that you're not alone.
Oftentimes when this is happening sort of across the board, where you notice your engagement is going down on your account, It's usually because Instagram is updating their app and or they're testing out new features and they're kind of going through a weird shift. Okay, so I've been in this game long enough to ride the roller coaster of Instagram and sometimes this happens when Instagram is just making those updates to the app. So I believe and I've seen over and over again that even though your Instagram engagement rate might be in the toilet right now, don't give up. Keep focusing on creating that high value, high quality content and trust that the algorithm will start to work in your favor as Instagram kind of works out those glitches and kinks that they've been experiencing lately.
So let's get into this conversation about engagement. Now, what do I mean when I say Instagram engagement? What that means is how your audience or how people who are seeing your content on Instagram are interacting with it. So engagement simply means likes, comments, shares, saves, people DMing you, people responding to your polls and your story. So any sort of interaction with your content is engagement. Now, engagement rate is really important and there's really two main reasons why engagement is critical for your business if you're wanting to leverage Instagram to grow your sales and your impact.
Number one is Instagram makes money by people staying on their app. So if you create a piece of content and people see it but they don't like it, they don't comment on it, they don't share it, they don't save it, The algorithm is going to think, okay, this is not a great piece of content and I'm not going to share it out to a lot of people because Instagram wants us to stay on their app and keep consuming the content. That is how they make money.
That's how they get sponsorships and ads. and revenue, right? So it is in their best interest to show the best possible content and put it in front of the right people so that way people consume more and more on their app and they make more money because Instagram is a business like any other. So if you have a great engagement rate, it's awesome because that means the algorithm will start to show your content to more people. So while it's true that likes and comments and follows don't necessarily equate to sales, it is really critical if you're in a place of wanting to grow your audience and get in front of more people, and if you've already built a following, to have your content be seen by your followers. When you have a higher engagement rate, it helps you to get better visibility on Instagram.
And it also positions you more as an expert and a trustworthy leader in your space, right? So there is some clout around if you create content and you grow an account, it does build that know, like, and trust factor, assuming that, of course, all of your content is high quality, it's truthful, it's helpful, all of those things, it's educating someone, it's inspiring them, it's motivating them, then you will be rewarded by that. Instagram will show your content to more and more people. Now, just to kind of be clear on how this works, If you, John, are looking at my video and you like it, or you think it's really funny, so you comment on it, or maybe I'm teaching you an Instagram strategy, so you decide to save it. That tells the algorithm that John likes Elizabeth's content, and so the next time that John logs into Instagram, he's gonna see my content. He's also gonna see other content that is similar to my content.
So I'm sure this has happened to you. I know this happens to me all the time and my husband sends me these like really adorable like puppy videos and like dog videos and I'll go on to Instagram and I'll start to see more dog videos. So I'm sure this has happened to you, but this is why it's so important that you do want people to be interacting and engaging with your content because you can create the most incredible piece of content, but if nobody sees it, then it doesn't move the needle for your business. The second reason why engagement rate is important is it's a way to measure how your content is resonating with your target audience.
And this is something that as a marketer, as a business owner, you should always be evaluating to ensure that your social media strategy is really working for you, right? So you'll know when to pivot and what content is resonating. So that way you can repurpose it, or you can make it even better, or you can create more of the same content that your audience is really resonating with. So I do this all the time in both of my businesses. And I'll give you an example for my Instagram coaching brand. So I love to be really silly and not take myself too seriously while also being relatable and educating my audience.
And so some of my most popular reels recently have been the ones where I'm kind of making fun of the fact that, hey, I got two likes and 47 views on my last reel, but yet here I am showing up. And I'm kind of laughing at myself and I'm kind of calling out the fact that I'm creating all this content and I'm not getting much engagement, but yet here I am. The other way that I kind of measure this within my own business is I do reels in different locations. So I'll do reels in my kitchen. I will do reels on my porch. I used to do a lot of reels out in the open space when I was out walking. And what I did is over the course of months, I started to study my content and see what performed better. And I got really curious about that, right? And that's what I invite you to do because when I did that, I realized that all of the reels of me in my kitchen outperformed the ones of me in my bathroom. And they did better than the ones of me out walking.
And so part of this is really analyzing like what is your target audience really gravitating toward and studying that so you can leverage that in the future as you're creating more and more content. And the idea is that you're always refining your process, you're refining your messaging so you can really call out that Dreamboat client, so of course it's gonna be a no-brainer for them to follow you, they're gonna go binge on all your content, they're gonna like it, they're gonna comment on it, and hopefully start to get in conversation with you in the DMs and all of that. So engagement rate is super duper important, and if you're wondering how do you determine your engagement rate, I'm gonna teach you two easy ways.
The first way is to open up your professional dashboard on Instagram, and you will find your insights or your analytics. At the top, you'll see accounts reached, accounts engaged, and total followers, and it will show you a little percentage. So if the percentage is in the green, that means in the last 30 days, you're up. If it's kind of in that like grayed out color, it means it's down. And it will default to the past 30 days, but you can always toggle that setting to see a different date range. Like you could look at the past 90 days, for example. So to look at your engagement rate, you'll see that accounts engaged number right there on that homepage of your professional dashboard. You can also click on accounts engaged and it breaks it all down for you. So it opens up another window and it breaks it all down for you and it will show you different demographics.
So it will show you the top cities that your audience is in, the top countries, it'll show you your age range of the people who are seeing your posts, the gender, and how much of your engagement is your followers versus non-followers. So how much of your content is being pushed out to non-followers, people who don't already follow you, and how many of your actual followers are seeing your content. You'll also be able to filter it by content type, so you can see which kind of content is bringing you in the most engagement.
And we're gonna get into that when I start to share with you some five strategies for boosting your engagement. Now, so looking in your professional dashboard, that's a super easy way to kind of analyze what's been working or not working for you in the last 90 days. The other easy way that you can determine your engagement rate, if you want to look at a particular post. So what you can do is you can open up a reel on Instagram, a reel that you created or a carousel post or whatever kind of content that you created recently. And to determine your engagement rate, all you need to do is divide the total engagement on the post. So that would be the likes, the shares, the comments, the saves, all of the engagement that happened with that one post.
Add it all up and divide it by your total number of followers. and then you multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage. So this will tell you your engagement rate based on your entire follower count. So I'm going to give you an example because maybe math is a struggle for you and I know I just love examples. They help me to wrap my brain around these concepts. So if you have, let's say you have 1,000 followers, And on a recent post that you did, let's say you posted a reel, you got 10 likes on it, 10 comments, and 10 shares, just keeping the numbers really round and easy. So that would be 30 different pieces of engagement on that post. You would take 30 divided by your follower count, which is 1,000. That would equal 0.03. times 100 equals a 3% engagement rate on that post. Now you may be wondering, okay, what is a good engagement rate? And that really varies depending on the industry that you're in and your follower size.
Because as you get more and more followers, it's actually your engagement rate will go down. But generally speaking, a good engagement rate is one to 5% on each post. So if you are anywhere in that range of a 1-5% engagement rate on your post, you're doing great! Alright, so I hope you have a better idea about what is engagement rate, why it matters to your business, and how to find out what your engagement rate is. Now let's get into the five ways to increase your engagement on Instagram. The first way is to prioritize interacting with your audience. Remember, this is social media. We have to keep it social. I can't tell you how many businesses just post and ghost.
They leave and they don't interact with their audience whatsoever. So one of the best ways to boost engagement is always respond to any comments on your post. And I don't mean just respond with like a heart emoji or like a high five, okay? I mean like if someone took the effort to comment on your post, please respond to them. with words, with a thoughtful message. And here's another pro tip. Oftentimes, if it's appropriate, I don't force it, but if it's appropriate, I will respond to a comment with a question. And there's a couple different reasons why I do that. One is I genuinely have a question. Like, I'm so glad you love this. What part of this resonated with you? Or what was most helpful? Or which of these tips are you going to use this week? And part of that is I genuinely want to talk to my audience. The more you can be in conversation with your target audience, it will help inform all of your marketing decisions. It'll help you create better offers for your business. And you will know exactly what kind of content to create that will really give them answers to the problems that they're experiencing. So I will ask a question. I also do that though, because then like nine out of 10 times, they will respond to the question. And that tells the algorithm, oh, wow, this person is like really engaging with Elizabeth's content. And I do that to boost my engagement rate. So that person will see my content and it tells the algorithm, okay, this is a good piece of content. Like people are talking about it, they're interacting with it.
And so I'm gonna show it to more people. In this vein of interacting with your audience, okay, so I want you to be responding to comments. I can't tell you how many people do not do this and it makes me crazy. But the other thing I want you to do is respond to all DMs. So really part of your job is if you decide to use Instagram to grow your business, just like you check your business email account every day, you need to be checking your Instagram DMs, and you need to be responding to people, okay? Even if they just like your story, even if they just clap in your story, you know, have an emoji reaction, sometimes I'll respond to them and say like, thank you, I'm so glad you like this. And you would be amazed at how people are actually really wanting to get in conversation with you. And remember, sales come from conversations.
Sales come from relationships. And so if you can kind of break down that wall and reach out, people really love it. So I really invite you to add more of yourself and add more audience interaction into your strategy, and that will totally help to boost your engagement rate. The second way to increase your engagement rate on Instagram is to use strong calls to action or CTAs. so your followers always know how you want them to engage with your content. So I see this mistake made all the time where an incredible creative entrepreneur will create this piece of content and I feel so moved by it or I'm inspired or I wanna learn more about their product or their service or how I could work with them. And then there's no call to action. I don't know what I should do with their content. Should I DM them? Should I comment? Should I like?
Should I save it? And this isn't even for the algorithm. This is just human psychology, okay? Marketing is all about psychology and how people work. And so you have to tell people what to do for them to do it, okay? Yes, sometimes someone will just love what you're doing so much and they'll comment or they'll like it, but more times than not, especially if it's a cold audience, especially if it's someone that doesn't already know you, you have to kind of encourage them with those next steps. Like what is the next step that you want them to take with your piece of content? And remember, it doesn't have to always be salesy. In fact, it should not always be salesy on Instagram. That doesn't do well if you're constantly leading with sales and promos. What does do well is those relationship building pieces. Like, like this video if it resonated with you. Or save so you can come back to this in the future. So depending on what your piece of content is about, that's how you have to determine what call to action to use, right? So if it's an educational piece of content, you're teaching someone something new, then maybe your call to action is save and follow for more, right? Because I want you to save it because it's so educational, you're gonna wanna come back and reference it. And you're going to want to follow for more because I'm going to be sharing more tips with you. Do you see how that works? So it depends on the type of content you're creating, but you always want to think about like, what do I want people to do with this? And that is so important because as you are more clear about how you want people to engage, that will boost your engagement because people will be more inclined to take action.
One way that we use the CTA in my business, in my dance studio business, that's so much fun, is we are in the wedding industry and we do choreography for first dances. And so a lot of times in our market, and again, this is just a reminder to you that you have to be really clear on who you serve and your demographics and what is their struggle. And here's an example of that. So we do first dance lessons and customized choreography. And one pain point that we often hear is that there's one person in the couple who is totally down for it. They cannot wait to take dance lessons. They're so excited. They watched Dancing with the Stars. They're ready to go. And then there's another person in the couple who's like, Like, this sounds horrible. I have two left feet. I'm awkward. I have no desire to learn how to dance. I hate dancing. Like, no, I'm not doing it. So a lot of times in our content, we will create pieces where we will say, tag your fiance to get them on board.
And it might be a really inspiring piece of content or it might be a post about why you want to take dance lessons because not everybody even understands all the benefits of why you would want to do that for your wedding. And it always works so well because then the people who are consuming it, they can tag their fiancé to get them going. And it's a great way for us to boost engagement and get in front of more people because not only Well, the person that they tagged see our content, but the algorithm will say, oh, you know, John was tagged in this piece of content. He looked at it. I bet that John is friends with other people in this demographic. So I'm gonna also show this wedding dance coach video to John's friends. And so that's how it works. Remember, the algorithm is just a engine that is trying to filter information to the right people. It is not trying to, shadow ban you or make Instagram not work for your business. It is really just a little computer that is trying to filter out your content and show it to the people who could actually benefit from your content. So use those calls to action and be really clear about how you want people to interact with your posts. The third way to increase your engagement on Instagram is so simple and fun, and that is leveraging stories. So if you're not already leveraging stories, you definitely need to be doing that. Stories are shown to the people who are already following you. So remember that stories are not where you're gonna find new followers, but it's a great way to nurture the people who are already in your audience. And one of my favorite ways to boost engagement is to use the stickers and polls in my story. So I might use a poll and say, like for our wedding dance business, we'll say, are you considering wedding dance lessons? Like, yes, I am. Or no, I'm not. And then on the next slide, it might be, Okay, so if you are considering choreographed first dance, have you picked out your song yet? And then they get to vote. And it's a really fun, interactive way for people to engage with you. And it is such a great way to do target market research. And so you can get really creative.
A lot of times with my Instagram coaching brand, I'll do this where I'll say like, ask me anything about how to grow your business on Instagram. Or I'll say, what is your biggest struggle with Instagram right now? And those answers really help to inform my content for this podcast, for my reels that I create, for my email newsletter, for all of the content I create. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Instead of just trying to rack your brain and figure out, what does my audience want? Go and ask them questions. And the stories are a great way to do that. And it's awesome. Instagram loves it when you use their features. So leverage those stickers, the little slider, the poll, the sticker where you can put in a question and people can type in their answer. Take advantage of those. And I also want to say, don't get discouraged if the first week or two or even month of doing this, you don't get any responses. Welcome to the club. This kind of thing just takes time. You're probably still in a place like I am where I'm still rebuilding. I did a big brand pivot. just over a year ago, and I'm still building a whole new audience and demographics. So this kind of thing takes time, but I invite you to keep testing and playing and seeing what resonates with your audience. And as they start interacting with your poll sticker and asking you questions and liking your stories and commenting on them, that will definitely help to increase your engagement on Instagram. And when that person is interacting with your story, they are going to be more likely to see your story again the next time you post something.
The fourth way to increase your Instagram engagement is to utilize the top line of your caption to drive engagement. So the top line of your caption is so important. So we already talked about the CTA, the call to action. I always recommend the call to action is on your video or on your carousel. Don't just bury the call to action in the caption. Most people won't even read the whole caption, so don't do that. Make sure the CTA is in the video. But when you're looking at a reel or a post on Instagram, the caption, the very top line of the caption, is prime real estate. Because when you're scrolling on reels, you can see those first five to six words, and then there's like dot, dot, dot, and they have to click if they wanna read more of your caption. So those first few words are gold. They are critical. And using that line strategically is one of the best ways that you can boost engagement on your post. So something as simple as, can you relate? that can be a great conversation starter in the comments, right? Or if it's more of an educational post, you could share some education in your video, like a couple high-level key points. And let's say maybe I'm sharing like 10 ways to boost your Instagram engagement.
And I create a video that says the hook is like 10 simple ways to boost your Instagram engagement. And then my call to action is read the caption. And then at the top line, I can say here they are with a little down arrow pointing down. So people have to tap on that to read all 10 tips. Do you see how that works? So the top line of your caption is a really important way to boost that engagement, because if people are reading your caption, they're more likely to take that next step, that call to action. And sometimes I'll use the top line of my caption to just say, like if you needed to see this today, right? So it can be so simple, but you can really tell people how you want them to interact with your content right there at the top line of your caption, and that will totally help to boost your engagement. Last but not least is probably the most important, and that is if you want to boost your engagement on Instagram, reels must be a huge part of your strategy. So that's right, I want you to create more reels.
I want you to consistently post high value reels that are targeted at that ideal dreamboat perspective follower and client. So before I hit record on this podcast, I was looking at my insights, and in the last 90 days, 96% of all of my engagement for my account came directly from Reels, okay? 96% of engagement came from Reels. And this happens all the time with my private clients too, because I have them share with me their analytics. Reels is the number one way to get your content in front of more people and really boost that engagement rate. And I've covered this a little bit in previous episodes, but you need to be posting a minimum of three reels a week. Ideally more than that, but three reels a week to me is sort of the bare minimum of what you need to be doing if you're working on growing your audience and increasing your reach. Now, with that being said, because I hate those hard cut rules, like you have to do this, What I want to encourage you to lean into, depending on where you're at in your business and your time and your personal capacity, is I would rather you create a higher quality reel and post one a week consistently than to post like three really crappy reels that do nothing, right?
So take it with a grain of salt, but if you want to boost your engagement on Instagram, you might wanna play with posting more reels than you're currently posting. And I play with this all the time in both of my brands where I might have a week where I post a lot, like I might post 14 reels in a week. And then I might have a week where I'm only posting five reels. And I'm kind of always testing. And the thing that I like to remind myself about posting a lot of reels is that the more I create reels, the better I get at the actual content creation process. coming up with the ideas, editing my videos, filming my videos, writing the captions, like everything gets easier and more streamlined the more I do it. So I just love that personally for myself. But the other reason why I like to create a high volume of reels is then I get to see what resonates with my ideal client. And the more I create, the bigger pool of evidence that I have, right? So what I wanna tell you is, You need to be posting consistently for at least three months, if not six months, before you can really do a full analysis of what is working and what is not.
So you have to create a higher volume, and of course high quality, before you can start to really analyze. Because you wanna have a bigger pool to really survey, if that makes sense. And Reels are absolutely my zone of genius. I love short-form video. I love the power of showcasing your unique brand personality and identity. And I love how it builds that know, like, and trust factor, because whether you're selling a product or a service, people buy people. They wanna get a vibe for the energy and personality behind your brand, and there's no better way to do that than Reels. It's also such a fun way to educate your audience, teach them something new, motivate them, inspire them to take new action or entertain them, right? Like make them laugh. Depending on your market, you may just focus on the educational aspect. For me, I like to incorporate all three of those into my Reels, but Reels are absolutely worth investing in in terms of you mastering the art of creating a high-performing Reel that not only gets a lot of likes and comments and saves, but most importantly, attracts your ideal client so you can convert more of your followers into paying clients because that's why we're here, right?
We wanna create because we are creators and artists and we have to pay our bills, right? So there's nothing wrong with that, that your end goal is that you want those conversions, and there's no better way to do that than with Reels on Instagram, which is why I am so excited about my InstaGrowth 30-day private Instagram marketing mentorship, because during this 30-day high-touch bespoke Instagram container, you and I will work on your account together. So this is so much fun. I've been delivering these in the last few months with some clients and they're getting incredible boosts to their engagement and to their confidence. I mean, that is a huge part of this, right? Is feeling like you know what you're doing, you know what to post, you know who you're talking to and how to really leverage your reels to move the needle in your business and make a big impact. InstaGrowth is designed for ambitious business owners and you, my friend, if you're still listening, are that person because you're investing all this time and energy in learning this new skill. And I am here to shortcut the learning curve for you and give you what you need and leave the rest behind, any of the bells and whistles that you don't need because Instagram can be so overwhelming with the different features and options. And what I love to do is to customize everything for my clients so I can really understand their vision and goals and curate their Instagram so it really works for their business.
So say goodbye to that frustration that you've been having at that low engagement rate and hello to confidence on Instagram if you join my 30-day private InstaGrowth mentorship. If you wanna learn more about this, simply DM me the word on Instagram, grow, and I will send you a message back with details of the program what we're gonna do together in our 30 days and the investment. And here's the best part. For a limited time only, podcast listeners can save $200 off their investment with Code Podcast. So hit me up in the DMs on Instagram with the word grow, and don't forget to use code podcast at checkout to save $200. I am so excited to see you go and implement these five strategies into your Instagram content this week, and I can't wait to see how it impacts your engagement rate. Make sure you check out those analytics before you start implementing these strategies, so you can really measure how they're working for you in real time. Send me that DM, grow on Instagram, and we'll be in touch that way. And I cannot wait to start it with you next week.
Thank you for listening to Strut It. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free Monetize Your IG guide, where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies. That's elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.