How to Increase Engagement on Your Instagram Business Account
We've been doing social media all wrong.
The running joke of how marketers are the worst at marketing themselves rings true to our experience. And it's frustrating. How do we write content that promises clients a vibrant online presence—when ours is frequented by crickets and not a tight community?
After listening to playlists of social media marketing podcasts, filling our schedule with workshops and webinars, and reading stacks of books and blogs, we concluded that the #1 reason why our social media accounts aren't taking off is that:
We post and ghost.
Guilty of it too?
Posting and ghosting means spending time and energy crafting captions, taking beautiful photos, designing posts, and hitting "Publish." The end. Right after releasing our content out in the wild, we log out and pray our post is gonna blow up.
But instead of making waves and attracting our audience, we find our organic content cuddling with crickets—no conversations sparked, no more than a thousand people reached. Awkward!
Prodigy is 8 years strong. And while we're not after vanity metrics, we want to grow in new ways. For years, we've consoled ourselves with excuses such as:
We're a B2B business. It's easier to gain traction online when you're a retailer.
We're just busy helping our clients grow!
We have a very small, very specific market.
Though these are true, the more important piece that we're missing is the art of engagement.
Let's define social media engagement
"Social media engagement is a measure of how people are interacting with your social media accounts and content," writes Mike Eckstein on Buffer.
These interactions can be:
Likes/Reactions
Comments
DMs/Replies
Shares, Regram, Retweets
Saves
Clicks
Tags/Mentions
Why social media engagement matters for businesses online
More and more social media platforms have set up algorithms that favor brands with meaningful interactions.
For example, Facebook serves audiences with News Feed posts based on their activity and connections. The number of comments, likes, and reactions a post receives (engagement) and what kind of post it is (e.g. photo, video, status update) can also make a post more likely to appear on their feed.
Meanwhile, Instagram ranks Feed Posts and Stories based on:
Information about the post
How many people liked it?
When was it posted?
How long is it (if it's a video)?
Where is the location?
Information about the person who posted
How many times have you interacted with this person/business profile in the past few weeks?
User activity
What kind of posts have you shown interest in?
How many posts have you liked?
A user's history of interacting with someone
How interested are you generally in seeing posts from a particular profile? (e.g. based on whether or not you comment on each other’s posts)
In Feed, the five types of interactions Instagram looks at most closely when deciding what to show a user is whether they are likely to:
Spend a few seconds on a post
Comment
Like
Save
Tap on the profile photo
📌 Note: While comments, likes, and shares are important to increase your brand reach, using sketchy ways to get them can hurt your social media accounts. If you don't want to rank lower on your customers' feeds, be banned, or get reported, stay away from shady schemes such as buying followers or using spam bots.
Non-Spammy Tactics To Boost Engagement On Instagram
Engagement, which is essentially conversations, leads to opportunities. Opportunities lead to conversions.
If you have an hour to spare, we recommend this podcast on improving Instagram engagement to build community and conversions. It's Michael Stelzner's interview with Sue B. Zimmerman aka @theinstagramexpert.
And here’s a list of actionable tips and advice from the episode—we took notes so we can share them with you!
Top 3 Mistakes Marketers Make When Engaging on Instagram (And What You Can Do Instead)
Leaving irrelevant and salesy comments
Ever posted a selfie and received an out-of-context comment?
Like comments from strangers promoting trading gurus who allegedly made them millionaires in six days—right in the comment section of your #wokeuplikethis selfie?
Let's never try that.
Tagging innocent people on Feed posts
You're falling asleep, but you hear your phone's notification sound.
It's from Instagram: "awesomebrand021 tagged you in a photo." Curious, you check it out. You see a random photo from a random profile that you don't even follow. Surprise! You're tagged on a giveaway post for an over-toaster—and you don't even like bread.
Furious, you hit unfollow. You curse them for ruining your good night. The lesson of the story: Stop tagging people on photos they're not in or won't care about (especially in the middle of the night).
Not engaging
Not engaging because you're busy perfecting your content is like wearing the best dress at a cocktail party and sitting in a corner, seemingly uninterested in connecting.
No one bothers you, no one walks up to you for that first dance of the night, and the next day no one knows you even went to the party. Bummer, right?
So if you don't have anything to post that's valuable for your audience, hang out with them instead. You'll still have a great time.
What you can do:
Know your target audience.
Then follow the accounts that they're interested in and thoughtfully engage with them. It's the best tactic we've tried so far, and it's super effective!
Leave meaningful comments with a signature style.
It increases your chances of being pinned to the top of the comment section. That's like a thank-you or a gold-star recognition that allows more people to see your comment and maybe visit your profile!
Know what's great for the algorithm?
Conversation threads! So when writing comments on other people's posts, consider how you can encourage others to jump into the conversation too.
How to Get More Engagement on Your Instagram Content
Stay true to your promise
You made a promise to your audience—and it's written in your bio.
If you're following the best practices, your Instagram bio clarifies who you serve, how you help them, and what kind of content they can expect from you. And you have to deliver on that through your posts. A disconnect between your bio and your content can confuse and turn your followers off.
Deal with your DMs
Are you getting kind and helpful feedback from your audience? Are they asking you questions?
Reply to each one. You can make the conversation more personal by responding with a video message—or a voice memo if you're camera-shy. Add this to your work routine and see how it encourages meaningful interactions between you and your audience.
If you're blessed enough to get overwhelmed by tons of messages and inquiries, you can try Instagram's "Saved Replies" (known as "Quick Replies" in the past) for a more convenient and efficient process.
Respond to comments
When someone takes the time to leave a thoughtful comment on your Feed post, go beyond reacting with a heart emoji. ❤️
You can ask them relevant questions instead to keep the conversation going. If you feel like you've already established a genuine connection with them, try asking them to tag a few friends who would also appreciate your content.
But what if no one's leaving comments on your Instagram content?
You're not alone. We can relate, and here's what we're gonna try on Instagram in the next few weeks—you can test them out too!
📌 Note: Try these tactics only with people from your loyal community and those who will appreciate the tag or DM. Don't tag random people or else you'll come off as spammy (we don't want that now, do we?)
Feed
When someone likes your post without leaving a comment, you can bring them back into the conversation.
How? Thank them in the comment section (or via DM) for liking your post and ask them a thoughtful question.
You can say, "I see that you liked our post about ______, I'd like to know your thoughts." or "Do you have any questions? Here's a link so you can quickly jump into the conversation."
This is all to redirect them back to your original post.
Send a post to up to 50 people in the DMs, all at once.
But first, make sure it's relevant to the recipient.
Bring value to your Group DMs by sharing your valuable content there.
On your Feed post, you can tag up to 20 people who would find the content relevant.
Otherwise, you'll annoy them for wasting their time.
Try to create comment threads.
When you get a comment saying, "Hey, this is such great information. Thank you!" You can reply with, "I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Please tag three of your friends that you know would appreciate it too."
If they have a question, answer it and write something like, "Let me know if you have any other questions." Always encourage conversations.
Stories
You can mention up to 10 people in your Story by typing @ and their username (you can hide the text behind pretty stickers, GIFs, or a brushstroke on Story).
When you tag them, they'll be notified and get a DM with a preview of your Story. This makes it easy for them to re-share your Story, helping you reach their audience.
IGTV
Regardless of your follower count, you can use the Swipe Up feature when promoting your IGTV posts on Stories.
Just post a teaser via Stories, click the link icon, and select your IGTV post. Bonus tip: Add a snazzy 'Swipe Up' sticker for a more eye-catching call-to-action.
Write stellar descriptions for your IGTV videos and add relevant links.
Yep, this is the only space where you can add clickable links (aside from the website link in your bio), so use it wisely!
Don’t forget to add captions.
Most video viewers watch without the sound on, so always turn on video captions.
Live
Are you regularly going on live broadcasts? Try inviting 2-3 guests to broaden your audience.
You share your audience with them, and they share theirs with you. #Mutualism
Encourage questions by reminding your viewers to use the Q&A sticker.
Let your Instagram mantra be: Keep meaningful conversations going!
Think of replay viewers and create evergreen content that you can repurpose later.
Reels
While the Reels feature isn't here in the Philippines yet, you can keep the following tips in mind.
Be mindful of where you place your text.
Similar to TikTok videos, if you place texts too close to the top or bottom, they might not be readable for your viewers after publishing. Aim to place texts within the 4:5 ratio.
Add relevant CTA to direct your audience on what action to take after viewing your Reel.
Surprisingly, people still like being told what to do (we'll never admit that, though).
When's the best time to post? When you have time to engage after you post.
Here's a challenge for you
Do you value infinite learning and enjoy problem-solving?
Here at Prodigy, we do. It's in our DNA to desire growth and improve as we go. So we're challenging ourselves to apply all the tactics we've learned and shared here with you.
You can follow us on Instagram at @prodigy.rocks and leave a comment to see if we're staying true to our promise. But we're curious.
Are you gonna apply these underrated yet powerful Instagram engagement tactics too?
